ABSTRACT

In recent years, scholarly accounts of urban modernity in Europe have focused increasingly on historical processes that transcended the boundaries of the local. The emergence of modern forms of state power and urban governance, the growth of civil society and the rise of the public sphere have emerged as key themes in the historiography. In turn, this has led to a growing recognition of the comparative possibilities afforded by the analytical study of these transnational developments. Historians have been especially keen to explore the similarities and differences that characterized the modernization of urban society in diverse European contexts.