This book had its origin in a 2009 workshop hosted by the University of Amsterdam on the theme of shopping streets in European cities between 1500 and 1914. Such a wide-ranging subject could easily have produced a set of interesting but disparate essays with little in the way of common themes. This is not the case here. The introductory chapter by Jan Hein Furnée and Clé Lesger argues persuasively that the focus on shopping streets offers a way of linking and integrating other broad themes. These include: issues to do with the location of retail outlets and the reasons why this changed or did not change over several centuries; questions about continuity and innovation, including the extent to which changes in the nineteenth century can be regarded as revolutionary; and questions about the diffusion and adaptation of new retail formats or shop design both across national boundaries and within a specific country. Two chapters on each of England, France, the Netherlands and Belgium plus one on Germany explore these themes.

Both Jon Stobart and Claire Walsh address long-term change in England. Stobart invites the reader to be less concerned about ideas of modernity and to focus instead on the ways in which retailing and shopping met the needs of contemporary consumers. While demonstrating that there was a considerable degree of continuity between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly with regard to retail geography, he also identifies the early nineteenth century as a bridge between consumer-driven change in the eighteenth century and more retailer-centred innovation after 1850. Walsh reminds us that in the early modern period the word ‘shop’ could refer to a variety of different structures. Long-term change, and the eventual triumph of the fixed shop at the expense of markets and street traders, owed more to civic regulation, urban rationalisation and cultural values than to changing modes of selling or display.

Focusing on the location of shops in eighteenth-century Paris, Natacha Coquery also emphasises the importance of economic, social, political and technical factors. Being well located was essential for any shopkeeper, but what that meant depended both on the type of goods on offer and the history of the place itself. She uses a 1769 trade almanac to explore the dynamics of dispersion and concentration in the city. Paris also features in Marie Gillet's chapter on the nineteenth century, but her main concern is the interplay between innovation and tradition and the dissemination of new retail formats both across national boundaries and from Paris to the French provinces. She demonstrates the continuing diversity in retailing and the ability of more traditional retailers to adapt to the challenges posed by innovators.

Three of the four chapters on the Netherlands and Belgium are concerned with the longer term. Lesger traces changes in the retail landscape of Amsterdam from 1650 to 1800. In the ‘golden age’ the city was the most planned and organised urban space in Europe but its shopping streets increasingly lagged behind those of other capitals. Specialised shop fronts barely existed there until the end of the eighteenth century. Modernisation was a feature of the early nineteenth century, driven less by internal dynamics than by a desire to mimic Paris and London. Furnée traces continuities in The Hague, demonstrating that consumer culture, including strolling and leisure shopping, were well established there in the late seventeenth century. Key shopping locations changed little during the period studied, although the visual appearance of the shops changed in the nineteenth century as retailers appropriated foreign innovations in architecture and window display. Ilja van Damme and Laura van Aert explore how urban space structured retailing in Antwerp between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, but also how citizens adapted existing urban space to shifting consumer demands. As well as considering where and how luxuries and necessities were retailed, the authors remind us of the importance of the second-hand trade and how that changed over time. Anneleen Arnout's chapter on Brussels ranges across the themes of location, innovation and dissemination. Focusing on the mid to late nineteenth century she discusses the success of the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert and asks whether shopping arcades were truly innovative. Turning to the city's new market halls she explores why they were something of a failure compared with similar facilities in Paris and England. In a carefully nuanced discussion she draws out the importance of innovation being adapted to specific urban and retail contexts and the difficulties surrounding terms like ‘traditional’ and ‘innovative’.

Heidrun Homburg makes good use of travellers' accounts to demonstrate that while many Germans bemoaned the backwardness of their states with regard to retailing, markets and fairs continued to flourish, with the latter being important for fashionable goods. The German ‘modern consumer’ was present by the late eighteenth century even if modern types of retailing or commercial architecture did not appear widely until a hundred years later. Given that the existing literature on German retailing before 1850 is relatively limited, this chapter on the century after 1750 is particularly welcome. Indeed, the book as whole might have benefitted from a slightly less restrictive definition of Western Europe to include, for example, Italy or the Iberian Peninsula. Also, despite several chapters spanning the 1850 watershed, the issue of whether it is still possible to speak of a ‘retail revolution’ in the context of growing mass markets in the second half of the nineteenth century is only partly addressed and not really resolved. On the other hand, a convincing case is made for the modernity of much retailing prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, for important continuities in the location of urban retailing, and for the need to question the extent to which retail types such as arcades or department stores were genuinely innovative. The attention paid to non-shop retailing is also welcome.

This book is therefore an important and very useful addition to the literature on retailing, consumption and the use of urban space in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. It addresses many key issues in a thought-provoking way and will surely stimulate further comparative research.