Since the cultural turn, social and economic history has taken a backseat to more fashionable approaches such as entanglements, migration, and symbols. Long considered one of the hallmarks of the post-1945 historiographic shift away from big-men history, the study of conjonctures and structures (Fernand Braudel) has receded considerably in recent decades. This collection, to a certain point, stands somewhere between these two poles: on the one hand, the editors, in their introduction (1–24), base their framework on, among others, Tönnies, Anderson, and Lefebvre (4–7), which, not only in the German-language academy, is rather uncommon, to say the least. Cities and communities are perceived as heterogeneous in nature, and the thirteen case studies detail certain “practices” (14–15) of urban life in premodern Europe. On the other hand, Colson and van Steensel argue against “[class] struggle” while building their case on “cooperation” and “competition,” perceived as “two sides of the same coin” (10).

This conceptual and terminological uncertainty is mirrored in the case studies that vary widely, from England to the Old Swiss Confederacy to Catalonia, from the Low Countries to Hungary and Croatia. Yet the editors’ claim to geographic variation “from all corners of Europe” (2) is only partially true: five essays focus on England, two more on the Low Countries; and if the East-West divide is considered, only two contributions (on medieval Zagreb [98–114] and on Hungary between 1750 and 1850 [188–207]) focus on areas outside Western Europe. Even so, and as with many comparable collections, there are some essays that stand out: Obradors-Suazo’s study on fifteenth-century Barcelona highlights the richness of the municipal archives (25–42, esp. 27–29); Arnaud’s comparison of the spatial arrangements in Bologna and Strasbourg is well researched and conceives of networks socially, not primarily spatially (60–78); if anything, one needs to read the thought-provoking essay by Vannieuwenhuyze on late medieval Brussels (132–50) and Burn’s extremely dense contribution on working communities in Newcastle upon Tyne (169–87). The two chapters on early modern London by Bishop (208–24) and Baker (245–67) also reveal new insights into speech regulation in livery companies and the sale of scientific instruments, respectively.

We must, at this point, also mention a few less fortunate details: virtually all contributors point to the interrelationship between craft associations and citizenship, yet with the exceptions of Burn, Obradors-Suazo, and, to a certain extent, the essay on poor relief in Zagreb, no essay addresses residency rights. Crosby’s interpretation of Gladman’s procession, while possible, remains rather speculative; and Jordan’s findings, based on court records from Freiberg in Saxony, while quite dense in terms of source material, is rich in vacuous jargon—what does “services” (83) mean in the sixteenth century?—and methodologically weak (81–82). Also, figures and tables should include appropriate captions (155, 157). Schober’s microstudy of two to three well-off inhabitants of Basel around 1600 (225–44), while skillfully executed, reminds us of the increasingly popular trend to take this particular approach, which originated in a very different time, to study individuals of the upper classes, thereby belying microhistory’s origins to a certain degree.

These issues aside, the essays are all rich in information and, the aforementioned geographic bias aside, make for very interesting reading. We need to note, however, that while the editors acknowledge this collection to be a “first step to a better understanding of premodern communities” (7), it is not always evident how the essays interact with each other or the general themes of the volume. Despite the introductory emphasis on digital tools (7–9), most contributors do not employ them, with Vannieuwenhuyze being the exception. Finally, and with respect to the notions of “premodernity” and “urban complexity” (14–15), the editors point to “practices,” a term that has become as fashionable these days as it remains ill-defined, yet virtually all research, across the ideological spectrum, points to the evolutionary nature of social change due to the emergence of capitalism from the late Middle Ages to the present, as, e.g., Spencer Dimmock, Steven Marks, and Markus Cerman emphasize. As such, this collection of essays will make you think hard about the individual case studies, but its general implications are, unfortunately, rather limited.