Abstract
Seventeenth-century England saw the growh of provincial towns. This article examines the economic development of one of the provincial capitals, Norwich. It focuses on the occupational structure of the city and on the connection between the city and other towns as well as its hinterland. The occupational stucture of the city which appears in the freemen register of the city sugests that throughout the seventeenth century the urban economy was becoming specialized in the worsted industry. The flourishing of the worsted industry was attributed to the function of the city as the centre of the Norfolk worsted industry: the organization of spinners by town wool combers who were putters-out, the tendency of the weaving process to centre on the city from its hinterland, and the monopoly of the finishing process by town finishers, all of which made the city the core of the organization of the Norfolk worsted industry. This tendency to specilize in one industry did not exclude other economic functions of the city. The basic industries such as food and drink, clothing and building trades gave considerable employment to the townsmen. The city was also the centre of intra-and inter-local trade. The development of the commercial function was based on the development of the social division of labour in the economic hinterland of the city. The pre-industrial urban economies have often been characterized by their unspecialized nature. It is true, but, compared with other commercial towns like York of which the growth of the population was stable, the tendency to specialize in the worsted industry must have made possible the urban growth as that of Norwich. Therefore, the tendency to specialize was important in pre-industrial urban economies which encouraged urban grwth and alsointegrated the regional economy into the national economy.
