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now able to provide us with a better view of the urban economy before the Middle Ages and has illustrated the diversity of urban forms. Urban decline at the end of Roman times and urban persistence into the early Middle Ages are thoroughly investigated by Michel Fixot-some of the topography of the old cit.&s dates right back to these times.

In the volume on the medieval town (here, 1110-l 530), Andre Chedeville discusses the transition from religious citb to medieval villes. He portrays the new boroughs and new commercial suburbs, and shows the birth of a new generation of urban centres, particu- larly in northern France. Jacques Le Goff is perhaps more interested in institutions and mentalit& but his contribution is important for an understanding of how people perceived cities in the Middle Ages. He also has important things to say to those interested in measuring the importance of economic forces on cities which had lost their political and administrative functions and were mainly commercial and cultural centres. Jacques Rossiaud has studied the period of crises and difficulties in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries : he stresses changing mentaZitt% and social structures, but does not detect major changes in the urban network which, it seems, was tied to the new administrative structure developed by the Ring.

In volume 3, Hugues Neveux adopts a geographical approach in his discussion of late sixteenth- and seventeenth-century cities: their distribution is related to their functions, both productive and administrative. For the same period, Rogier Cartier considers urban space, details the first speculative developments in large cities, and discusses institutions that reflect a more ordered social life, such as hospitals. Le Roy Ladurie does not stress the distribution of towns but his synthesis of their pre-industrial demography is excellent, as is his study of the changing economic base of French cities just before industrial revolution. His treatment of eighteenth-century urbanism is less original. The last part of the third volume is a study of ‘LQ vilEe jacobine et balzacienne (1789-1840) by Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret. He is mainly concerned with the topographies of revolution, and on social groups and mentalit&, than on changing urban patterns or economies. This is a pity, because the first impact of industrialization is consequently not clearly presented.

The first three volumes of Histoire de la France urbaine are certainly major achieve- ments, and they make a considerable contribution to historical geography. Historians in France are now well aware of modern urban analysis and are using it to provide new insights into cities and city networks of the past. What is perhaps lacking is a better view of the origins of the present-day diversity of townscapes. It is difficult for historians, gen- erally thinking by periods rather than areas, to deal with the subtleties of urban cultural landscapes.

University of Paris-Sorbonne PAUL CLAVAL

MALCOLM FALKUS and JOHN GILLINGHAM (Eds), Historical Atlas ofBritain (London: Granada Publishing, 1981. Pp. 223. fX540)

Search as you will on this volume, you’ll not find the sockets for the legs. Complete with many maps of India, Australia, Turkey, France, and such places, it is a lavish, thoroughly laid-back guide to the history of Britain-the work of 39 scholars, many of them too distinguished to mention by name. There are 93 topics-mostly with a double-page spread of maps, brief text, and often attractive photographs-arranged in eight chapters. Who wrote what is a secret. The fussy old custom of acknowledging scholars whose work has been borrowed is eschewed in favour of the more ritzy (but incomplete) one-page list tucked away at the back; a legal rather than intellectual debt. Exciting as it is to see the nation’s past in panoramic technicolour-and some of the sections are written up as well as one could possibly expect in such hopeless space limits-the one thing an atlas should contain is good cartography; and judged on that score it is a zappy, zippatone, lettrafilm disaster. The footprints of the “graphic designer”, undamaged by

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the cartographer, are evident: none of the maps has a scale (except a reproduction of Speed’s Suffolk, 1610); and you need sunglasses to look at them. For the dwindling band of geographers who regard the teaching of a correct appreciation of cartography as one of their functions, it is not enough that popular atlases of this kind cover interesting ground, some of it best presented-and interpreted-through maps; the message must not be obscured by the medium. Colour schemes d&mode’ in cartography nearly 20 years ago should be avoided; absolute numbers are not best mapped using choropleth techniques; graded colours should be graded rather than random; volumetric symbols should not be based on linear scales; point sizes for lettering should not be chosen at random; and, even when their graticules are retained, unconventional projections h la Times Atlas of World History should be used for a good purpose. Above all the information should be accurate. A fuller list of errors is available on application, but it may help any tourists who receive a copy of this book to know that shillings should replace pounds in the maps and text dealing with medieval wealth (pp. 176-7); that the population of Liverpool did not grow by one million people between 1750 and 1841 (p. 201); that some Suffolk market towns have gone for a walk since 1100 A.D. ; that there were no motor cars in Britain in 1854; and that the condescending “graphics” on p. 214, intended for those incapable of understanding an age pyramid, do not denote the presence of a gentlemen’s lavatory. To those who object that popularizers of knowledge can never win, the answer is that they can, but not by dressing it up as a Readers Digest offer-instant knowledge without effort. Instant, that is, rather than fresh-ground.

P. LAXTON

PIERRE FLATRES and XAVIER DE PLANHOL (Eds), Paysages Arbor& et Complantb (Paris: Departement de Gtographie, Universitt de Paris-Sorbonne, 1980. Pp. 121) Mkianges Agraires: Travaux de la RCP 355 du CNRS. Civilisations Agraires de I’Ancien Monde: Paysages et So&&b (Paris: privately published by Pierre Flat&s, 1980, Pp. 219)

These volumes assemble some of the findings of a research group supported by the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique in order to investigate rural landscapes and agra- rian societies in Europe, Asia and Africa. It functioned between 1974 and 1981 and was composed mainly of French geographers, with collaboration from historians, and from geographers residing outside France. Commonlands and layered landscapes associated with tree crops were chosen as the first research themes, to be followed by investigations into hilltop settlements and micro-features of the rural landscape. Les Terres Communes, published on behalf of the group in 1975, included seven contributions on regions of France and two sections dealing with Italy and Spain. Four chapters in Mklanges Agraires extend the inventory by presenting an overview of communal lands in Norway and three case studies drawn from northern and western France. The general emphasis is evolu- tionary, with contributors examining past conditions in order to help explain present landscapes and to speculate how they might change in the future. Some authors work from old maps and manuscripts, while others place greater stress on field observation and reasoned argument. An essential contrast is drawn between communaux, to which large village communities had access, and sectionaux, which were used by residents of smaller settlements. It is a pity that commonlands in several regions of France escape discussion. The six remaining chapters in MPZanges examine quite separate aspects of field patterns and rural settlements in France and Spain.

Complantage involves the creation of layered productive landscapes, which comprise crops at both ground and tree levels. The essential principles are usually associated with the tropical world but Xavier de Planhol and his collaborators demonstrate that they also apply across a wide spectrum of climatic and socioeconomic conditions. Nine case studies relate to central and western France, northern Iran, eastern Algeria and Spain. Differing environmental circumstances in both space and time have endowed complantage