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Wrestling with the angel: on problems of definition in urban historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2011

Harry S.J. Jansen
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Abstract

The question ‘what is the city’ raised by Martindale in his edition of Max Weber's The City is an omnipresent one in urban history. This analysis of urban historiography since 1840 explores two definitional strands, each with many theoretical dimensions. The first is a somewhat self-contained conception of the city and relies on rural-urban contrasts; the second is a more open conceptualization of the city. The article tries to unravel the different approaches rather than preferring one approach to the other

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , December 1996 , pp. 277 - 299
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Robert Bland for his translation and Richard Rodger for his helpful comments.

References

1 Weber, M., The City, ed. Martindale, D. and Neuwirth, G. (New York, 1958), 11Google Scholar.

2 Stave, B.M., ‘A conversation with H.J. Dyos: urban history in Great Britain’, Journal of Urban History, 5 (1979), 491CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also idem, ‘A view from the United States’, in D. Fraser and A. Sutcliffe, The Pursuit of Urban History (London, 1983), 421.

3 The difference between Dyos and the Dutch urban historians mentioned here may therefore not be so great as it seems. According to Dyos, urban history not only differs from local history, or from social, municipal, economic history but also from any other form of history. See Dyos, H.J., ‘Urbanity and suburbanity’, in Cannadine, D. and Reeder, D., Exploring the Urban Past. Essays in Urban History by H.J. Dyos (Cambridge, 1982), 36Google Scholar. See also R. Rodger, ‘Theory, practice and European urban history’, in idem (ed.), European Urban History. Prospect and Retrospect (Leicester and London, 1993), 3.

4 P.R.D. Stokvis, ‘Moderne stadsgeschiedenis, een nieuwe subdiscipline’, Spiegel Historiael (1986), 333–8 and F.A.M. Messing, ‘Stand van Zaken: een inleidend overzicht’, in P.A.M. Geurts and Messing, F.A.M. (eds), Theoretische en methodologische aspecten van de economische en sociale geschiedenis I. Geschiedenis in veelvoud 7 (The Hague, 1979), 1–53, see esp. 30-3Google Scholar.

5 Kooij, P., Stadsgeschiedenis (Zutphen, 1989), 8Google Scholar. See also idem, ‘Stad en platteland’, in F.L. van Holthoon (ed.), De Nederlandse samenleviong sinds 1815 (Assen, 1985), 93–119.

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7 Kooij, Stadsgeschiedenis, 8.

8 Ibid., 9.

9 See volumes like Fraser and Sutcliffe, The Pursuit of Urban History, and Morris, R.J. and Rodger, R., The Victorian City. A Reader in British Urban History (London and New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

10 The somewhat closed, actionistic, ‘independent’ approach to urban history sees the town as an entity of its own. It is the form of urban history Z. Miller called the ‘cultural approach’, while Lubove saw it as the history of the city building-process. See Stave, ‘A view from the United States’, 419. With ‘biographical’, I mean a conception of the city as a cohesive and active social body; I do not ascribe to it the ‘descriptive’ and ‘noninteractional’ connotation that Dyos and Rodger assign to it. See Rodger, "Theory, practice and European urban history’, 2–3. This is a category which is assigned by Dyos and Rodger to self-contained approaches adopted by amateurs and local historians. The more open, behaviouristic approach has already been circumscribed above where I referred to Kooij and Lampard. It is a kind of urban history in which the city is a subsystem of a more comprehensive system. In England Abrams and Pahl advocated this approach (as we shall see, Abrams's interpretation of Weber as an advocate of such an approach is, to say the least, not very fortunate). 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 in Societies. Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978)Google Scholar. See also Morris and Rodger, The Victorian City, 11-12.

11 Braudel, F., Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme. XVe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1979)Google Scholar. Part I: Les structures du quotidien: le possible et l'impossible. Part 2: Les jeux de l'échange. Part 3: Le temps du monde. The translated passages are from the English edition, Capitalism and Material Life 1400–1800, trans. Kochan, M. (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

12 ‘Toute ville est, se veut un monde à part.’ Braudel, , Civilisation matérielle. Part I: Les structures du quotidien, 376 (Kochan, trans., 382)Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 446. ‘Les villes… sont toutes les produits de leur civilisations.’ Abrams and Pahl also see logical inconsistencies between Braudel's first assertion of ‘a town is a town wherever it is' and his second one that ‘the town in the end is what society, economy and politics allow it to be”. They are astonished that Braudel himself has overlooked this problem. R.E. Pahl, ‘Pursuing the urban of “urban” sociology’, in Fraser and Sutcliffe, The Pursuit of Urban History, 379 and P. Abrams, ‘Introduction’, in Abrams and Wrigley, Towns in Societies.

14 Wesseling, H.L., ‘Fernand Braudel’, in Huussen, A.H. Jr, Kossmann, E.H. and Renner, H. (eds), Historici van de Twintigste Eeuw (Utrecht, 1981), 240Google Scholar.

15 Kochan, Capitalism and Material Life, 441.

16 Braudel was not the only one. Dyos also got caught in the pitfalls of the urban conception. I will comment on that in the sections on ‘The pendulum swings back…’ and ‘New urban history’.

17 K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Die deutsche Ideologie. Kritik der neuesten deutschen Philosophie in ihren Repräsentanten Feuerbach. B. Bauer und Stirner, und des deutschen Sozialismus in seinen verschiedenen Propheten’, in Marx-Engels Werke 3, Institut für Marxismus-Leninismus beim ZK der SED ed. (Berlin, 1969), 50. Referred to elsewhere as MEW.

18 Ibid., 51. When he was writing his critique of Feuerbach, Marx was embroiled in a fierce dispute with the Freien, a Berlin group of young Hegelian thinkers of whom the brothers Bauer and Max Stirner were the leading lights. He was not yet, however, wholly free of their terminology.

19 Avineri, S., The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1970), 157Google Scholar: ‘Thus the structure of the late medieval town cannot be reduced to its material components.”

20 Lefèbvre, H., La Pensée Marxiste et la Ville (Paris, 1972), 41Google Scholar.

21 Hegel, G.W.F., Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts, ed. Reichelt, H. (Frankfurt, 1972), 218 (para. 259)Google Scholar.

22 ‘Ici le sujet de l'histoire, c'est incontestablement la ville’. Lefèbvre, La Pensée Marxiste et la Ville, 45.

23 Marx, ‘Die deutsche Ideologie’, 50.

24 Lefèbvre, La Pensée Marxiste et la Ville, 72–4.

25 Ibid., 81.

26 Lefèbvre and another French urban Marxist, Manuel Castells (The Urban Question (London, 1977)Google Scholar) greatly influenced urban sociologists in England and the USA in the 1970s and early 1980s. See, for example, Harvey, D., Social Justice and the City (London, 1973)Google Scholar. They all advocated a concept in which the town figured as a dependent variable of capitalism and urbanism: see A. Sutcliffe, ‘In search of the urban variable: Britain in the later nineteenth century’, in Fraser and Sutcliffe, The Pursuit of Urban History, 236 and 243.

27 ‘… the stronger treads the weaker under foot, and that the powerful few, the capitalists, seize everything for themselves, while to the weak many, the poor, scarcely a bare existence remains’, MEW 2, 257. The translation is by F. Kelley-Wischnewetsky (1887), The Condition of the Working Class in England, ed. McClennan, D. (Oxford, 1993), 37Google Scholar.

28 Most contemporary English Marxist urban historians conceive the (nineteenth-century) city as a dependent variable of capitalist society. See, for example, Jones, G., Outcast London. A Study of the Relationships between Classes in Victorian Society (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar; Foster, J., Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution. Early Industrial Capitalism in Three English Towns (London, 1974)Google Scholar; and Koditschek, T., Class Formation and Urban-Industrial Society. Bradford 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1990)Google Scholar.

29 Vaughan, R., The Age of Great Cities… or Modern Society Viewed in its Relation to Intelligence, Morals and Religion (London, 1843)Google Scholar. See Clark, P. et al., The Urban Setting (Milton Keynes, 1977), 20Google Scholar and G. Davison, "The city as a “natural system”’, in Fraser and Sutcliffe, The Pursuit of Urban History, 355–7. Vaughan here takes a similar position as Marx in 1844.

30 Disraeli, B., Coningsby, ed. Briggs, A. (New York, 1962; 1st ed. 1844), 133Google Scholar. See also Briggs, A., Victorian Cities (2nd ed., Harmondsworth, 1968), 92Google Scholar, and Clark et al, The Urban Setting, 22.

31 Lees, A., ‘Critics of urban society in Germany, 1854–1914’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XL (1979), 61–83, esp. 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Perceptions of cities in Britain and Germany 1820–1914’, in Fraser and Sutcliffe, The Pursuit of Urban History, 151–66.

32 In addition towns lost their aestheticism. The broad straight streets of proletarian warehouses had robbed the town of her old picturesque aspect. Riehl was particularly upset about the Ludwigstrasse in Munich. Lees, ‘Critics of urban society in Germany’, 63.

33 A similar approach is in Howard, E., Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (London, 1898)Google Scholar. See also Clark et al., The Urban Setting, 24 and Sutcliffe, ‘In search of the urban variable’, 241.

34 Diamond, W., ‘On the dangers of an urban interpretation of history’, in Goldman, F. (ed.), Historiography and Urbanization. Essays in American History in Honour of W. Stult Holt (Port Washington, NY, 1968), 67–108, esp. 71Google Scholar.

35 See for the organic point of view in urban research in Britain in the first half of the nineteenth century, Davison, ‘The city as a “natural system”’, 349–70.

36 Appelbaum, R.P., Theories of Social Change (Boston, Dallas and London, 1970)Google Scholar, and Banks, J.A., ‘The contagion of numbers’, in Dyos, and Wolff, , The Victorian City, I,105–22, esp. 110–13Google Scholar.

37 Z.L. Miller, C. Griffin and G. Stelter, ‘Urban history in North America’, Urban History Yearbook (1977), 6–29, esp. 7.

38 Park, R.E., Burgess, E.W. and McKenzie, R.D., The City (Chicago, 1967; 1st pub. Chicago, 1926), 4Google Scholar. Critical remarks on the urban concept of the Chicago school can be found in Pahl, ‘Pursuing the urban of “urban” sociology’, 372–3.

39 Smith, M.P., The City and Social Theory (Oxford, 1980), 44Google Scholar.

40 Appelbaum, Theories of Social Change, 28–9.

41 In contrast to these evolutionarily inclined sociologists, Wirth considered that such a development did not happen by itself. Cities provided a gateway for development, through which it could be seen how population density and heterogeneity did not lead only to the creation of a new harmony and to integration on the basis of consensus.

42 Schlesinger, A.M., ‘The city in American history’, Mississipi Valley Historical Review, XXVII (1940), 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Ibid., passim, esp. 57. See also Diamond, ‘On the dangers of an urban interpretation of history’, 96.

44 Schlesinger, A.M., The Rise of the City 1878–1898 (New York, 1933), 435Google Scholar. See also Diamond, ‘On the dangers of an urban interpretation of history’, 93.

45 Ibid., 89.

46 Ibid., 101.

47 Ibid., 105.

48 Ibid., 104.

49 Ibid., 107, and Mohl, R.A., ‘The history of the American city’, in Cartwright, W.H. and Watson, R.L. Jr (eds), The Reinterpretation of American History and Culture (Washington, DC, 1973), 166Google Scholar.

50 Miller et al., ‘Urban history in North America’, 8–9.

51 Tisdale, H.E., ‘The process of urbanization’, Social Forces, 10 (1942)Google Scholar. See also Vries, J. de, European Urbanization 1500–1800 (London, 1984), 10–11, 32Google Scholar.

52 Kooij, P., ‘Het gewest uitgetest I. Theorieën en modellen voor de regionale geschiedenis’, Groniek, 16, 76 (n.d.), 14Google Scholar.

53 Ibid., 138.

54 See, for example, Lesger, C., ‘Hiërarchie en spreiding van regionale verzorgingscentra. Het regionale plaatsensysteem in Holland benoorden het Y omstreeks 1800’, Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis, 16, 2 (1990), 128–53, esp. 142Google Scholar. Thus Lesger finds a wide divergence between Christaller's model and the actual spread of central places in Holland north of the Y around 1800.

55 Lampard, ‘Urbanization and social change, 133.

56 Ibid., 237.

57 Lampard, ‘Historical aspects of urbanization’, 530–53.

58 Mumford, L., The Culture of Cities (New York, 1938)Google Scholar.

59 Idem, The City in History (Harmondsworth, 1979; 1st pub. 1961), 101, 117.

60 Briggs, A., Victorian Cities (2nd ed., Harmondsworth, 1968), 33–4Google Scholar and elsewhere. That Briggs here takes a position opposed to Mumford's depiction of nineteenth-century English cities as ‘Coketowns’ does not detract from the theoretical similarity of their views of the city.

61 Cannadine, D., ‘Conclusion. The “Dyos phenomenon” and after’, in Cannadine, D. and Reeder, D. (eds), Exploring the Urban Past. Essays in Urban History by H.J. Dyos (Cambridge, 1982), 211–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 E.P. Thompson, ‘Responses to reality’, New Society, 4 October 1973. See also Cannadine, ‘Conclusion’, 209.

63 Ibid., 208. See also H.J. Dyos, ‘Editorial’, Urban History Yearbook (1974), 5–6 and Rodger, ‘Theory, practice and European urban history’, 2.

64 Dyos preferred to write about ‘speculative builders’ and ‘urban developers’ rather than about ‘fluctuations in house rents’ or ‘building cycles’. See, for example, H.J. Dyos, ‘The speculative builders and developers of Victorian London’ and ‘A Victorian speculative builder: Edward Yates’, in Cannadine and Reeder, Exploring the Urban Past, 179–202 and see also Reeder, ‘Introduction’, in Exploring the Urban Past, xiii.

65 See, for example, Dyos, ‘Urbanity and suburbanity’, 33.

66 Ibid.

67 Cannadine, ‘Conclusion’, 219. Incidently, not all of the above-mentioned ‘new urban historians’ approached their work in the way described here. Warner, Katz and Blumin were more ‘urban’ than Thernstrom and his followers.

68 Miller et al., ‘Urban history in America’, 15.

69 For the rest we may learn from this discussion about the New Urban History that the disciplinary question has more to do with definition than with methodology.

70 O. Handlin,‘The modern city as a field of historical study’, in Handlin and Burchard, The Historian and the City, 2.

71 Ibid., 8.

72 Ibid., 2–5.

73 Briggs, Victorian Cities; Blumin, S.M., The Urban Threshold. Growth and Change in a Nineteenth-Century American Community (Chicago, 1976)Google Scholar; Fraser, D., Power and Authority in the Victorian City (Oxford, 1979)Google Scholar; idem, Urban Politics in Victorian England. The Structure of Politics in Victorian Cities (2nd ed., London, 1979); Frisch, M., Town into City. Springfield Massachusetts and the Meaning of Community 1840–1880 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972)Google Scholar and idem, ‘The community elite and the emergence of urban polities’, in S. Thernstrom and R. Sennet (eds), Nineteenth-Century Cities: Essays in the New Urban History (New Haven, 1976; 1st pub. 1969), 277–96.

74 Haase, C., Die Enstehung der Westfälische Städte (Munster, 1965)Google Scholar.

75 Ennen, E., ‘Die Stadt zwischen Mittelalter und Gegenwart’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, 30 (1968), 118–31Google Scholar.

76 Abrams, ‘Towns and economic growth’, 9–33.

77 Ibid., 17.

78 Ibid., 19.

79 Ibid., 20.

80 Wrigley's conclusion, that growing towns enlarge the size of markets thereby stimulating growth in industrial production and employment, is a plausible one. See Wrigley, "The town in a pre-industrial economy’, 304. Such a pronouncement justifies the conception of the town as an independent variable. Even Daunton who, in contrast to Wrigley, denied that a positive role should be ascribed to the towns in the process of industrialization in eighteenth-century England, acknowledges that towns can act as ‘agents of modernization’. They are the ‘solvents’ of traditional norms and patterns of consumption and can be regarded as the pioneers of capitalism. See M.J. Daunton, ‘Towns and economic growth in eighteenth century England’, in Abrams and Wrigley, Towns in Societies, 276.

81 Chon, Song-U, Max Webers Stadtkonzeption. Eine Studie zur Entwicklung des okzidentalen Bürgertums (Gottingen, 1985)Google Scholar; Abramowski, G., Das Geschichtsbild Max Webers. Universalgeschichte am Leitfaden des okzidentalen Rationalisierungsprozesses (Stuttgart, 1966), 83Google Scholar; Tromp, B.A.G.M., ‘De sociologie van de stad bij Max Weber’, in Goddijn, H.P.H. (ed.), Max Weber. Zijn leven, werken betekenis (Baarn, 1980), 113–33, esp. 121 and 130Google Scholar.

82 It is unfortunate that Abrams's misinterpretation of Weber has had a great impact on many English urban historians and urban sociologists. See, for example, Sutcliffe, ‘In search of the urban variable, 235; Pahl, ‘Pursuing the urban of “urban” sociology’, 379; and Morris and Rodger, The Victorian City, 2 and 16.

83 Edel, A., Analyzing Concepts in Social Science, Part 1, Science, Ideology and Value (New Brunswick, NJ, 1979)Google Scholar.

84 ‘Of course, we can trim it by removing some of the disturbing dimensions - if we do not have to remove too many - or else by pulling back some of the jagged points and accepting the consequences.’ Ibid., 97.

85 Ibid., 101–3.

86 Ibid., esp. 32–3.

87 For a comprehensive inventory of complementary studies covering the history of town-country relations, see G.A. Hoekveld, ‘Theoretische aanzetten ten behoeve van het samenstellen van maatschappijhistorische modellen van de verhouding van stad en platteland in de nieuwe geschiedenis van Noord-West Europe’, Economisch en sociaalhistorisch jaarboek (1975), 1–47.

88 See Jansen, H.S.J., De constructie van het stadsverleden. Een systeemtheoretische analyse van het stadshistorisch onderzoek ter bevordering van de synthetiserende geschiedschrijving (Groningen, 1991)Google Scholar. An English translation is forthcoming.