Combining the efforts of French and North American scholars, Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France contains six original studies exploring important and previously overlooked aspects of French urban history under the Ancien Regime. These essays are preceded by an extensive introduction which places them in their historical and historiographic context and surveys the major changes experienced by France's cities over the period from the sixteenth century to the eve of the revolution.
This collection seeks at once to synthesize early modern French history and to suggest new avenues for research, offering an illuminating picture of the significant transformations undergone by French society from the end of the Middle Ages to 1879.