Highly acclaimed in the original French edition, this landmark urban study of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries appears here for the first time in English. It provides one of the first synoptic views of the evolution of the French urban system before the Industrial Revolution by examining not only the major cities but the wider urban hierarchy. The innovations of this study lie in Lepetit's use of models of urban interaction and the unraveling of the complex spatial dimensions to urbanization.

This volume offers a powerful response to the long-felt need for a substantial study of urban education that takes full comparative account of both the historical and international contexts. A distinguished international team of contributors has been assembled to assess the principal theoretical and methodological approaches to the history of urban education in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia and the specific way in which these have been tried in various national contexts. This is a major work of reference for scholars across the social sciences.

Small towns comprised the great majority of urban settlements in pre-industrial Europe, but very little is known about them and their economic and social world. This is the first major work in English to give a pan-European perspective on the changing role of small towns from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Chapters by leading experts in the field look at small communities from the Hungarian Plain to western Ireland, from Sweden to Spain, and the general introduction provides a broad comparative perspective.

Verhulst examines fifteen towns, mainly situated on the rivers Meuse and Scheldt and along the North Sea coast of present day Belgium, Holland and France. He details the impact of political, military, ecclesiastical, economic and social factors on the development of towns from market towns to industrial centers. Arranged chronologically, the book charts the settlement and subsequent growth of the towns from the fourth to the twelfth centuries. Well illustrated with maps and with a full bibliography, this book will prove essential reading for students and scholars of historical and urban...