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.
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