Th e articles in this collection deal with the early modern street-a public space that was never completely separate from other public spaces, or indeed from private spaces. Th is introduction presents central themes for the following six articles that explore the history of the street in various European towns. Public and private, order and disorder, and control and hierarchy are discussed, and the inextricable link between the material and the immaterial in the history of the street is emphasized.
Th is article examines how, in the early modern towns of Stockholm and Åbo, royal interests, town planning, street building and maintenance, and street behavior related to ideas and ideals of urban order. Town laws and ordinances, royal letters and some town court records are employed to tell a story of royal interest in well-ordered, impressive, successful towns; various street plans for the capital and the smaller provincial towns; and the varying execution of renewal plans. It is evident that the capital was to refl ect the royal person and the state and that streets and street behaviour were important in this regard. But in towns outside the capital, especially in concrete street maintenance, the centrality of streets does not clearly emerge. Th e burghers in towns operated as individuals-there was no bottomup or top-down plan or supervision.
Our corporeality and immersion in the material world make us inherently spatial beings, and the fact that we all share everyday experiences in the global physical environment means that community is also spatial by nature. This book explores the relationship between the seventeenth-century townspeople of Turku, Sweden, and their urban surroundings. Riitta Laitinen offers a novel account of civil and social order in this early modern town, highlighting the central importance of materiality and spatiality and breaking down the dichotomy of public versus private life that has dominated traditional studies of the time period.
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