Introduction

The construction of historical knowledge involves an essential tension: between the quest to detect broad patterns of significance, and the need to root these patterns in the stubborn particularities of time and place. This volume attempts to capture this tension, and in so doing to provoke some rethinking of the history of French cities and of their changing role within the larger society of which they were a part over the course of the three centuries that the French conventionally label ‘l’époque moderne’, and which shall be referred to here interchangeably as the ‘Ancien Régime’ or early modern’ period. Six original archival studies, exploring important and largely neglected aspects of French urban history between the close of the Middle Ages and the outbreak of the Revolution, are preceded by a long introductory essay offering an interpretive overview of the subject.