The Pre-industrial Urban System: France 1740-1840

This is a landmark publication in the urban study of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which appears here for the first time in English. Highly acclaimed in the original French edition, 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 methodology: his use of models of urban interaction and the unravelling of the complex spatial dimensions to urbanisation. He also sets up a detailed analysis of French urbanisation and regionalism, and the different aspects of urban society: finance, building, trade, images and innovation. Lepetit’s ideas will be of major interest to scholars of urbanisation and the industrial revolution in Europe.