ABSTRACT
In the literature of urban geography, little space is devoted to prenineteenth-century cities. When the subject is discussed it is usually treated with a bland lack of controversy: textbooks, and monographs and papers on historical and modern cities are alike in their exclusive and uncritical presentation of Sjoberg's generalizations about what he termed the 'pre-industrial city'. 1 The reasons for this situation are not, of course, hard to find. Until recently, this was the only set of generalizations available, and the continents in which much of the recent work in urban social geography has been done have no great fund of pre-nineteenth-century urban experience. The
1. Sjoberg, G. (1960) The pre-industrial city, past and present (Glencoe, Ill.).
