Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T07:36:22.616Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban History: prospect and retrospect*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Richard Rodger
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The appearance of Urban History as a journal marks a further stage in the progression from Newsletter to Yearbook and now to a semi-annual periodical. The timing is apt since it coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of the first issue of the Urban History Newsletter, and the enthusiasm surrounding the production and publication of Urban History is a continuing sign of the vigour and confidence expressed by H.J. Dyos thirty years ago, and again in 1974, when the Yearbook first appeared. The current academic self-confidence is matched by a commercial one from the new publishers, Cambridge University Press.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , April 1992 , pp. 1 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

The section on ‘Theory, practice and urban history in Britain’ represents the distillation of remarks made to the final session of a meeting in Chicago 1990 on ‘Modes of Inquiry for American City History’. Many individuals have written since encouraging me to develop these ideas. I am particularly grateful to Peter Fearon, Josef Konvitz, Lynn Lees, Alan Mayne, Bruce Pennay, David Reeder, Joel Tarr, and Anthony Sutcliffe for their observations, oral and written, and if not by name, would like to acknowledge the enthusiastic promptings of my many other correspondents. My only regret is that I am not equal to the task which they urged me to address, and could not incorporate their observations more effectively.

References

1 Martin, G.H. and Mclntyre, S., A Bibliography of British and Irish Municipal History (London, 1972).Google Scholar

2 Dyos, H.J., ‘Editorial’, Urban History Yearbook (1974), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Clark, P. and Haynes, B., Register of Urban History Teaching Research and Publications 1991, Centre for Urban History Special Publications Series No. 2 (Leicester, 1991).Google Scholar

4 Diederiks, H. and Van Der Laan, P.H.J., ‘Urban history in the Netherlands’, Urban History Yearbook (1976), 28–34;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Z. Miller, C. Griffen and G. Stelter, ‘Urban history in North America’, ibid. (1977), 6–29; I. Hammarström, ‘Urban history in Scandinavia’, ibid. (1974), 46–55; G. Davison, ‘Australian urban history’, ibid. (1979), 100–9; D. Roche, ‘Urban history in France’, ibid. (1980), 12–22; S. Watanabe, ‘Planning history in Japan’, ibid. (1980), 63–75; J. Reulecke and G. Huck, ‘Urban history research in Germany’, ibid. (1981), 39–49; N. Gupta, ‘Twelve years on: urban history in India’, ibid. (1981), 76–9; R.A. Mohl, ‘The new urban history: some reflection on US scholarship on the twentieth century city’, ibid. (1983), 19–28; E. Bloomfield, ‘Canadian urban history’, ibid. (1983), 53–72; D.A. Hamer, ‘New Zealand urban history’, and M. Kelly, ‘Urban history goes social: some recent work in Australia’, ibid. (1984), 61–80; G.H. Pirie, ‘South African urban history’, ibid. (1985), 18– 29; M. Daly, ‘Irish urban history’, ibid. (1986), 61–72; D.D. Buck, ‘The study of urban history in the People's Republic of China’, ibid. (1987), 61–75; J.E. Myhre, ‘Nordic urban history’, ibid. (1988), 65–77.

5 For a thorough appraisal of his influence see Reeder, D., ‘H.J. Dyos: an appreciation’, Urban History Yearbook (1979), 4–10;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cannadine, D. and Reeder, D. (eds), Exploring the Urban Past: Essays in Urban History by H.J. Dyos (Cambridge, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Warner, S.B., ‘When urban history is at the center of the curriculum’, Journal of Urban History 18, (1991), 3–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 McDonald, T.J., ‘Rediscovering the active city’, Journal of Urban History, 16 (1990), 304.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Dyos, H.J., ‘Editorial’, Urban History Yearbook (1975), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Dyos, H.J., ‘Editorial’, Urban History Yearbook (1974), 5–6.Google Scholar

10 Cannadine, D.N., ‘The “Dyos phenomenon” and afteŕ, in Cannadine and Reeder, Exploring the Urban Past, 208.Google Scholar

11 Briggs, A., The History of Birmingham: Borough and City 1867–1939 (London, 1952);Google Scholar and Victorian Cities (London, 1963).Google Scholar

12 Dyos, , ‘Editorial’ (1974), 5–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Dyos, H.J., Urbanity and Suburbanity (Leicester, 1973).Google Scholar

14 Checkland, S.G., ‘An urban history horoscope’, in Fraser, D. and Sutcliffe, A. (eds), The Pursuit of Urban History (London, 1983), 451 and 458–60.Google Scholar

15 Mandelbaum, S.J., ‘H.J. Dyos and British urban history’, Economic History Review, 38 (1985), 437–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Dyos, , ‘Editorial’ (1974), brackets added.Google Scholar

17 Dyos, H.J., ‘Editorial’, Urban History Yearbook (1977), 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Hobsbawm, E.J., ‘From social history to the history of society’, Daedalus, 100 (1971), 20–45Google Scholar, rpt. in Flinn, M.W. and Smout, T.C. (eds), Essays in Social History (Oxford, 1976);Google Scholar Glynn, S., ‘Approaches to urban history: the case for caution’, Australian Economic History Review, 10 (1970), 219;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Pollard, S., ‘Two visions of the city’, Times Higher Educational Supplement, 7 Sept (1973);Google Scholar The term ‘portmanteau subject’ was coined by Dyos himself, see his editorial, Urban History Yearbook (1977), 4. For a further historiographical account see Morris, R.J. and Rodger, R., ‘An introduction to British urban history 1820–1914’, in Morris, R.J. and Rodger, R. (eds), The Nineteenth Century: A Reader in British Urban History 1820–1914Google Scholar (forthcoming).

19 Pahl, R., ‘Concepts in context: pursuing the urban of “urban sociology”’, in Fraser, and Sutcliffe, , The Pursuit of Urban History, 382.Google Scholar

20 Pahl, R., Whose City? (London, 1970);Google Scholar Abrams, P., ‘Towns and economic growth: some theories and problems’, in Abrams, P. and Wrigley, E.A. (eds), Towns and Societies (Cambridge, 1970).Google Scholar

21 Abrams, P., ‘Towns and economic growth’, 10.Google Scholar

22 Castells, M., The Urban Question (Paris, 1972; London, 1977);Google Scholar Hobsbawm, ‘From social history’.

23 Goose, N.R., ‘In search of the urban variable: towns and the English economy 1500–1650’, Economic History Review, 39 (1986), 184–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Koditschek, T., Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society: Bradford 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990), 80–1Google Scholar, note 4. 1 am indebted to David Reeder for drawing my attention to this statement.

25 Sutcliffe, A., ‘In search of the urban variable’, in Fraser, and Sutcliffe, , The Pursuit of Urban History, 263.Google Scholar

26 For example, Cannadine, D.N., Lords and Landlords: the Aristocracy and the Towns 1774–1967 (Leicester, 1980);Google Scholar Offer, A., Property and Politics 1870–1914: Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England (Cambridge, 1981);Google Scholar Daunton, M.J., House and Home in the Victorian City: Working Class Housing 1850–1914 (London, 1983);Google Scholar Muthesius, S., The English Terraced House (New Haven, 1982);Google Scholar Olsen, D.J., The Growth of Victorian London (London, 1976).Google Scholar

27 Monkkonen, E.H., America Becomes Urban: The Development of US Cities and Towns 1780–1980 (Berkeley, 1988).Google Scholar

28 McDonald, , ‘Rediscovering the active city’, 309.Google Scholar

29 Pahl, R., ‘Playing the rationality game’, in Bell, C. and Newby, H. (eds), Doing Sociological Research (London, 1977), 130–48.Google Scholar

30 Denison, E., ‘United States economic growth’, Journal of Business (1962), 109–21, table 1;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rosenberg, N., Technology and American Economic Growth (New York, 1972), 31–2;Google Scholar Saul, S.B., ‘Introduction’, in Saul, (ed.), Technological Change: The United States and Britain in the 19th Century (London, 1970), 19.Google Scholar

31 McDonald, T.J., ‘Faith of our fathers: middle range social theory and the remaking of American urban history’, paper to ‘Modes of Inquiry into American City History’, Chicago, 1990.Google Scholar

32 Morris, R.J., ‘The state, the elite and the market: the “visible hand” in the British industrial system’, in Hohenberg, P., Diederiks, H. and Wagenaar, M. (eds), The Visible Hand: The Fortunes of Cities (Leicester, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

33 Rodger, R., ‘Managing the market, regulating the city: urban control in 19th century British cities’, in Hohenberg, , Diederiks, and Wagenaar, , The Visible HandGoogle Scholar, and ‘Containing the contamination’, in Rodger, R., Housing in Urban Britain 1780–1914: Class, Capitalism and Construction (London, 1989), 45–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Morris, R.J., ‘Externalities, the market, power structures and the urban agenda’, Urban History Yearbook, 17 (1990), 104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 See, for example, Evans, W.M., Organizational Theory: Structures, Systems and Environments (New York, 1976);Google Scholar Levine, S. and White, P.E., ‘Exchange as a conceptual framework for the study of interorganizational relationships’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 5 (1961), 583–601;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cook, K.S., ‘Exchange and power in networks of interorganizational relations’, Sociological Quarterly, 18 (1977), 82–8;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hartley, O.A., ‘The relationship between central and local authorities’, Public Administration, 49 (1971), 439–56;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rhodes, R.A.W., ‘Some myths in central-local relations’, Town Planning Review, 51 (1980), 270–85;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hall, R.H. et al. , ‘Patterns of interorganizational relationships’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 22 (1977), 457–74;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Aldrich, H., Organizations and Environments (New Jersey, 1979);Google Scholar Pfeiffer, J. and Salancik, G.R., External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependency Perspective (New York, 1978);Google Scholar Schmidt, S.M. and Kochan, T.A., ‘Interorganizational relationships: patterns and motivations’, Administrative Science Quarterly, 22 (1977), 220–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Dyos, H.J. and Wolff, M. (eds), The Victorian City: Images and Realities, 2 vols (London, 1973).Google Scholar

37 Warner, S.B., ‘The management of multiple urban images’, in Fraser, and Sutcliffe, , The Pursuit of Urban History, 383–94.Google Scholar

38 Domosh, M., ‘The symbolism of the skyscraper: case studies of New York's first tall buildings’, Journal of Urban History, 14 (1988), 321–45;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rubin, B., ‘Aesthetic ideology and urban design’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 69 (1979), 339–61;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lane, B.M., ‘Changing attitudes to monumentality: an interpretation of European architecture and urban form 1880–1914’, in Hammarström, I. and Hall, T., Growth and Transformation of the Modern City (Stockholm, 1979), 101–14.Google Scholar

39 See, for example, the papers to the conference on ‘Built Form and the Cultural Environment’, University of Kansas, November 1986.Google Scholar For an account, see Rodger, R., ‘Built form and the cultural environment’, Planning History Bulletin, 9 (1987), 8–13.Google Scholar

40 Examples include Lawrence's, R. article in this issue of Urban History and his Le Seuil franchi…logement populaire et vie quotidienne en Suisse romande 1860–1960 (Geneva, 1986);Google Scholar Korosec-Serfaty, P. (ed.), L'Appropriation de I'Espace (Louvain-La-Neuve, 1976);Google Scholar Barbey, G., L'Habitation Captive: Essai sur la Spatialité du Logement de Masses (St Saphorin, 1980)Google Scholar.

41 Higgs, E., ‘Particular instance papers: the historical and archival dimensions’, Social History, 10 (1985), 89–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Report of the Wilson committee on Modern Public Records, Cmnd. 8204, para. 110,118.

43 Hull, F., The Use of Sampling Techniques in the Retention of Records: A RAMP Study with Guidelines (Paris, 1981).Google Scholar

44 Dyos, H.J., ‘Editorial’, Urban History Yearbook (1978), 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.