Page 294 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol V

world cities in history—overview 2071

actually “king-places” or “regal-ritual” cities whose single- Viewing the table of modern world cities, we might
functionality was one reason for the fragility of the sys- still see an “Asian age” right up to 1800 because all the
tem when it was exposed to environmental stress and world’s major cities were then Asian, if not actually Chi-
persistent warfare. nese. But on closer inspection that is less of an indicator
of wealth and power than a symptom of stagnation
The Modern World because the table shows, before 1800, no evidence of
For the modern era, we return to a unitary vision because growth, only some form of musical chairs. The growth
our threshold criterion rises to 1 million, in other words, that mattered was happening at the other end of Eurasia,
to “millionaire cities” that, at least initially, were few in in Western Europe, but it was, for a while, still under the
number. (See Table 1.) radar.The growth factor initially rose from the city-states,
The table depicts a process that over the course of one Genoa and Venice, and in the Low Countries, whose
millennium raised the number of modern world cities experience was by 1500 translated into that of nation-
from one, to 300, a rate of urban expansion never pre- states. Portugal, Spain, and the Dutch Republic assumed
viously experienced. What is more, most of that expan- increasingly important global roles spearheaded by their
sion occurred in the last one or two centuries. enterprising cities—Lisbon, Antwerp, and Amsterdam.
To start with, the urban landscape at the turn to the These were experiments in new forms of global organi-
second millennium continued as it was in 900, with a zation that reached maturity with the experience of
central role for the Muslim world and strong Chinese par- Britain. By 1800 London broke through to the “million-
ticipation. But then, soon after 1200, disaster struck. In aire city” league, which suggests that innovation is not
a space of two or three generations, the Mongols cap- just a product of city size.
tured all the “millionaire cities” and seized control of the It is the list for 1900 that offers a clear picture of the
Silk Roads, even while laying waste to North China and urban structure that shaped what we tend to think of as the
Central Asia, destroying and massacring the inhabitants world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: the strong
of Beijing, Merv, Samarkand, Herat, and Baghdad.When British stake earned in the Industrial Revolution,with Lon-
they faded away, one century later, this was still the “Asian don, Manchester, Birmingham, and Glasgow; the then-
age,” but the spirit had gone out of it, and the Silk Roads new, and rising, United States’ challenge, with NewYork,
withered. Chicago, Boston, and Philadelphia; the traditional great

Table 1.
Modern Cities of 1 Million Inhabitants or More
year:
1000 1200 1400 1600 1800 1900* 2000*
1 3 1 1 4 16 299
Baghdad Baghdad Nanjing Beijing London London Paris
Kaifeng Beijing Manchester Berlin
Hangzhou Edo Birmingham Vienna
Guangzhou Glasgow Moscow
New York St. Petersburg
Chicago Beijing
Boston Tokyo
Philadelphia Calcutta
*These are partial lists of the number of cities.