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This volume aims at taking the first steps towards a revaluation of urban historiography in Northwest Europe, including rather than excluding texts that do not fit common definitions. It confronts examples from the Low Countries to well-studied cases abroad, in order to develop new approaches to urban historiography in general. In the authors' view, there are no fixed textual formats, social or political categories, or material forms that exclusively define 'the urban chronicle'. Urban historiography in pre-modern Western Europe came in many guises, from the dry and modest historical notes in a guild register, to the elaborate heraldic images in a luxury manuscript made on commission for a patrician family, to the legally founded political narrative of a professional scribe in an official town chronicle. The contributions in this volume attest to the diversity of the 'genre' and look more closely at these texts from a broader, comparative perspective, unrestrained by typologies and genre definitions. It is mainly because of these hybrid guises, that many examples of urban historiography from the Low Countries for instance succeeded in going unnoticed for a considerable amount of time.
A pioneering text which covers the urban society of early modern Europe as a whole. Challenges the usual emphasis on regional diversity by stressing the extent to which cities across Europe shared a common urban civilization whose major features remained remarkably constant throughout the period. After outlining the physical, political, religious, economic and demographic parameters of urban life, the author vividly depicts the everyday routines of city life and shows how pitifully vulnerable city-dwellers were to disasters, epidemics, warfare and internal strife.
Rosemary Wakeman's original survey text comprehensively explores modern European urban history from 1815 to the present day. It provides a journey to cities and towns across the continent, in search of the patterns of development that have shaped the urban landscape as indelibly European. The focus is on the built environment, the social and cultural transformations that mark the patterns of continuity and change, and the transition to modern urban society. Including over 60 images that serve to illuminate the analysis, the book examines whether there is a European city, and if so, what are its characteristics? Wakeman offers an interdisciplinary approach that incorporates concepts from cultural and postcolonial studies, as well as urban geography, and provides full coverage of urban society not only in western Europe, but also in eastern and southern Europe, using various cities and city types to inform the discussion. The book provides detailed coverage of the often-neglected urbanization post-1945 which allows us to more clearly understand the modernizing arc Europe has followed over the last two centuries.
Urban history is a well-established and flourishing field of historical research. Written by a leading scholar, this short introduction demonstrates how urban history draws upon a wide variety of methodologies and sources, and has been integral to the rise of interdisciplinary and comparative approaches to history since the second half of the twentieth century. Shane Ewen offers an accessible and clearly written guide to the study of urban history for the student, teacher, researcher or general reader who is new to the field and interested in learning about past approaches as well as key themes, concepts and trajectories for future research. He takes a global and comparative viewpoint, combining a discussion of classic texts with the latest literature to illustrate the current debates and controversies across the urban world. The historiography of the field is mapped out by theme, including new topics of interest, with a particular focus on space and social identity, power and governance, the built environment, culture and modernity, and the growth and spread of transnational networking. By discussing a number of historic and fast-growing cities across the world, What is Urban History? demonstrates the importance of the history of urban life to our understanding of the world, both in the present and the future. As a result, urban history remains pivotal for explaining the continued growth of towns and cities in a global context, and is particularly useful for identifying the various problems and solutions faced by fast-growing megacities in the developing world.
This volume explores the specificity of the urban culture in western Europe during the period c.1150-1550. Since the mid-twentieth century, many studies have complicated the association, traditionally made, between the medieval growth of towns and the birth of a modern, secular world; but few have given any attention to what actually made urban culture 'urban'. This volume begins by placing medieval 'urban culture' within its spatial context, to consider how urban conditions determined the perception and representation of the city-dweller. Contributors examine a variety of urban cultures, from the political to the artistic, from London and Bruges to Florence and Venice, and beyond Europe. They show how urban culture involved a process of interaction with other discourses (royal, noble, ecclesiastical) and that it was not monolithic: the relationship between urban environments and the cultures they generated were hybrid, fluid and dynamic.
The field of urban environmental history is a relatively new one, yet it is rapidly moving to the forefront of scholarly research and is the focus of much interdisciplinary work. Given the environmental problems facing the modern world it is perhaps unsurprising that historians, geographers, political, natural and social scientists should increasingly look at the environmental problems faced by previous generations, and how they were regarded and responded to. This volume reflects this growing concern, and reflects many of the key concerns and issues that are essential to our understanding of the problems faced by cities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Addressing a variety of environmental issues, such as clean water supply, the provision/retention of green space, and noise pollution, that faced European and North American cities the essays in this volume highlight the common responses as well as the differences that characterised the reactions to these trans-national concerns.
A concise study of large time frame (fourth-twelfth centuries) charting the growth and development of cities in north-west Europe.
A survey of urbanization and the making of modern Europe from the mid-eighteenth century to the First World War.
Examines and explains the waves of urbanization across Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the dawn of the 21st century, covering the whole of Europe, north and south, east and west, and looking at urban trends, the urban economy, social developments, cultural life, and governance.
Europe became a land of cities during the last millennium. The story told in this book begins with North Sea and Mediterranean traders sailing away from Dorestad and Amalfi, and with warrior kings building castles to fortify their conquests. It tells of the dynamism of textile towns in Flanders and Ireland. While London and Hamburg flourished by reaching out to the world and once vibrant Spanish cities slid into somnlence, a Russian urban network slowly grew to rival that of the West. Later as the tide of industrialization swept over Europe, the most intense urban striving and then settled back into the merchant cities and baroque capitals of an earlier era. By tracing the large-scale precesses of social, economic, and political change within cities, as well as the evolving relationships between town and country and between city and city, the authors present an original synthsis of European urbanization within a global context. They divide their study into three time periods, making the early modern era much more than a mere transition from preindustrial to industrial economies. Through both general analyzes and incisive case studies, Hohenberg and Lees show how cities originated and what conditioned their early development and later growth. How did urban activity respond to demographic and techological changes? Did the social consequences of urban life begin degradation or inspire integration and cultural renewal? New analytical tools suggested by a systems view of urban relations yield a vivid dual picture of cities both as elements in a regional and national heirarchy of central places and also as junctions in a transnational network for the exchange of goods, information, and influence. A lucid text is supplemented by numerous maps, illustrations, figures, and tables, and by substantial bibliography. Both a general and a scholarly audience will find this book engrossing reading. Table of Contents: Introduction: Urdanization in Perspective PART I: The Preindustrial Age: eleventh to Fourteenth Centuries 1. Structure and Functions of Medieval Towns 2. Systems of Early Cities 3. The Demography of Preindustrial Cities PART II: The Industrial Age: Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries 4. Cities in the Early Modern European Economy 5. Beyond Baroque Urbanism PART III: The Industrial Age: Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries 6. Industrial and the Cities 7. Urban Growth and Urban Systems 8. The Human Consequences of Industrial Urbanization 9. The Evolution and Control of Urban Space 10. Europe's Cities in the Twentieth Century Appendix A: A Cyclical Model of an Economy Appendix B: Size Distributions and the Ranks-Size Rule Notes Bibliography Index Reviews of this book: A readable and ambitious introduction to the long history of European urbanization. --Economic History Review Reviews of this book: A trailblazing history of the transformation of Europe. --John Barkham Reviews Reviews of this book: A marvelously compendious account of a millennium of urban development, which accomplishes that most difficult of assignments, to design a work that will safely introduce the newcomer to the subject and at the same time stimulate professional colleagues to review positions. --Urban Studies