History is a discipline in a state of perpetual crisis. Thus, in 1970, Arthur Marwick explained much of the controversy over historians' use of social science methods and theories in the latest incarnation of a social history which emerged after the Second World War. History's flirtations with the social sciences are recurrent. So are its crises. In the 1980s, Marwick's view of cyclical crises in history has been borne out. The use in history of ‘illuminating’ social science methods and concepts is now widely accepted. A spirit of tolerance, respect and professional courtesy has replaced the outward hostility which until recently characterized exchanges between the so-called ‘traditional’ and new social historians respectively.

The debate about the comparative performance of the British and American economies around the turn of the century has involved most industrial sectors. In the case of the railways, the argument goes back at least to 1887, when a critical analysis of English railway operations compared to those of the United States was published. For British railway companies, the years after 1900 were a particularly difficult time especially in the capital market, and many new investment projects were abandoned, although not solely because of adverse conditions in the capital market. A substantial number of these projects were probably of a marginal nature but the eighteen-year period between 1890 and 1908 also saw the development of a new type of railway – the urban rapid transit system. This was in response to two very different factors – the continuing growth of cities and the application of electric power in a form suitable for railway use. The spread of these systems in Britain paralleled their expansion in the United States.

In 1976 a medieval and renaissance theatre history project was launched under the masthead Records of Early English Drama (now more familiarly known as REED). The official launch had taken two years of planning by scholars from Britain, Canada and the United States, and was given assurance for the future through a ten-year major Editorial Grant from the Canada Council. REED's stated goal – then as now – was to find, transcribe and publish evidence of dramatic, ceremonial and musical activity in Great Britain before the theatres were closed in 1642. The systematic survey undertaken would make available for analysis records relating to the evolution of English theatre from its origins in minstrelsy, through the flowering of drama in the renaissance, to the suppression first of local and then of professional entertainment under the Puritans.

While there has been much interest recently in the early modern history of London there has been little work done on establishing a comprehensive picture of the City, the central core of its economy. The population history of the City has begun to be explored in a systematic way. The social and economic structure of one or two small areas has begun to be examined, both within the City and outside, in districts such as Southwark and the East End. Other studies concentrating on single issues have attempted to establish such things as the economic profile of the metropolis from the occupations given in a sample of parish death registers, resulting in a claim that the London manufacturing sector was more significant than commerce, and not the reverse, as had been assumed previously. Another study, by Power, based on the hearth tax from a small sample of parishes concluded with the comment that ‘the impression is gained of an urban scene where occupations and rich and poor are thoroughly jumbled’.

Urban historians are much concerned with the need to study their towns from the perspective of social class and socio-spatial segregation, especially in periods of rapid industrialization. The models of such scholars as Engels, Sjöberg, Burgess, Hoyt and others are predicated on the possibility of identifying clearly the members of defined social classes. The manuscript census enumerators' books (CEBs) are one of the basic sources used for Victorian Britain (1841–81), but it is no simple matter to attribute the occupational descriptions found in them to a range of social classes. Problems occur at two levels: those associated with the conceptual validity of systems of class distinction, and those encountered in attributing occupations within such systems. As this article shows, there is also a degree of interaction between the two levels since it is useless to pursue concepts that cannot be systematically and straightforwardly related to the information available.

Dutch urban history has finally accorded the eighteenth century the attention it deserves in a number of recent publications. That century was characterized by the economic and political decline of the Dutch Republic generally, and certain towns in particular. The ‘Zuiderzee’ towns witnessed a dramatic fall in population, reflecting their economic decline, and in the southern part of the province of Holland urban life also stagnated. In contrast to the ports, inland towns derived status in the urban hierarchy from their industrial interests, but due to foreign competition in the eighteenth century, they too declined; most notably, the cloth industry of Leiden, the clay pipe industry of Gouda, and the breweries and potteries of Delft each lost the leading position established in the seventeenth century. Leiden was the largest of the towns with more than 70,000 inhabitants in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and after Amsterdam, was the most populous town of the Republic. Leiden however could not maintain that position, and lost almost 50 per cent of its inhabitants during the first half of the eighteenth century, declining further to under 30,000 residents by 1800. Gouda numbered about 20,000 in 1732, but declined to 12,000 in 1795; Hoorn with 12,000 inhabitants diminished to only 9,500 in 1795 and the population of Delft, too, fell from around 24,000 in 1680 to 14,000 in 1795.

Although small and consequently often overlooked, Belgium none the less provides historians with an interesting case study for comparing social and economic trends among Western European countries. Belgian society in the nineteenth century was transformed by the same forces as its close neighbours – Britain, France and Germany. Indeed, Belgium was the second country in the world to industrialize and it has long been one of the most heavily urbanized societies as well. Yet urbanization and industrialization affected Belgium in some significantly different ways than they did other Western European countries.