Page 292 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

world cities in history—overview 2069

rising to 466 in the spring and autumn of Eastern Zhou. Greek ambassador about 300 BCE. In the second half of
City-building was apparently part of state-building, with the classical era the focus of North India shifted to
the term for “state” (guo) denoting a walled city. While Kanauji, which became the capital of the Guptas and
many of these cities were quite small, in no time a system continued as the centerpiece of regional politics until it
of independent and flourishing states arose, each was sacked by Muslim armies in 1018 and then
anchored in a major city with merely nominal and cere- destroyed. In the south, Buddhism gained an early
monial links to Luoyang. foothold in Sri Lanka at Anuradhapura and came to radi-
That, in turn, left the field open to immensely destruc- ate its influence throughout Southeast Asia, including Sri
tive wars, in what came to be known as the period of Ksetra in Burma, Palembang in Srivijaja, and Angkor in
Warring States. The most ruthless and warlike of these Cambodia.
states, Qin, conquered all the others and founded the The Mediterranean was the focus of the other major
First Empire. But that proved short-lived, and the Han urban network of the classical world, equal in weight to
Empire that replaced it quickly built a great new capital, the East Asian. The Mediterranean network began to
Changan (Xi’an), while continuing Luoyang in a sec- form later in the ancient era but quickly expanded via
ondary role. Changan and Luoyang each had their good three great waves of urbanization: the Phoenician, the
and bad times (the former was largely destroyed in 189, Greek, and the Roman. In about 1000 BCE Tyre sent a
sacked in 315, plundered in 756 and 763, and subjected first colony to Cyprus, and soon its settlers founded
to a bloodbath in 881; the latter was utterly destroyed in Carthage, which in short order became the powerhouse
189 and 190, sacked in 311, and declined after 907), but of the Western Mediterranean. Pliny the Elder, the ency-
they continued to alternate as China’s leading cities right clopedist, put its population, prior to the start of the wars
until the end of the classical era, when Kaifeng assumed with Rome, at 700,000, probably too high but indicat-
a central place in the Northern Song. By that time Kyoto ing its reputation.The second wave came from the Greek
(Japan) and Sorabol (in Silla, Korea) also joined the ranks world, under the sponsorship of individual cities. For
of world cities in East Asia that accounted, in the classi- example, Corinth initiated the foundation of Syracuse, on
cal era, for about one-third of the world’s major urban Sicily, whose defeat of the Athenian expedition tipped the
potential. scales in the Peloponnesian war, and which may have
The South Asian experience paralleled that of East been, about 400 BCE, the largest city in the Greek world.
Asia, albeit on a smaller scale, in that the first millennium But the greatest impetus to Hellenization came from
BCE saw a flourishing of cities in a context of autonomy, the conquests of Alexander of Macedon, the founder of
in North India in particular, a process that was then set numerous cities.The most important of these was Alexan-
back by the founding of imperial structures and by exter- dria, which became the capital of the post-Alexandrine
nal incursions. Out of a cluster of tribal units an urban rulers of Egypt, the Ptolemies, who fashioned it not only
landscape emerged in the Ganges Valley that in turn coa- into a center of political power, and of trade and ship-
lesced into a system of independent polities that became ping, but also equipped it with a great lighthouse on
the seedbed of Buddhism. However, a recent study of the Pharos Island, a beacon to ship-farers and a symbol of
sites of the capitals of sixteen of these Early Historic states enlightenment for a city boasting of a museion and a
showed them to be in the range of 50 to 200 hectares, huge library. A city that was home to many nationalities,
suggesting populations smaller than their counterparts in Alexandria became the first exemplar, in Stoic thought,
China of that time and falling below our threshold. of a cosmopolis, a city of the world, a higher formation
Over time, one of these became the dominant power than a mere polis.
and formed the core of an empire centered on Patalipu- The last wave was that of the Romans, builders of an
tra, on the Ganges, a large city that greatly impressed a empire, but also builders of cities. Rome annihilated