Thursday, March 11, 2004

France, History Of, Cities

Commerce rather than industry buoyed up French cities, especially the Atlantic seaports. In 1789, 15 percent of Frenchmen lived in cities with more than 2,000 inhabitants. Paris, a city of about 500,000 inhabitants, was only half the size of London, the world's largest seaport. But regardless of their size, French cities were centres of intellectual transformation on the Continent. It was