Alexander Cowan – författare

Examining the nature and diversity of urban life during the 16th and 17th centuries, a period of considerable economic, political and social change, this text stresses the extent to which towns remained distinct from their rural hinterlands. Its wide embrace gives it the character ofa history of Europe, viewed from the urban perspective. In achieving the integration of different experiences into the broader discussion, itmanages to retain an acute sense of the importance and development of regional diversity. In assessing the contribution of urban centres in western Europe to long-term change, the focus is primarily on life inside the town. Each chapter considers the framework of urban life - such as the economy, government, elites, social organization, the environment - and the tensions that arose from demographic growth, prosperity or adversity and the growing presence of external pressures. Responses to poverty and threats to social order are paid particular attention. While this study attempts to convey a sense of the parameters and diversity of life in an urban environment during the period, it also provides an insight into the ways in which existing structures of government and institutional organization attempted and often failed, to come to terms with new problems.

How do we experience a city in terms of the senses? What are the inter-relations between human experience and behaviour in urban space? This volume examines these questions in the context of European urban culture between the fifteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring the institutions and ideologies relating to the range of sensual experience and its interpretation. Spanning pre-industrial and modern cities in Britain, France, Germany and the United States, it enables the reader to establish major contrasts and continuities in what is still an evolving urban experience. Divided into sections corresponding to the five senses: noise, vision, taste, touch and smell, each sections allows for comparisons which act as reminders that the experience of the city was a multi-sensual one, and that these experiences were as much intellectual as physical in their nature.

Throughout history, marriage has been used as a method of creating and strengthening bonds between elites and the societies over which they ruled. Nowhere is this more apparent than in early modern Venice, where members of the patriciate looked to marital alliances with outsider brides to help maintain their position and social distinction in a fluid society. This book explores the parameters of upward social mobility, contemporary evaluations of social status and moral behaviour, and the place of marriage and concubinage within patrician society. Drawing heavily on the records of the Avogaria di Comun, which had the task of examining the social backgrounds and moral reputations of women from outside the patriciate who wished to marry patricians, this study provides a fascinating reconstruction of Venetian society as it was seen by individuals at every level.

Was there a distinctive Mediterranean urban culture in the early modern period? In this collection, a team of international scholars from a wide range of disciplines use a variety of approaches - literary, art-historical, cultural, social and economic - to demonstrate both the range of collective urban experience in the Mediterranean and the complexity of the nature of urban culture at that time.The book, after an Introduction by the editor, is divided into three sections: neighbours and neighbourhoods; religion, ethnicity and minority groups; culture, politics and society. The coherence of the collection sets up resonances and comparisons which confirm a considerable unity in the concept of Mediterranean urban culture in its broadest sense.

Throughout history, marriage has been used as a method of creating and strengthening bonds between elites and the societies over which they ruled. Nowhere is this more apparent than in early modern Venice, where members of the patriciate looked to marital alliances with outsider brides to help maintain their position and social distinction in a fluid society. This book explores the parameters of upward social mobility, contemporary evaluations of social status and moral behaviour, and the place of marriage and concubinage within patrician society. Drawing heavily on the records of the Avogaria di Comun, which had the task of examining the social backgrounds and moral reputations of women from outside the patriciate who wished to marry patricians, this study provides a fascinating reconstruction of Venetian society as it was seen by individuals at every level.