Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book describes the main industrialising economies of nineteenth-century Europe, but the variations between them provide a valuable basis for the comparative analysis of the petite bourgeoisie. It offers distinct paths of transition to freedom of trade, to industrial economies and urban societies, and to democratic political cultures. The book focuses on material from a wider variety of situations than exist within a single country, in order to advance broader explanations or interpretations. It explores comparisons between countries, comparisons between trades, and comparisons between types of town, then this is because the significance of adjusting the unit of comparison has emerged from our study of the petite bourgeoisie. The book explores the way the place of petits bourgeois in the radical world of the menupeuple progressively fragmented along with the popular politics that it had sustained.