Was the Eighteenth Century an Era of Urbanization in France?

Abstract

Was the Eighteenth Century an Era of Urbanization in France? During the past decade, at least five attempts have been made to measure the rate and pattern of urban growth in preindustrial France, sometimes within the context of more ambitious investigations of urbanization throughout Europe or even the world.1 The most important of these efforts, such as de Vries' account of European urbanization or Lepetit's study of French cities between 1740 and 1840, brilliantly combine intellectual ambition with theoretical and methodological sophistication. Together, these studies have disclosed a number of significant patterns characterizing the growth of cities in that era, substantially enhancing our understanding of the spatial articulation of the preindustrial French economy and of the forces either promoting or retarding urban growth. The rhythms of urbanization shown by work of this sort promise to provide one of the statistical backbones around which much of the urban and social