In the last third of the eighteenth-century, Bristol and Nantes were two of the most active commercial ports of England and France, despite a slowdown of their economy. Their economies were based primarily on the maritime trade, but they developed alongside Atlantic industries that attracted many migrants, both male and female, from the surrounding countryside and from abroad. The busy urban environment, the high number of sailors and single men migrating to the port, and the decline of female house based proto-industries, were factors encouraging the development of prostitution. How prostitution is perceived in the context of social control and urban change is key to understanding the evolving attitudes to gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century. In this comparative study, Marion Pluskota offers an analysis of the lives of prostitutes that looks beyond a purely criminal perspective, and which encompasses their roles within their families, relationships and social networks. Using police and judicial records, she provides a valuable corrective to the narrow analysis of prostitutes in terms of immorality or deviance. The unique forms of development and problems faced by port cities in the early modern period make them particularly interesting subjects for comparative history. This book is well suited for those who study social history, gender and women’s history.

In the last third of the eighteenth-century, Bristol and Nantes were two of the most active commercial ports of England and France, despite a slowdown of their economy. Their economies were based primarily on the maritime trade, but they developed alongside Atlantic industries that attracted many migrants, both male and female, from the surrounding countryside and from abroad. The busy urban environment, the high number of sailors and single men migrating to the port, and the decline of female house based proto-industries, were factors encouraging the development of prostitution. How prostitution is perceived in the context of social control and urban change is key to understanding the evolving attitudes to gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century. In this comparative study, Marion Pluskota offers an analysis of the lives of prostitutes that looks beyond a purely criminal perspective, and which encompasses their roles within their families, relationships and social networks. Using police and judicial records, she provides a valuable corrective to the narrow analysis of prostitutes in terms of immorality or deviance. The unique forms of development and problems faced by port cities in the early modern period make them particularly interesting subjects for comparative history. This book is well suited for those who study social history, gender and women's history. --

This book charts the lives of (suspected) thieves, illegitimate mothers and vagrants in early modern Frankfurt. The book highlights the gender differences in recorded criminality and the way that they were shaped by the local context. Women played a prominent role in recorded crime in this period, and could even make up half of all defendants in specific European cities. At the same time, there were also large regional differences. Women’s crime patterns in Frankfurt were both similar and different to those of other cities. Informal control within the household played a significant role and influenced the prosecution patterns of authorities. This impacted men and women differently, and created clear distinctions within the system between settled locals and unsettled migrants.

Drawing on a body of research covering primarily Europe and the Americas, but stretching also to Asia and Africa, from the mid-eighteenth century to the present, this book explores the methodological and heuristic implications of studying cities in relation to one another. Moving fluidly between comparative and transnational methods, as well as across regional and national lines, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the necessity of this broader view in assessing not just the fundamentals of urban life, the way cities are occupied and organised on a daily basis, but also the urban mindscape, the way cities are imagined and represented. In doing so the volume provides valuable insights into the advantages and limitations of using multiple cities to form historical inquiries.

Urban power and politics are topics of abiding interest for students of the city. This exciting collection of essays explores how Europe’s cities have been governed across the last 500 years. Taken as a whole, it provides a unique historical overview of urban politics in early modern and modern Europe. At the same time, it guides the reader through the variety of ways in which power and governance are currently understood by historians and new directions in the subject. The essays are wide-ranging, covering Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, Russia to Ireland, between 1500 and the twentieth century. Each chapter employs a specific case-study to illuminate a way of examining how power worked in regard to topics such as women, popular culture or urban elites. A variety of approaches are deployed, including the study of ritual and performance, morality and conduct, governmentality and the state, infrastructure and the individual. Reflecting the state of the art in European urban history, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the study of urban politics and government. It represents a fresh take on a rich subject and will stimulate a new generation of historical studies of power and the city.

In the early modern period women played a prominent role in crime. At times they even made up half of all defendants. Female criminality was a typically urban phenomenon. Why do we find so many women before the Dutch criminal courts?

For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban society was shaped and how this changed over time. Much of the lives of urban dwellers in early modern Europe were played out in city streets and squares. By exploring urban spaces in relation to themes such as politics, economies, religion, and crime, this edited collection shows that streets were not only places where people came together to work, shop, and eat, but also to fight, celebrate, show their devotion, and express their grievances. The volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and applies new approaches and methodologies to the historical study of urban experience. In doing so, Early Modern Streets provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in early modern history. Accompanied by over 50 illustrations, Early Modern Streets is the perfect resource for all students and scholars interested in urban life in early modern Europe.

This interdisciplinary book brings together eleven original contributions by scholars in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, America and Japan which represent innovative and important research on the relationship between cities and their hinterlands. They discuss the factors which determined the changing nature of port-hinterland relations in particular, and highlight the ways in which port-cities have interacted and intersected with their different hinterlands as a result of both in- and out-migration, cultural exchange and the wider flow of goods, services and information. Historically, maritime commerce was a powerful driving force behind urbanisation and by 1850 seaports accounted for a significant proportion of the world’s great cities. Ports acted as nodal points for the flow of population and the dissemination of goods and services, but their role as growth poles also affected the economic transformation of both their hinterlands and forelands. In fact, most ports, irrespective of their size, had a series of overlapping hinterlands whose shifting importance reflected changes in trading relations (political frameworks), migration patterns, family networks and cultural exchange. Urban historians have been criticised for being concerned primarily with self-contained processes which operate within the boundaries of individual towns and cities and as a result, the key relationships between cities and their hinterlands have often been neglected. The chapters in this work focus primarily on the determinants of port-hinterland linkages and analyse these as distinct, but interrelated, fields of interaction. Marking a significant contribution to the literature in this field, Port-Cities and their Hinterlands provides essential reading for students and scholars of the history of economics.

Policing Women examines for the first time the changing historical landscape of women’s experiences of their contact with the official state police between 1800 and 1950 in the Western world. Drawing on and going beyond existing knowledge about policing practices, the volume discusses how women encountered the official police, how they experienced that contact, and the outcomes of that contact in the modern Western world. In so doing, it is an original and much needed addition to the literature around changes in policing, women’s experiences of the criminal justice system, and women’s experiences of control and regulation. The chapters uncover such experiences in a range of countries across Europe, the USA, Canada, and Australia. Importantly, the collection focuses upon a crucial epoch in the history of policing – a 150-year period when policing was rapidly changing and being increasingly placed on a formal level. Bringing together scholarly work from expert contributors, this unique volume draws to the fore women’s experiences of policing. It will be of great use to both scholars and students on undergraduate and postgraduate criminology and history courses, working on the history of crime, historical criminology, the history of criminal justice, and women’s history.

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