Small towns comprised the great majority of urban settlements in pre-industrial Europe. This work in English gives a pan-European perspective on the changing role of small towns throughout all parts of Europe from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.

Editorial preface; 1. Introduction Peter Clark; 2. The mainstays of the urban fringe: Norwegian small towns 1500–1800 Finn-Einar Eliassen; 3. Small towns in the periphery: population and economy of small towns in Sweden and Finland during the early modern period Sven Lilja; 4. Small towns in eastern central Europe Vera Bacskai; 5. Small towns in England 1550–1850: national and regional trends Peter Clark; 6. The cultural role of small towns in England 1600–1800 Michael Reed; 7. Small towns in early modern Ireland Raymond Gillespie; 8. In search of the small town in early nineteenth-century France Bernard Lepetit; 9. Small towns in early modern Germany: the case of Hesse 1500–1800 Holger Graf; 10. Demography and hierarchy: the small towns and the urban network in sixteenth-century Flanders Peter Stabel; 11. Domestic demand and urbanization in the eighteenth century: demographic and functional evidence from the small towns of Brabant Bruno Blonde; 12. The small towns of northern Italy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: an overview Peter Musgrave; 13. Cities, towns and small towns in Castile 1500–1800 Juan Gelabert; Bibliography; Index.