Peter Borsay

Introduction: Wales, a new agenda for urban history

The publication in 2000 of the three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Britain presented British urban historians with an ideal opportunity to take stock of the current state of research in their discipline. For Welsh urban historians it raised a number of particularly thorny issues. Whilst it contained some important chapters focused exclusively on the history of Welsh towns, it also identified Wales as one of the most under-researched areas of urban Britain. This special issue, dedicated specifically to Welsh urban history, has been conceived in part as a response to that finding. It also represents the collective efforts of scholars, new and established, whose research on urban Wales was presented at a conference on ‘Understanding Urban Wales’ at the University of Wales Swansea in September 2003. The event demonstrated the existence of a healthy ‘critical mass’ of scholarship, at both postgraduate and postdoctoral level, on Welsh towns and their development.

The English Medieval Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1200-1540.@@@The Tudor and Stuart Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1530-1688.@@@The Eighteenth Century Town: A Reader in English Urban History, 1688-1820.

Urban growth and agricultural change - England and the Continent in the early modern period, E.A.Wrigley country, county, and town - patterns of regional evolution in England, A.M.Everitt urban improvement and the English economy in the 17th and 18th centuries, E.L.Jones and M.E.Falkus the English urban renaissance - the development of provincial urban culture 1680-1760, P.Borsay the London mob in the early 18th century, R.B.Shoemaker Bath - ideology and utopia 1700-1760, R.S.Neale science, provincial culture, and public opinion in enlightenment England, R.Porter money, land, and lineage - the big bourgeoisie of Hanoverian London, N.Rogers Birmingham and the West Midlands 1760-1793 - politics and regional identity in the English provinces in the later 18th century, J.Money social class and social geography - the middle classes in London at the end of the 18th century, L.D.Schwartz voluntary societies and British urban elites 1780-1850 - an analysis.