The shop distribution pattern that I was able to reconstruct on the basis of the Personele Quotisatie of 1742 remained unchanged until after the mid-nineteenth century. Indeed, this is what one would expect, as there were in essence no changes to the structure of Amsterdam's urban grid during this period, nor was there a change in the spatial distribution of income groups. But this need not mean that there were no changes at all. In England, for example, the eighteenth century was a time of fundamental change. In this chapter, we shall first focus on the situation on the other side of the North Sea before turning to examine whether similar developments also took place in Amsterdam.

Shops in Britain in the eighteenth century

In order to find out how the retail shop developed in Britain in the eighteenth century, we need briefly to examine the somewhat older literature on British retail trade in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many of these works have made much of the changes that took place in this period, and not unjustifiably. The most striking expression of these changes in retail trade was, of course, the rise and rapid expansion of large-scale retail businesses. Here it is important to note that scholars studying the modern shop tended to be dismissive of the situation before the mid-nineteenth century, labelling it as ‘traditional’ and ‘underdeveloped’.