View the h-urban Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in h-urban's May 1997 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in h-urban's May 1997 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the h-urban home page.
Reviewed for H-Urban by Pierre-Yves Saunier, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Lyon, France <saunier@sunlyon3.univ-lyon3.fr Jean-Luc PINOL, _Atlas historique des villes de France_, Paris, Hachette/Centre de Cultura contemporania de Barcelona, 1996 Manuel GARCIA, Francisco Javier MONCLUS, Jose Luis OYON, _Atlas historico de ciadades europeas. Penisula Iberica_, Barcelona, Salvat/Centre de Cultura contemporania de Barcelona, 1995 As a reader, I must say I hardly wait for the next issue of the historical atlas of European cities, which should be devoted to the British Islands. It will, indeed, be a pleasure to see Manchester, Dublin, Edinburgh and others submitted to the treatment that already has analyzed 10 French cities, 9 Spanish towns and the 2 Portuguese largest cities. Waiting for this moment, I feel like throwing a first glance to compare the two existing issues. Those who would like to imagine the difficulties confronted by the project leaders can read Terry Slater's review about the historical atlases of towns, initiated by the International Commission for the History of Towns in 1955 (1). It is a heavy burden to establish guidelines, to have them respected, to find scholars for the unthankful task of synthesis, to mobilize energies in several cities and countries. The fate of this other international project shows these difficulties: incoherent scales of the maps, very different approaches, various contents or sizes of the local and national items make their comparative use impossible. Or so Slater wrote, with a bit of disillusion in his pen. I must share his opinion, considering the French outcomes of his project (some 40 items on small and medium cities). Well, of course, taken one by one, they bring valuable information. Consider side by side two booklets, let's say the one on Provins and the one on Epinal (Editions du CNRS), two small French provincial towns. The plans are of different sizes, scales and dates; they are difficult to read; and they bring information only for the medieval and 19th century. As for the text, it is very short for Epinal and very developed for Provins. They are, as are the maps, essentially focused on public buildings, but the Provins one brings useful elements on sewers and other elements of urban infrastructure. They are nevertheless close to the genre of the "historical digest" that is more interested in the "great hours" of the cities than in the viewing of the urban fabric. Anyhow, in both case, all information stops after the mid 19th century. The aim of the Historic atlas of European towns is very different. The European team who planned these in 1991 (Manuel Guardia, Francisco Javier Monclus, Jose Luis Oyon, Richard Rodger, Thomas Hall, Michael Wagenaar, Giampaolo Trotta), wish to create an international and interdisciplinary project, rooted in the tradition of atlases as basic tools for knowledge, bringing comparable information for a sample of big European cities (some ten per country). The two existing volumes are built on the same frame, with a general essay on urbanization, followed by the chapters devoted to each city, with each theme or period developed on two pages. The Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona cares for the iconographic side of the work, ensuring the homogeneity of the general product. A common set of questions was given to the authors, to assure comparability. Each of us can imagine how this aim was difficult to achieve, with national teams of some 20-30 persons, writing far away from the concerns and commitment of the project masterbuilders. The comparison of the two existing volumes show that these hard tasks are accomplished as much as possible in the present state of the academic world. The reading of the two volumes gives me the feeling of a yet unreached richness of the European urban panorama, from the origins of the cities to the present day, seen through different LENSES, from the morphological one to the social one. Thus it provides a tool that we dreamt of sometimes: a mine of graphic and written information about cities in different countries. It is a common compliment to say, in a review, that a book "should be in each urban historian's library". It would be a crime to use here this long-lasting catch phrase. Just buy them to see what you can tell... One can easily imagine that everything is not perfect. Of course, it can be difficult to use it for teaching. But the atlas does not pretend to be a textbook. Of course, the maps are not always of the same scale for each city. But technical factors prevent finding a common scale that could give justice to cities that are very different in size. Anyhow, the tendency to find close scales is strong. For example, the maps of growth of each city is always 1/15000 or 1/20000, and the reader can put two cities side by side. In this, as in all aspects of the two volumes, the success is much more important than the reproaches that can be made. So I won't waste my and your time by underlining those. Rather, I'd like to bring out elements that differentiate the two volumes, emphasizing the way in which each one reflects a particular state of urban studies. Of course, a complete study of the conditions through which they were produced would also imply a word or two on the human networks that were involved, but I confess not to be able to do that for the Spanish issue, so I will leave this aside, and concentrate on some formal aspects of the differences. The first is on the authors. It is easy to notice that the Iberian ones are less numerous, but also more regularly distributed. There are fewer cities to be managed by one single author than in the French case, when the teams are nearly always made up of two or three authors, and the team for Marseille reaches ten persons. Of course, it can be said that this shows the relative scarcity of Iberian urban scholasrhip but it also gives more coherence to each team. In fact, this is not what I found the more interesting. I'd rather underline the stronger interdisciplinarity of the Iberian team. Geographers, architecture or art historians and historians are represented in significant number, even as the leading team is composed of three architects. This strongly contrasts with the very strong "historian" colour of the French team. This first major difference partly explains other differences: As I said in an earlier review (2), the French volume devotes a large part to medieval or early modern history. The Iberian one shows the opposite balance, with a strong focus on 19th and 20th centuries, especially for the post-1945 period. Even if my suspect Spanish does not allow me to grasp all I imagine to see when written in French, I also find these contemporary pieces much more useful than their French counterparts. Quite often, the French chapters on post-1945 years sounded often like reprints from city-boosting leaflets. Of course, the question remains of why this relative lack of pre-1800 focus. The quick growth of some cities during the 19th century (Bilabao) can be a reason, but certainly not for Granada with its rich Muslim past; or Zaragoza with its royal heritage. What is the reason ? It can be a choice of the authors, and then it might need to be explained. It could also be a consequence of a relative weakness of historical urban studies for some cities. The general colour of the two volumes is clearly different. It can be seen from two points of view that contradict themselves. On one hand, the more complete view given by the French volume on the political and social life, compared with the Iberian focus on the urban fabric. Hence some acute contrasts: the interest in political life of the French volume is absent from the Iberian one, as the Iberian attention to technical networks is too rarely seen in the French one. On the other hand, the general feeling is that the Iberian volume is trying hard to convey an history OF the city, as the French one tends to be about things that happen IN cities. Hence a more encyclopedic view on the French side, but one that does not always succeed in giving us the strong feeling that radiates from the Iberian volume: being part of the growth of a city. Of course, we know these contrasts also emanate from scientific as well as from national or disciplinary traditions. It has been a common argument about urban history to discuss the definition of a city and of urban history from Lampard, Dyos and Lubove to Charles Tilly (3). Each of us has an answer, rather closely related to the genesis of his own interest into cities, and to his national or subdisciplinary historical ethos. Is it even useful to try to cut this Gordian knot? That would be losing the leisure of looking forward to each next issue of the Atlas, waiting to see how the British, German, and Italian urban historians will interpret their own urban partition. And hoping that we'll see also the Slovenian, Greek, Swiss, Scandinavian side of this urban moon. NOTES 1 See Terry Slater "The European Historic Town Atlas", _Journal of Urban History_, vol. 22, No., September 1996. 2 H-Urban Review, Fri, 27 Dec 1996. Jean-Luc PINOL, _Atlas historique des villes francaises_. Reviewed by Pierre-Yves Saunier. 3 See also Harry S.Jansen "Wrestling with the angels : problems of definition in urban historiography", _Urban History_, vol.23, part 3, December 1996 Copyright (c) 1997 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact H-Net@H-Net.Msu.Edu. Pierre-Yves Saunier Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 10 rue Nicolai 69007 LYON -FRANCE saunier@sunlyon3.univ-lyon3.fr
|