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In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries we find the beginnings of something new in European historiography, as men holding office in urban administrations began to write chronicles. This article, published in Thirteenth-Century England XVII focuses on three cities where we first see this phenomenon witnessed: London (Arnold fitz Thedmar), Cologne (Gottfried Hagen) and Genoa (Caffaro/Jacopo Doria). It focuses on the socio-economic forces that drove men in these towns to write histories of their cities and analyses how the writers independently placed their cities in the wider world, defined liberty and articulated their philosophies of history against a backdrop of civic unrest.