The Urban Revolution in England, 900-1200

England, like other parts of Europe, experienced a vigorous growth in the number and size of urban communities in the period around 1000. In 900 this process of urbanization had scarcely begun; by 1200 England had a network of hundreds of prosperous towns, both large and small. A greater quantity and variety of source material has tended to draw historians towards the mature, post-1200, town, whilst the preceding centuries that saw rapid growth towards a flourishing urban sector have traditionally been rather neglected. There have been many excellent studies of the early phases of individual towns, concentrated largely on archaeological and geographical evidence for their planning and physical development, and for the activities of the emerging urban populations. But - with a few exceptions - historians writing about the first centuries of urban development have made little progress in placing studies of single towns into a wider context, or in relating our now extensive knowledge of early urban activities to broader historical movements. A milestone publication was the Cambridge Urban History of Britain, vol.i, The Medieval Town (2000), with its excellent general chapters examining aspects of early towns; but we have still not come very far in explaining the emergence of urban economies and distinct urban societies as an aspect of the general course and chronology of contemporary social and economic developments. The aim of The Urban Revolution in England, 900-1200 is to address that seeming reluctance to understand the evolution of towns as a crucial feature of the new feudalism, by adopting a fresh approach to the evidence for towns in the period. Rather than a single process unfolding over time, urbanization will be presented as a changing interplay of several social processes, capable both of reinforcing and of conflicting with each other.