A Tale of Three Cities. How to Generalize from Here?

Cities of Commerce is an important study that has serious repercussions for a number of core debates within the field of institutional economic history. Future research will have to make clear what the outcomes of concrete interactions between newcomers and natives were and how these are determined by the interplay between the characteristics of the migrants and the local membership regime. Extending the geographical unit of analysis even further, the book is an excellent starting point to make broader, global comparisons with cities in Asia, Northern Africa and the Middle East, in order to understand better under what conditions gateway cities developed similar evolutionary adaptive processes as in Europe's Northwest. Reprinted by permission of the International Institute of Social History