One of the original aims of the Institute for European Population Studies was to concentrate research activities on the demography of urban areas and of the urbanization process. Urbanization was a critical element in European demographic change in the modern period, with unprecedented population growth associated directly with rapid urban expansion. Our earlier publication in this series (Lawton and Lee, 1989) examined key aspects of urban population change in a number of Western European countries. It focused on different aspects of urban growth, including the respective role of natural increase and in-migration in urban demographic development, the nature and impact of the migration process and the significance of urbanization for demographic change in modern Europe. The individual contributions highlighted the significant acceleration of large city growth from the earlynineteenth century onwards, the steepening of the downward curve of urban rank-size distribution, and the perceptible patterns of increasing European convergence: by the early-twentieth century Europe's cities were effectively dominated by national capitals, major ports and the central towns of the main industrial regions.

Recent research in historical demography has also highlighted the need for disaggregated analysis and the empirical testing of hypotheses on the basis of selected micro-level studies. An industrial or functional typology has been applied successfully in urban history in order to isolate common urban characteristics (Rodger, 1992) and the demographic profile of a city was, at least in part, a reflection of its function. Different city types can be associated historically with the role of different components in urban population growth and differences in occupational structure, social stratification and income distribution were reflected systematically in the demography of individual urban communities. If a clearer understanding of the nature of population processes in cities is essential to any analysis of demographic and social change in modern Europe, as a whole, the application of a sufficiently robust urban typology may well provide an important key for future research in this field.

This volume focuses explicitly on a port-city typology, providing a series of contributions on major commercial ports in Western Europe during the modern period. To this extent, the individual studies of Bremen, Cork, Genoa, Glasgow, Hamburg, Liverpool, Malmö, Nantes and Trieste offer an important insight into the population dynamics and development of Western European port-cities.