The major changes experienced by France's cities over the period from the end of the Middle Ages to the eve of the Revolution are explored by six French and North American historians in this volume. They offer an illuminating picture of the significant transformation undergone by French society over three centuries which should be invaluable to all those interested in European social and urban history. Many of the contributors discuss the interaction between urban society and the growth of the state. Others suggest new methods for constructing the life courses and experiences of ordinary...

This book is the first modern study to examine the history of a single French community over the full course of the civil wars (1560 1600), and its account of local developments is enriched by frequent comparisons with events and conditions elsewhere in the country. An introductory chapter describes Rouen's economy, social structure and political institutions on the eve of the Wars of Religion. Successive chapters explore the rise and decline of Protestantism; the sociology of the faith; the causes and chronology of the popular violence which began to disturb the city after 1560; the roots of...

Fifty years after the beginning of the debate about the 'general crisis of the seventeenth century, ' and thirty years after Theodore K. Rabb's reformulation of it as the 'European struggle for stability, ' this volume returns to the fundamental questions raised by the long-running discussion: What continent-wide patterns of change can be discerned in European history across the centuries from the Renaissance to the French Revolutio

The major changes experienced by France's cities over the period from the end of the middle ages to the eve of the Revolution are explored by six French and North American historians.