This volume marshals 14 articles which, as the title suggests, broadly consider the topics of ‘communities’ and ‘solidarities’ in medieval and early modern Europe. It is a collection of diverse geographical regions and histories, including an intensive thematic introduction by editors Justin Colson and Arie van Steensel. The extensive nature of this volume means that a thorough examination of each essay is not possible here; rather the most fruitful way to approach a review of it is to draw out its pertinent themes, considering the questions posed in the introduction and assessing how, and indeed how far, the contributors answer them.

The first question one must ask of the book is how ‘communities’ are defined by the contributors. The answer is multifarious. Some authors envisage communities existing within institutions, such as the livery companies in early modern London considered by Jennifer Bishop, or being created through the shared citizenship of a city, such as those of Norwich and Barcelona in articles by Derek M. Crosby and Carolina Obradors-Suazo respectively. Colin Arnaud problematizes how we might conceive of neighbourhoods as communities, by comparing the strength of social and spatial ties in Strasbourg and Bologna. More conceptual is the notion of ‘imagined communities’, which is prevalent in Sarah-Maria Schober's piece on Basel; this particular article, however interesting in its conceptualization, in fact concentrates on a more solid community based around the college of physicians. These examples just highlight a few of the positions taken but illustrate the flexibility with which historians might think about urban communities. We might also ask how ‘communities’ were experienced by individuals in pre-modern towns. The overall impression gained after a reading of this book is that they were important but malleable; Alexi Baker found that traders of scientific instruments in early modern England had diverse socio-economic networks which suggested wider communities than might initially be expected. Comparably, Andy Burn reminds us that where we might assume the existence of pre-modern communities (especially in terms of occupation and wealth), there were actually less rigid boundaries and more flexibility realities, as he demonstrates in seventeenth-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne. This volume therefore shows that while the concept of ‘community’ is a useful tool, it can be interpreted in different ways which push and seriously test a potentially rigid understanding of such a framework.

Another prominent theme of the book is the role of digital humanities and digital tools in the study of history, and especially of pre-modern societies which left non-digital source materials. Colson and van Steensel provide the historiography and an introduction to current understanding of the subject, leaving the authors to focus more closely on their own methods and research. Many of the authors heavily utilize databases, employ network analysis or use GIS. Bram Vannieuwenhuyze's, Andy Burn's and Dana Durkee's articles provide excellent examples of digital (relational or otherwise) databases. Árpád Tóth, Gábor Czoch and István Németh argue that databases can provide the ability to reconstruct a society at both macro and micro levels and demonstrate this in their discussion on findings from a database of burghers in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Hungary. Crucially, the use of digital tools complements the research of each article in such a way that the research takes centre stage, not the methodology. It is striking that the quality of research is extremely high throughout, providing strong analysis while critiquing the sources and the limitations of subjecting them to digital tools. John Jordan, writing on networks and relationships in Freiburg, even concludes that such relationships cannot be entirely explained by the four factors he tested (kinship, profession, neighbourhood and economic status) but by something not found in the archives: informal networks. The thoroughness of his research and the success of turning a substantial dataset into an understanding of networks within a late medieval city is strengthened by this admission and conclusion that a complex web of relationships was responsible for maintaining the urban peace.

While the benefits of digital tools is well established throughout this book, there are a few articles that offer a refreshing counter-balance. Jennifer Bishop's close reading of company records examines the qualitative content of linguistic disputes and the regulation of language in early modern livery companies. Full of colourful examples of slanderous accusations in sixteenth-century London, it provides not only an entertaining read but a thought-provoking one: Bishop highlights the importance of the location of spoken slanderous words, the importance of the reputation of an individual as reflective on the company and the jurisdiction of the company into family networks. Notably, the employment of a database, GIS or the like, is absent from the discussion, which instead relies on more traditional historical research. Crosby's article on Gladman's rebellion in Norwich is likewise qualitative through a study of symbols used to evoke notions of community and common good. Similar traditional methods are used by Suzana Miljan and Bruno Škreblin in illustrating communal perceptions of the poor in Zagreb, while Hadewijch Masure highlights measures of inclusion and exclusion through the use of poor boxes and guild structures in Brabant. These more qualitative articles do not stand in opposition to articles employing digital tools more overtly, but rather underline that traditional and evolving methodologies need not be separated into different categories.

This book will go far in remedying lingering concerns around the use of digital humanities in historical research. It can provide inspiration and guidance: Vannieuwenhuyze explains methodological issues with databases while also demonstrating how a database can be used to fill holes where traditional sources, like membership lists, do not survive. It is, of course, equally useful to historians of the geographical places, institutions and frameworks discussed and therefore will – and should – be a very useful read to historians of the medieval and early modern eras.