Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries asmany as one-half of the urban inhabitants of Englandand Wales lived in small towns. In 1801 62 per centof all towns with populations of 2,500 or morecontained fewer than 5,000 inhabitants and in 190130 per cent of all towns still contained less than10,000 persons. Yet despite the strength of smalltowns within the national urban system thesecommunities are far from proportionately representedin the large body of academic literature directedtowards analysing towns and urban growth. Ourknowledge and understanding of the forces of changeacting upon towns at the lower end of the urban sizehierarchy in this critical transitional period ofthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries remainsrelatively undeveloped, and this is especially truefor rural areas untouched by the main wave ofindustrialization.

Social history, and urban history in particular, hasbecome increasingly concerned, in recent years, withstudying the middle class. Historians haveprogressed from a concern with the ‘success’ or‘rise’ of the middle classes, to a study themper se both in quantitative andqualitative terms: questions concerning theirwealth, consumption patterns, residentialpreferences, representation within the politicalleadership as well as their beliefs, values and rolein attention. Urban historians have a particularinterest in the study of the local middle class, ina way that takes into account the finer detail ofdifferent kinds of urban environment and thecomplexities of the urban experience. Since much ofurban history has been at pains to discover thevariety of patterns in urban development and urbansociety, it is not surprising that recentspecialized studies of individual towns and citieshave revealed a great variety in the bases of classrelations. Indeed, the traditional Marxist notion ofa single national class interest is now open toqualification. The disparity between London and theprovinces in respect of class interests has longbeen recognized. An extension of the propositioninherent in that disparity will contend here thatthere were different types of middle class locatedin different types of urban environment. Such aproposition is not in itself pathfinding orparticularly new. There are problems, however, indeciding in what ways such a differentiated patterncan be drawn out, examined and presented in coherentform.

Recent historical studies of social groups havestressed the need to know, in detail at a householdand personal level, the precise objective characterof individuals and their circumstances – thephysical profile – to the extent that these can bedefined, quantified and measured. One of the areasof success in the analysis of social change has comein studies that emphasize local situations. Thelocal area – city, town, or district – was thecontext in which, for all but the small element whoformed the upper class, life was conducted, socialcontacts circumscribed and power struggles andconflicts articulated. Local case-studies,particularly of urban and therefore geographicallycompact populations, have emerged as a majormechanism through which the details of dynamicsocial relationships can be identified andjuxtaposed.

For a long time historians saw the increased wealth,numbers and power of British manufacturers,merchants and professionals as simply an inevitablepart of the process of industrialization. As aresult the formation of the class seemed to requireno further exploration. More recently interest inthe middle class has increased and much closerattention has been given to specific dimensions. Itseems evident from this work that any analysis ofthe middle class faces a number of problems.Firstly, that of definition. There was a wide rangeof status and income groups within the middle class.What criteria of wealth and occupation should beused, how important is it to fix upper and lowerboundaries for the class, how are questions oflifestyle and attitudes to be gauged? Secondly,there were certain divisions within groups who canreasonably be considered middle class by anycriteria. Above all, we must note that there was nodistinctive middle-class political party anddifferences were as deeply felt in politics as wereantagonisms between Anglicans and Nonconformists inreligion. In view of such diversities is it possibleto speak of the middle class and, if so, what doesclass formation and unity consist of? What levels ofunity allow or inhibit class power? This is thesubject of my overall research, of which only aglimpse can be given here.

This article reviews the potential use of charityrecords in reconstructing the lives of the poor inthe early twentieth-century city and suggests howcomputer-assisted modes of quantitative andqualitative techniques of analysis can expand theknown source base of research on poverty. Althoughthe poor have themselves left only a small directimprint on the historical record, the historian ofpoverty has managed to use the diverse andvoluminous Victorian records generated by officialsof the Poor Law which has resulted in a variety ofadministrative and institutional analyses ofpauperism within various urban and regionalsettings. These studies have attracted a certainamount of criticism because of their dependence upona narrow range of sources and orthodox historicalmethodology. It can be argued, however, that thefull potential of Poor Law records in terms of whatthey contribute as well as what can be done withthem has not yet been fully exploited. There isscope, for example, for the linkage of Poor Lawmaterial with demographic sources, such as thecensus enumerators' returns, to explore thegeography of urban poverty in the nineteenthcentury. The value of Poor Law records would beenhanced if research questions could be phrased inrelation to the socio-geographical context of thecity, taking into account the dynamics of urbanism.For example, in Victorian and Edwardian Leicester itis possible to consider the consequence ofsocio-economic changes in a move from a domestic toa predominantly factory-based mode of production inthe hosiery and footwear trades and the impact ofthe Poor Law during this transformation as patternsof discrimination characterized the provision ofrelief in certain districts of the town.

Since the establishment of the People's Republic ofChina in 1949, most of the topics associated withthe study of urban history have languished largelyunstudied beneath a pall of ideologically basedneglect. The list of understudied subjects includesurban population, physical structure, socialstructure, economic activity, urban politics, urbanplanning and the environment, and urban culture.This lack of interest in urban history directlyreflects the emphasis on the role of the peasantryas a creative force in Chinese history. The historyof Chinese peasant uprisings and wars became thefocus of attention and left little interest for whatchanges might have taken place in urban settings.Today, a combination of forces has generatedconsiderable changes in the institutional structureof historical studies in China, as well ascompelling historians to reconsider establishedresearch preferences. In this atmosphere it appearsthat for the first time since 1949 topics thatconcern urban historians in the West and Japan arereceiving serious attention in the People's Republicof China. While it is still too early to speak ofurban history in China, continuation of currenttrends in historical research over the next five toten years will almost certainly bring thisspecialization into existence.