Textiles are a key component of the industrial and consumer revolutions, yet we lack a coherent picture of how the marketing of textiles varied across the long 18th century and between different regions. This book provides important new insights into the ways in which changes in the supply of textiles related to shifting patterns of demand.

Little is known about the ways in which early modern musical cultures were integrated within their broader urban environments. Building on recent trends within urban musicology, the authors of this volume aim to transcend descriptive overviews of institutions and actors involved with music within a given city. Instead, they consider the urban environment as the constitutive context for the making of music as a significant aspect of urban society and identity.

Through selected case studies and by focusing on three musical circuits opera and theater music, sacred music, and secular songs this book contributes to a more effective understanding of music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century urban societies in the southern Netherlands and beyond. Musicological and historical research perspectives are fruitfully integrated, as well as insights from theater scholarship and literary criticism. With attention to the musical life behind the traditional institutions, the circulation of repertoires, and musical cultures in peripheral urban environments or in cities in decay, Music and the City reveals the societal dimension of music in urban life."

The Low Countries was collectively one of the earliest and most heavily urbanised societies in European history. Present-day Belgium and the Netherlands still share important common features, such as comparatively low income inequalities, high levels of per capita income, a balanced political structure, and a strong 'civil society'. This book traces the origins of this specific social model in medieval patterns of urbanisation, while also searching for explanations for the historical reproduction of social inequalities. Access to cheap inland river navigation and to the sea generated a 'river delta' urbanisation that explains the persistence of a decentralised urban economic network, marked by intensive cooperation and competition and by the absence of real metropolises. Internally as well, powerful checks and balances prevented money and power from being concentrated. Ultimately, however, the utmost defining characteristic of the Low Countries' urban cultures was located in their resilient middle classes.

The Low Countries was collectively one of the earliest and most heavily urbanised societies in European history. Present-day Belgium and the Netherlands still share important common features, such as comparatively low income inequalities, high levels of per capita income, a balanced political structure, and a strong 'civil society'. This book traces the origins of this specific social model in medieval patterns of urbanisation, while also searching for explanations for the historical reproduction of social inequalities. Access to cheap inland river navigation and to the sea generated a 'river delta' urbanisation that explains the persistence of a decentralised urban economic network, marked by intensive cooperation and competition and by the absence of real metropolises. Internally as well, powerful checks and balances prevented money and power from being concentrated. Ultimately, however, the utmost defining characteristic of the Low Countries' urban cultures was located in their resilient middle classes.

Textiles are a key component of the industrial and consumer revolutions, yet we lack a coherent picture of how the marketing of textiles varied across the long 18th century and between different regions. This book provides important new insights into the ways in which changes in the supply of textiles related to shifting patterns of demand.