Urban demography in pre-industrial England: what is to be done?

Abstract

For over thirty years demography has featured prominently on the urban history agenda. As long ago as 1963, in an article subtitled ‘On broadening the relevance and scope of urban history’, Eric Lampard emphasized that ‘An autonomous social history ought to begin with a study of population: its changing distribution in time and space’. In 1968 Leo Schnore suggested concentration upon ‘the demographic and ecological aspects of urban life’, according demography the number one priority. Leading British urban historians and historical geographers repeated such injunctions in the 1970s, emphasizing how little was known about even the most basic aspects of pre-industrial urban populations and how far British researchers lagged behind their continental colleagues in the field of urban demography. Unfortunately the response of the last generation of researchers to these precepts has been decidedly muted, and pre-industrial urban demography in England remains in its infancy.