Description
Book SynopsisLondon, Paris and New York in the eighteenth century, as today, were places where political authority, commerce and money, art and intellectual life intersected. They straddled an Atlantic world where ships powered by nothing more than wind, currents and human muscle criss-crossed the sea, carrying with them goods, ideas and above all people: men and women, bewigged aristocrats and lawyers, rough-handed craftworkers, quill-wielding bluestockings and doughty fishwives. But the cities were also home to dangerous criminals, corrupt politicians - and slaves.
Rebel Cities explores the stormy debate about the nature of cities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: were they places of enlightenment, sparkling wells of progress and civilisation, or were they dens of vice, degeneracy and disorder? Against a backdrop of accelerating urban expansion and revolution in both Europe and North America, revolutionary burghers of these extraordinary cities expended ink, paint, br
Trade Review
A refreshingly vibrant narrative. At times, [Rapport's] political study could almost double as a travelogue * New York Times *
Captivating . . . gripping . . . The book is a pleasure to read and a welcome addition to the literature on the revolutionary era across the Atlantic * American Historical Review *
Lucid, engaging, and evocatively written * The Nation *
Rapport traces revolution, and counterrevolution, throughout the cities, taking the reader from location to location, and even down individual streets, providing the reader with an on-the-ground experience * Gotham Centre for New York History *
'Mike Rapport describes how urbans geography shaped mass politics and how cities again became the great stages of politics...a skilful addition to 'Atlantic history' -- Dominic Green * Literary Review *
