1“ Bruce Mazlishs "ee Re ay” Hy Dag David Lewis. 1999, Birth of the Mi Business History —From Ash to A inatonal Yar of Ancient cope Ashur to Augustus. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Basinecs Schifer, Woe. “Das 20, Jehshundert hat Kater bane ae ebshundert hat gerade ext onstruiert werden?” ee hee ston Na Beat Bie gear Hm se Hace MoR SS vEW City-States, Prime Cities, Global Cities Witold Rybcoynski Globalization is an unprecedented phenomenon, as are global cities, yet cities have been sites for financial innovation and key capital markets Since the Middle Ages. Indeed, it could be said that from their very begin- ning cities exhibited a world view. ‘Traces of the oldest known urbah settlement, carbon-dated to as early as the eighth millennium BC, have been found at Jericho. Because side trade. atal Hilydk in Anatolia, a seventh- milllennium town that covered more than thirty acres, is known fo have bbeen a source of obsidian, a black voleanic glass that, before bronze and ion, made the best cutting tools. Such a degree of specialization likewise implies trade, pethaps even far-reaching trade, and the likely existence of other, as-yet-undiscovered towns. Larger cities emerged in Mesopotamia in the valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates around 3200 BC1, The Sumerian city of Ur had 34,000 peo- ple living within its walls, and as many asa quarter of a million in its sub- urbs and surroundings; the walls of Uruk enclosed two square miles’, ‘The Sumerian cities were not an isolated phenomenon. Throughout the Fertile Crescent, Assyrians, Akkadians, Canaanaites, and Hebrews, also built cities. These settlements were self-governing, independent entities. end, The City in the Ancient World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University 36, 2 Pal Lamp (Cites and Plamsing in the Ancient Near East (New York: George Braaiee, 1868), 15.Witold Rybceynski © oldest form of state” observed! Amold Toynbee, "Thus, civilization and they were not necessarl id the Levant, civili alized planning, ant wont gious, adininstative or ingen a se Santon Chide referred to the period of the emergence of cites as “urban revolution”! Fernand Braudel calls cities “turning. points, watersheds of human history’S. The ae for their appearance is hard lustrialization and com- 1 ATS0ld Toynbee Cites of Destiny (New York: Heat 5 WGordon Childe, “the Uiban Revolution” Fernand Braudel, «its. (Neve York: Harper Ro Levis Munford, The i York: Harcourt, Brace thervane Books 1967, 31, The Ture Pay ity-States, Prime Cities, Global Cities v lawyers, even its distraction.” He emphasizes this point. “The town only ‘exists as a town in relation to a form of life lower than its own. There are ‘no exceptions to this rule””. Domination was an integral aspect of urbanization tive advantages of cities were great, Cities became w: than the sur- rounding countryside, and translated that wealth into garrisons for physical security, temples for spiritual protection, food storage for droughts, and technology to assure a constant water supply. At the same time, cities could be fragile, since large, dense agglomerations of people ical, and technological support networks, and lined, cities declined with them. Both Harappa and Mohenjodaro in the Indus valley, for example, were abandoned pre- cipitously, as were the Mesoamerican cities of Teotihuacn and Tikel, and the Anasazi cities of the American Southwest, Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon. If power was indeed an urban condition, a diminution of power usually led to urban decline. “A town never exists unaccompanied by other towns,” writes Brau- dol, Spiro Kostof also noted the tendency of early cities to occur in clus- ters®, This was true whether the cities were self-governing city-states, or belonged to an empire. In the lower valley of the Tigris the Nile valley, the Mediterranean coast of and the canyons of the American Southwres Mexico, Teotihuacn was the largest of several cities that included Cholla, EL Tajin, and Monte Abn, In North America, the Hopewell Indian civili- zation that built Cahokia, also built Azatlan and Mound City. A rare exception to the clustering rule was the Shang civilization that grew up around the Yellow River in northern China. This loose confederation of villages had but a single capital city, although the fickle Shang kings relo- cated it several times. The Chou, who conquered the Shang in the 11th ceritury BC, vastly enlarged the kingdom and, following a more conven ‘onal urbanization pattern, built a network of regional capitals ring may initially have been due to natural regional advan- tages such as nearby rivers for irrigation and transportation, or great for. ests that could supply building materials and fuel, or the presence of natural cereals (ancestors of wheat and barley). Clustering was also the result of—and a precondition for—the division of labor that characterized the compara in groups. In ‘City Shape: Urn Patterns at Mannings Through History (Boston: Lite, Brown d= Company, 1990), 38,18 Witold Rybezynski ‘metallurgy, the wheel, and the plow"®, Jane Jacobs argues that ct F eeuated in agriculture, cross-breeding stock, disseminating B techniques, developing food-storage, and propagating seed ~ According to her, such expertise in agriculture and animal hus- bandty only later available the countryside. "Rural work. is ety work transplanted”, ld” did not mean the whole world, The number of m peo- i ted in the urban revolution was tiny, probably no mare pian fen percent of the world’s population'®. The majority of people lived beyond cities and their spheres of influence, wandering the cee Beyond ce spheres rence, wandering the deserts and in the scattered southeast Asia, ions of cities and their surrounding regi +humankind's knowledge and power were com centrated. Urbanization meant civilization 2° Mason Hammond, The City in the Ancient Wor (Cambldge, Mase: Harvard sity or (Cambridge, Mase: Harvard Unive Jane Jacob, The Eeaomy of Cites, (New York: Random House 16 hoi, 18 4 Hammond 7, CCity-States, Prime Cities, Global Cities 19 ‘A World Outlook ‘The first cities with what can be termed a world outlook were the Greck, Phoenician, and Etruscan city-states, which derived their power and wealth not from their immediate surroundings, but from afar. These urban civilizations were commercial rivals, proved dominant, Theirs was never a single state or empire, but rather an urban trading network. Unlike the Sumerian cities, the Greek cities, perched on a rocky coastline or in isolated inland valleys, had no hinter. land to exploit—or to expand into—so they were obliged to look else- where, They established commercial colonies: Syracuse in Sicily, Miletus and Ephesus on the Anatolian coast, and Rhodes. The Greek concept of local government prevented the extension of citizenship beyond the city- state to other cities. Thus, the Greek cities expanded their Mediterranean reach by forming loose leagues, with individual city-states as key compo- nents. ‘The democratic city-state, whose heyday was in the fifth century BC, when the population of Athens grew to about 320,000, was the great Greek political invention and achievement, and became the political ‘modi for later ages. Sovereignty was vested in the citizens (precise qual- ifications for citizenship vatied from city to city, but excluded resident foreigners, women, children, and slaves). The Greek ment was founded on two principles, First, that th ly should express the will of the people, and second, that government should take into consideration the interests of the whole community", This led to the idea that laws were man-made, rather than deriving from ‘their appointed rulers. -states did not last Jong, They suffered the same fate as the Sumerian cities, which eventually had come under the domination of the Babylonian empire. Following the disastrous war between Athens and the Spartan confederation, and the defeat of the Greeks by the Macedonians, the independent Greek city-states largely disappeared, The later partition of Alexander's empire into three king- doms—Macedonia, Ptolemaic Egypt, and the Seleucid kingdom that stretched from the Levant to the Indian Ocean—Iett cities with a second- ary, and chiefly mercantile role. They were still prosperous and populous, but considerably less influential in world affairs, which were dominated by territorial states, ¥ Did, 189,