A study of cities and towns in early modern Europe. Europe is defined in this study as the region encompassed, at the start of early modern times, by the Church of Rome. This includes all of western and central Europe and some of eastern Europe, but it excludes Russia and the Ottoman Empire.

This is the first in a two-volume study of the medieval city. It traces the slow regeneration of urban life in the early-medieval period, showing where and how an urban tradition had survived from late antiquity, and when and why new urban communities began to form where there was no continuity.