The Social and Economic Structure of the Old Regime 321tersburg reached sixty-eight thousand in 1730. Buda
and Pest were then separate towns with a combined to-
tal of seventeen thousand people. Many cities, such as
Geneva, with a population of twenty-eight thousand in
1750, were so small that residents could easily walk
their full width for an evening stroll.
The largest city in Europe sat on its southeastern
edge: Constantinople had an estimated 700,000 per-
sons. The two dominant cities in the development of
modern European civilization, London and Paris, both
exceeded 500,000 people, but no other cities rivaled
them. Rome was smaller than it had been under the
Caesars, with a population of 135,000 in 1700. Such
large cities were the centers of western civilization, but
they did not yet make it an urban civilization. If one
defines urban as beginning at a population of ten thou-
sand people, Europe was only 9.4 percent urban at the
end of the eighteenth century; if the definition goes
down to towns of five thousand people, Europe was
12.1 percent urban. Even if one counts small farming
towns of two thousand people (which were different
from manufacturing and commercial towns), Europe
was still less than one-fourth urban, although some re-
gions were one-third urban.
In legal terms, cities and towns of the Old Regime
were corporate entities (hence the terms incorporatedand
unincorporatedfor towns). Towns held legal charters, of-
ten centuries old, from the government. Charters speci-
fied the rights of town dwellers—collectively called the
bourgeoisie (from the French term bourg,for town) or
burghers (from the similar German term)—rights that
the rural population did not enjoy. As in the Middle
Ages, the old German saying held true: “City air makes
one free.” The urban population thus formed a clearly
defined estate, lacking many of the privileges of the
aristocracy but freed from the obligations upon the
peasantry. Hence, they came to be seen as a “middle”
class. As a group, they possessed significant nonlandedAlpsMts.Pyrene
esMts.Carpathian
Mt
s.Po R.Ebro
Douro R.
R.Seine
R.Danube
R.Donets
R.Dniest
erR
.Black SeaAtlantic
Ocean
NorthSeaMediterraneanSeaBalticSeaElbeR.Rhine
RConstantinopleParisLondonDublinSt. PetersburgMoscowViennaAmsterdamLyonMilanLisbonMadridRomePalermoNaplesVeniceFlorenceBolognaBarcelonaSevilleValenciaCadizMarseillesGenoaBordeauxGranadaTurinBrussels
PragueDresden BreslauKönigsbergLille
RouenHamburgStockholmAdrianopleEdinburghCorkBalearic IslandsCorsicaKINGDOM
OF SARDINIASicilyCrete CyprusPORTUGALSPAINKINGDOM
OF THE
TWO SICILIESPAPAL
STATESALGERIAOTTOMAN EMPIRE
ANATOLIAIRELANDSCOTLANDENGLANDNORWAYSWEDEN FINLANDRUSSIAN EMPIREFRANCESWITZERLANDLORRAINEBRANDENBURG-
PRUSSIAHOLY
ROMAN
EMPIRESILESIAHUNGARYBANAT
BOSNIA
SERBIA BULGARIAMONTENEGROBESSARABIAUKRAINEVOLHYNIA
LITTLE POLANDPOLANDLITHUANIAKINGDOM OF
DENMARK–NORWAYDUTCH
REPUBLICDENMARKSTYRIACRIMEA0 250 500 Miles0 250 500 750 KilometersElbe -Trieste LineMAP 17.1
Urban Europe in 1750