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The list of research given below is substantially longer than last year's despite the rigorous pruning of such dead wood as invariably appears among this vigorous growth. Yet it seems doubtful whether the Register will continue to grow at the rate it has shown for a decade or more, or even whether it will grow at all. The signs are that the rate at which work for higher degrees is being completed or abandoned has never been higher and the number of new starts being made on research for higher degrees appears to be on the decline: some 83 dissertations were successfully completed since the last listing: another 60 or so were abandoned or put into suspense.

New Zealand's national myths have emphasized the rural frontier. The archetypal and most commonly celebrated colonist has been the backblocks settler, the cow cockie, and to some extent the gold miner. New Zealanders have never seen much glamour in their towns. Yet from the very beginning New Zealand has been a mainly urban society. Many towns were founded in the early stages of European settlement, and New Zealand has exhibited in modified form the tendency to 'metropolitanism' characteristic of other countries that were settled in the mid-nineteenth century. The urban historian could have a very important role to play in helping New Zealanders to come to terms with, and absorb into their sense of national identity, this major aspect of their national existence.

The editorial board of urban history has decided to change the format of the 'review of theses' section. While wishing to retain a survey of the most recent doctoral studies in urban history, we have decided to focus each review on a specific theme or topic, written by a current student or postdoctoral researcher. The first of these reviews, by Nancy Haekyung Kwak, surveys theses in international and/or comparative urban history.

Die New Urban History entwickelte sich, obwohl die Bedeutung der Stadt für die amerikanische Geschichte schon früh erkannt wurde, in den letzten Jahrzehnten eher langsam. Der Verfasser geht auf die wichtigsten Arbeiten ein, die sich als maßgeblich für die aufkommende Spezialisierung erwiesen haben. Diese Arbeiten kündigten das Entstehen von bedeutenden Forschungsarbeiten an, die an drei Leitlinien orientiert waren: der Entwicklung neuer theoretischer Ansätze zur städtischen Entwicklung, der Erforschung des allgemeinen Stellenwerts der Städte in der amerikanischen Geschichte und der Untersuchung der Städte von innen her. 1969 wurde der Begriff New Urban History zum ersten Mal verwendet, um die Arbeit einer Gruppe von Historikern zu beschreiben, die ein Jahr vorher an der Universität von Yale zusammengekommen waren, um ihre Forschungen über die Stadt zu diskutieren. Nach dem Treffen von Yale entwickelte sich dieses Gebiet rasch weiter. Der Verfasser zeigt die Richtung dieser Entwicklung auf. Mit einer Erweiterung im Bereich der Quellen ging die Anwendung ausgefeilterer quantitativer Techniken einher. Es werden die Bezeichnung New Urban History zur Beschreibung der gegenwärtigen Forschung und die Merkmale, die bei Historikern und Nicht-Historikern über die Zugehörigkeit zu diesem Bereich entscheiden, erläutert. Ein Überblick über die allgemeinen Ergebnisse der New Urban History bezieht sich auf Bevölkerungsstrukturen, soziale Mobilität, ökologische Studien des städtischen Raums, städtisches Wachstum und ökonomische Entwicklung, städtische Sozialstruktur sowie städtisches Gemeindebewußtsein. (SD)

This was the tenth anniversary meeting of the Urban History Group though only the sixth occasion on which there had been a formal programme of papers. So many came – over 160 – that we felt for the first time the loss of the old intimate, bantering style of discussion, and slipped instead into more formal speeches pitched for the most part on a rather more general level than we have had before. It was possible this year to miss people altogether in the corridors and even in the bars. At any moment one expected to come across a knot of specialists earnestly planning a splinter group, as we had done ourselves one lunch-time at the Sheffield conference of the Economic History Society in 1963. It was an opportunity to reflect on the implications of growth in other ways, for the University Bookshop had arranged an exhibition of some 500 books on various aspects of urban history to celebrate the last decade of print, to which the Standing Conference on Local History added a hundred titles more from their recent exhibition on the publications of local organizations in this field.

Johannesburg, in certain respects the Republic's leading urban centre, celebrates her centenary in 1986. Acquisitive citizens and indifferent officials have, however, long driven much of her past from the streets. Today carnival history is being manufactured hurriedly beyond remote tarmac parking grounds and behind ticketing turnstiles. Although its popularization is also overdue, scholarly interest in South African urban history fortunately has not attracted only whimsical attention. In the brief review which follows an attempt is made to sketch the outlines of the South African urban past, to capture the flavour of substantive research into South African urban history and to contour the intellectual climate in which this has been conducted and shaped. Emphasis is placed on research reported in scholarly outlets. Not unexpectedly there is a wide range of other publications which contain elements of urban historical interest, these ranging from newspapers and magazines to general historical texts and finely liveried, lavishly illustrated Africana. For the purposes of this presentation, the 'modern period' of South African urban history is closed during the 1950s.