ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how Basel's Fasnacht offered a way for those who were structurally disenfranchised from civic government to develop social networks among themselves, gain visibility and a voice on civic matters and, eventually, to acquire sufficient presence in the civic realm to bring about their enfranchisement as full citizens. Basel, like most European cities, experienced substantial growth in the nineteenth century. Basel differed in one significant respect from comparable cities in France, Germany and Switzerland, by keeping political power in the hands of its medieval guilds and reserving citizenship and voting rights to a very small number of residents until the end of the nineteenth century. In the late nineteenth century, as Basel's working class organized, there was an explosion of new unions and associations in each trade. The urban form and institutional structures of Basel had changed little from the time of their establishment in the thirteenth century until the end of the eighteenth century.
