Abstract
The academic conference entitled “City Limits? The European City, 1400–1900” was organised by the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada) in 2004. The book under review is largely based on the success of this conference, although its contributors extended their work further in the next few years. As a result, the collection of texts written by Canadian and US scholars was edited and finally published in 2010.
This notable work falls under the field of urban history or, more specifically, the growing field of urban cultural history. Authors take us on the historical journey to show how European cities worked in the early modern period (roughly 1400–1900). They focus primarily on European cities in all but two of the chapters, where examples of Asian and American cities are used for the purpose of comparison. This book provides different perspectives on urban life such as political culture, religion, art, journalism and leisure, including experiences of various social groups ranging from the élites to marginalised people. As noted by the editors
The originality of these insights comes from an interdisciplinary approach to urban phenomena understood more in terms of discourse and representation than in terms of data analysis (p. 6).
The book consists of 13 chapters grouped into three parts, plus general introduction, prefaces for all three parts, postscript and bibliography. Although the chapters can be read separately, only the whole volume provides the answer to the basic question: what are city limits? It is important to consider that this book is not (or not only) about physical or administrative boundaries of the city, it is much more about socio-cultural and socioeconomic limitations (or the absence of them) occurring within city boundaries and affecting the way of life of many social groups living there.
Part 1, ‘Placing the city’, highlights the role of dynamic interaction between people and places in order to explain any specific urban identity developed within relatively fixed boundaries of the city. It begins with the chapter written by Christopher Friedrichs, who is interested in urban political cultures in Eurasian cities during the early modern period. Contrary to Max Weber, Friedrichs argues that historical European and Asian cities have more similarities than usually considered, especially concerning the ways in which different social groups pursued their collective interests. In the next chapter, Johannes C. Wolfart analyses “vernacular confessional historiography”, which is understood as one of the factors in cultural production of both Protestant and urban identities in the early modern cities of Germany during the Reformation. In chapter 3, Susan Lewis Hammond applies theories of reception to the cases of Venice and Copenhagen in the Renaissance period. As she notes, Venice served as a musical model for the very distant city of Copenhagen, thus bringing the two cities closer in cultural terms and fostering cultural transmission in both directions. Mary A. Blackstone in chapter 4 writes on the public performances of authority, urban identity and social cohesion in Norwich during the reign of Mary Tudor. Melanie A. Bailey, the author of chapter 5, deals with the idea of nationalising élite Parisian values immediately after the revolution of 1848–49. Throughout chapter 6, Robin Hoople contrasts aesthetic harmony in Florence with the cultural deprivation prevailing in the architectural text of New York in the late 19th century.
Part 2 is entitled ‘Gender, mobility, and the city’. Its main idea lies in showing that the city accommodates cultural contradictions and ambivalences that produce everlasting tensions in the constitution of urban identity. This part consists of only three chapters, well chosen to demonstrate such important dichotomies as tradition/modernity, health/disability and male/female. It begins with chapter 7 by Pam Perkins, which is devoted to the subject of urban tourism through the example of Edinburgh in the late 18th century. It reveals an aesthetic disunity of past and present in the city’s urban architecture as well as the co-existence of traditional and modern social values. Vanessa Warne in chapter 8 examines the social problem of blind beggars in London during the mid Victorian period, when British society was already intolerant of mendicity, but compassionate towards disability. Finally, in chapter 9, Julie Johnson explores the social status of women artists in fin-de-siècle Paris, with an emphasis on their contested identity in a predominantly male world.
‘Redressing boundaries’ is the title of part 3, with another four chapters. This part concerns the experience of cultural diversity, which draws real or imagined boundaries between homogeneous groups in the city. At the same time, cultural differences may also encourage urban communities to interact, thus allowing their members to cross these socially constructed lines of division. For instance, Alexander J. Fisher in chapter 10 elucidates the role of music and Catholic processions in the streets of Augsburg during the counter-reformation, when the city was divided by an invisible boundary between the Protestant majority and the Roman Catholic minority. Saskia Coenen Snyder, the author of chapter 11, examines the cultural importance of the Jewish neighbourhood in Amsterdam 1670–1730 with regard to how local and foreign visitors observed the synagogues as well as the involvement of Jews in the public life of the city. Chapter 12, an essay by Jon Saklofske, describes two different perspectives on urban landscape using poetic responses to London in the late 18th century. The final chapter, written by Isaac Land, is devoted to the sub-culture of the sailortown community in London’s Wapping neighbourhood throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries.
The authors of this collection mainly draw on case studies, in itself appropriate for the subject. However, the overall selection of case studies favours western European cities at the expense of the cities in other parts of Europe, even in the chapter dealing with Eurasia. Therefore, readers interested in the unique cultural experience of the whole Europe may find this collection incomplete. For example, Saint Petersburg and Prague have also contributed to European culture during the period considered in the book, but there is no text about them. To avoid confusion, I have to add that the cultural importance of the cities described in the book is undeniable and the chapters achieve what the book intended—namely, to further new interdisciplinary approaches to urban cultural history. Every single chapter in this collection covers, in an innovative way, one of the possible perspectives on the historical cities of Europe. Many urban scholars, not only historians, will find this book useful as a source of information about certain historical cities, and also an inspiration for further research into historical and contemporary urban culture.