Introduction: Urban Europe from the Middle Ages to 1850

Abstract

Despite enormous variations across medieval and early medieval Europe, the second wave of European urbanisation that started around 1000CE had major repercussions everywhere. The increase in the number and size of European towns coincided with a period of relatively weak state power. This had a variety of consequences: from the diverse ways of organising urban life and space across the continent to the large degree of self-government that many towns enjoyed. It may also be one of the reasons why Europe remained, as it had become during the Roman era, a continent of medium-sized towns, rather than mega-cities – a development that arguably still affects the continent’s patterns of urbanisation today. This Introduction surveys aspects of European urbanisation as they played out across a millennium and their interpretation by urban historians.