The landscape of consumption: shopping streets and cultures in Western Europe, 1600-1900

This volume brings together research on retailing and shopping and their embeddedness in urban space, themes that have attracted wide interest in recent decades. Addressing these themes over an era that bridges the early modern and modern period, the authors argue that the 'modernity' of the nineteenth century is often overemphasised, at the expense of recognising the continuities with the earlier period and the degree of innovation that took place before the onset of 'modernity'. This collection compares long-term developments in retail locations, retailing formats, regulation of shopping streets, and the cult of shopping for pleasure across a number of neighbouring countries and regions (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands), and offers surprising new insights into the processes of cultural transfer, appropriation and exchange.