Starting with a set of key questions formulated by Walter Prevenier in 1984, this article proposes an agenda for future research on urban public services in early modern European towns. The author suggests, first of all, a shift in research strategy toward a greater emphasis on actor-oriented analysis and a systematic reconstruction of underlying ideas and intentions of actors in shaping public services. Second, he points out the need for comparative research on variations in public services in different zones of state formation, urban fiscal matters, and town—country relations within Europe and on continuity and change in “repertoires” of practices in urban provisions through time. Finally, he argues that historians should also address the grand question in what respect, how, and why the long-term evolution of urban public services was affected by “great transformations” such as the Reformation, Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. The historiographies of public services in the early modern and modern periods could thus be more closely connected as well.
Simon Gunn, "Governance, Citizenship, and Municipal Provision in the Modern City ," Journal of Urban History33 (2007): 1006-14.
2.
Brief overviews on urban public services in Britain in the early modern period are found in several essays in the Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Peter Clark, ed. 3 vols. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), namely Paul Slack, "Great and Good Towns 1540-1700," especially 2: 368-72 and 373-76, and Joanna Innes and Nicholas Rogers, "Politics and Government 1700-1840," especially 2: 540-51. Brief overviews on urban public services in Continental Europe are found in Histoire de l’Europe Urbaine, Jean-Luc Pinol, ed. (Paris: Seuil, 2003), 1: 821-50.
3.
L’Initiative publique des communes en Belgique: Fondements historiques (Ancien Régime)/Het openbaar initiatief van de gemeenten in België: Historische grondslagen (Ancien Régime) ( Brussels: Gemeentekrediet van België, 1984). James Tracy summarized the contents of a few essays in a review in The Journal of Modern History59 (1987): 608-9.
4.
L’Initiative publique/Het openbaar initiatief.
5.
Michèle Dagenais, Irene Maver, and Pierre-Yves Saunier, eds., Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historical Approaches (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
6.
Walter Prevenier , "Synthèse du colloque/ Synthese van het Colloquium," in L’Initiative publique/Het openbaar initiatief, 718-43.
Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups ( Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Katherine A. Lynch, Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200-1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Abram de Swaan, In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the Modern Era (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1988).
9.
For "citizenship" and "common good," see the introduction by Manon van der Heijden to this issue and the articles by Lynch, Lindemann, and Jørgensen. "Subsidiarity" in discourse and practice in early modern Europe is discussed in several contributions in Peter Blickle, Thomas O. Hüglin, and Dieter Wyduckel, eds., Subsidiarität als rechtliches und politisches Ordnungsprinzip in Kirche, Staat und Gesellschaft (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2002), and in Peter Stabel, "Reflections on Public Services, Civic Identity, Guild Regulation and Subsidiarity in Late Medieval Cities" (unpublished paper presented at the conference "Civil Society and Public Services in Early Modern Europe," November 30-December 1, 2007, Leiden University, Netherlands).
10.
Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990 (Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1990), especially 16-30.
11.
Marc Boone, Karel Davids, and Paul Janssens, "Urban Public Debts from the 14th to the 18th Century: A New Approach," in Marc Boone, Karel Davids, and Paul Janssens, eds., Urban Public Debts: Urban Government and the Market for Annuities in Western Europe (14th-18th Centuries) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 3-11. On the "urban belt" see Marjolein ’t Hart, "The Dutch Republic: The Urban Impact upon Politics" and Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen, "Conclusion," in Karel Davids and Jan Lucassen, eds., A Miracle Mirrored: The Dutch Republic in European Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 57-98 and 438-60 respectively.
12.
José Antonio Mateos Royo, "Municipal Policy, Food Supply and Urban Markets in the Kingdom of Aragon During the 16th and 17th Centuries" (unpublished paper presented at the conference "Civil Society and Public Services in Early Modern Europe," November 30-December 1, 2007, Leiden University, Netherlands). Fausto Piola Caselli, "Urban Welfare as a Political Tool: Rome in the Early Modern Age" (unpublished paper presented at the conference "Civil Society and Public Services in Early Modern Europe," November 30-December1, 2007, Leiden University, Netherlands).
13.
Charles Tilly , Popular Contention in Great Britain 1758-1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995) 42.
14.
Michèle Dagenais and Pierre-Yves Saunier, "Tales of the Periphery: An Outline Survey of Municipal Employees and Services in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," in Dagenais, Maver, and Saunier, eds., Municipal Services, 3.
15.
Hans Heinrich Blotevogel, "Einführung," in Hans Heinrich Blotevogel, ed., Kommunale Leistungsverwaltung und Stadtentwicklung vom Vormärz bis zur Weimarer Republik ( Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau , 1990), xiv.
