Cities In World History PDF

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF CITIES IN WORLD HISTORY THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF CITIES IN WORLD HISTORY Editorial Board Peter Clark, editor University of Helsinki David Mattingly, assistant editor for Early Cities University of Leicester Lynn Hollen Lees, assistant editor for Modern and Contemporary Citi...

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF CITIES IN WORLD HISTORY THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF CITIES IN WORLD HISTORY Editorial Board Peter Clark, editor University of Helsinki David Mattingly, assistant editor for Early Cities University of Leicester Lynn Hollen Lees, assistant editor for Modern and Contemporary Cities University of Pennsylvania Marc Boone University of Ghent Peter Burke University of Cambridge Renata Holod University of Pennsylvania William Rowe The Johns Hopkins University THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF CITIES IN WORLD HISTORY Edited by PETER CLARK Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, United Kingdom OX2 6DP, Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries The editorial material and arrangement © the Editor 2013 The chapters © the various contributors 2013 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–958953–1 Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. PREFACE This book has been written at a time when the city has been pushed to the world’s centre stage as never before. Not only do more people now live in cities than in the countryside, consuming a high proportion of global natural resources, but the economic and financial crises of 2008 and 2011 have had a seismic effect on the urban balance of power between Asia, other so-called developing regions, and the advanced West, whilst the popular uprisings in the cities of the Middle East have opened up a new political and cultural landscape in that region with radical resonances elsewhere. Given that many of the world’s leading cities have existed and been important for centuries, if not millennia, the need for a wide-ranging, comparative examination of global urban development which puts current economic, social, political, and cultural changes in an extended historical perspective has never been greater. The proposal for this book came from the publisher. It has posed many challenges. First, because as we explain in the Introduction (Ch. 1), despite the enormous increase of research on urban history in recent years, most of it has involved national or regional studies, and there has been much less interest in comparative analysis on a transcontinental scale. So a network of around fifty leading scholars interested in global comparative research, a scientific Ark, had to be built from scratch. Linked to this is the problem that national funding councils, while giving lip service to global perspectives, prefer to support regional or local projects. Lastly, in the age of accountancy publishing, the constraints on editors and authors are inevitably stringent: not all towns and cities, not all topics could be covered in this work. All funding for illustrations, meetings, and the like had to be raised by the editor and authors. Nonetheless, the book is the first detailed study of the world’s principal urban systems from early times to the present day. The aim from the start was to organize an integrated work with arguments, discourses, and themes: not an encyclopaedia of miscellaneous articles. This does not mean that there is a consensus, party line on global urbanization and its consequences. In fact the book explores a great plurality of views and ideas; thus on the figures for urban populations there is considerable diversity of opinion, reflecting the fragility and/or complexity of the data. To promote dialogue we organized two international conferences, at the University of Helsinki in May 2010 and at the University of Pennsylvania in April 2011, at which most contributors, in the fertile tradition of urban history, debated, argued, and indeed created the essence of the book with a good deal of hard talking and modest sociability. We are most grateful to the University of Helsinki, the History Department, Helsinki University, Urban Facts, Helsinki City, the Royal Netherlands Embassy, Helsinki, and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation for funding and supporting the Helsinki meeting. My former assistant Matti Hannikainen was invaluable in coordinating the meeting, along with Suvi Talja, Richard Robinson, Rainey Tisdale, and Niko Lipsanen. We are equally indebted to Renata Holod for taking the lead in organizing the Philadelphia meeting and to Nancy Steinhardt and Lynn Lees for helping her. Funding for the Philadelphia conference came from the University of Pennsylvania’s Provost’s Fund for International Projects, the School of Arts and Sciences, School of Design, the Penn Institute for Urban Research, the Center for Ancient Studies, the African Studies Center, the Middle East Center, Center for East Asian Research, the History Department, the History of Art Department, the Penn Museum, and Bryn Mawr College, and we thank them for their generosity. Gregory Tentler provided valuable logistic support, and John Pollack and Dan Traister from the Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania coordinated a superb exhibit of early modern urban maps, one of which is reproduced in this volume. Other debts are no less important. As editor, I am very grateful to David Mattingly and Lynn Lees, assistant editors for the early and modern periods respectively, for their invaluable advice, encouragement, and (when needed) solace; also to the other members of the editorial group for their support. The University of Helsinki gave financial help for producing the illustrations; Matti Hannikainen helped to coordinate the contributors’ website for the volume; and Mark Elvin, Graeme Barker, and Martin Daunton gave important advice at an early stage. We are particularly grateful to Niko Lipsanen for drawing most of the Regional Maps and a number of the Figures; Suvi Talja also assisted. The China Map for the ancient period was drawn by Sijie Ren, University of Pennsylvania. At Oxford University Press Stephanie Ireland, Emma Barber, and Dawn Preston helped at the rather difficult production stage. Susan Boobis prepared the index. Last but not least, the book owes an enormous amount to those authors and their families (Laurel and Tobias, children of contributors, were born during this enterprise!), as well as institutions, who supported the venture with enthusiasm and commitment. Peter Clark Helsinki CONTENTS List of Figures List of Plates List of Regional Maps List of Tables List of Contributors Image Permissions 1. Introduction PETER CLARK PART I EARLY CITIES Surveys 2. Mesopotamia AUGUSTA MCMAHON 3. Cities of the Ancient Mediterranean ROBIN OSBORNE AND ANDREW WALLACE-HADRILL 4. Africa DAVID MATTINGLY AND KEVIN MACDONALD 5. South Asia CAMERON A. PETRIE 6. China N. STEINHARDT Themes 7. Economy DAVID L. STONE 8. Population and Migration LUUK DE LIGT 9. Power and Citizenship MARIO LIVERANI 10. Religion and Ritual J. A. BAIRD 11. Planning and Environment RAY LAURENCE PART II PRE-MODERN CITIES Surveys 12. Medieval Europe MARC BOONE 13. Early Modern Europe: 1500–1800 BRUNO BLONDÉ AND ILJA VAN DAMME 14. Middle East: 7th–15th Centuries DOMINIQUE VALÉRIAN 15. The Ottoman City: 1500–1800 EBRU BOYAR 16. China: 600–1300 HILDE DE WEERDT 17. China: 1300–1900 WILLIAM T. ROWE 18. Japan’s Pre-modern Urbanism JAMES MCCLAIN 19. Port Cities of South East Asia: 1400–1800 LEONARD BLUSSÉ 20. Latin America FELIPE FERNÁNDEZ-ARMESTO Themes 21. Economy BAS VAN BAVEL, MAARTEN BOSKER, ELTJO BURINGH, AND JAN LUITEN VAN ZANDEN 22. Population and Migration: European and Chinese Experiences Compared ANNE WINTER 23. Power WIM BLOCKMANS AND MARJOLEIN ’T HART 24. Culture: Representations PETER BURKE PART III MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY CITIES Surveys 25. Europe: 1800–2000 ANDREW LEES AND LYNN HOLLEN LEES 26. Latin America ALAN GILBERT 27. North America CARL ABBOTT 28. China: 1900 to the Present KRISTIN STAPLETON 29. Japan PAUL WALEY 30. South Asia PRASHANT KIDAMBI 31. South East Asia and Australia HOWARD DICK AND PETER J. RIMMER 32. Middle East MERCEDES VOLAIT AND MOHAMMAD AL-ASAD 33. Africa: 1000–2010 BILL FREUND Themes 34. Industrialization and the City: East and West HO-FUNG HUNG AND SHAOHUA ZHAN 35. Population and Migration LEO LUCASSEN 36. Poverty, Inequality, and Social Segregation ALAN GILBERT 37. The Urban Environment MARTIN V. MELOSI 38. Creative Cities MARJATTA HIETALA AND PETER CLARK 39. Cinema and the City HANNU SALMI 40. Colonial Cities THOMAS R. METCALF 41. Contemporary Metropolitan Cities XIANGMING CHEN AND HENRY FITTS 42. Suburbs JUSSI S. JAUHIAINEN 43. Port Cities CAROLA HEIN 44. Conclusion: Cities in Time PENELOPE J. CORFIELD Index LIST OF FIGURES 4.1 Comparative plans at two different scales of a number of African urban and proto-urban sites, with settlement areas shaded. The largest enceintes at Ife, Kano, and Ibadan are of post-Islamic date, but are included for comparison with the extended settlement complexes around Dia and Jenné-jeno 4.2 Comparative plans of Garamantian towns and fortified villages 5.1 Plans of Indus cities and smaller centres showing evidence for semi-orthogonal blocks and discrete walled areas at settlements of different sizes 5.2 Indus Valley. Comparison of plan of Mohenjo-daro and plans of Early Historic cities and smaller centres showing the variable size of fortified areas 6.1 China: Walled settlements 6.2 China: Walled city plans 7.1 The social structure of an early city: ‘stratified, horizontally segregated layers of military, administrative, clerical and sometimes commercial ruling classes’ positioned above ‘laterally insulated communities of agricultural producers’ 7.2 A simplified model of the economy of an early city 7.3 Leptiminus in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, showing urban core surrounded by ‘productive periphery’ 12.1 Map of medieval Trier, late antiquity to 13th century 12.2 Map of Arras in the 12th century 20.1 Salvador, based on a watercolour plan by João Teixeira Albernaz, c.1616 20.2 Central Mexico City: the colonial street plan with the locations of major pre-colonial buildings 21.1 Model of economic and political systems in the pre-modern era 26.1 São Paulo: Urban growth beyond the municipality 28.1 The Pearl River Estuary (redrawn from a map by Xiangming Chen) 31.1 South East Asia: an open system with connections to South Asia, North East Asia, and Australia 31.2 South East Asia: an emerging urban region 31.3 Direct daily international airline flights involving South East Asia (including Hong Kong) and Australian airports 35.1 A global-historical typology of rural–urban migration settlement patterns 35.2 Urbanization in Africa in 2001 41.1 The Shanghai metropolitan region including several new towns, satellite cities, and transportation infrastructure 41.2 Two European ‘bananas’ which denote two cross-national urban regions 41.3 The Hartford region, US showcasing multiple borders of service delivery and ‘messy governance’ 42.1 Typology of suburbs from the 18th century to the present LIST OF PLATES 4.1 Fragments of architectural elements recovered from the Garamantian town of Garama (Old Jarma, Libya) in the central Sahara 73 4.2 Excavations at the early urban site of Dia (Mali) in 1998 5.1 Fired brick architecture at Mohenjo-daro, Indus Valley, showing House VIII in HR-A area with the socalled Buddhist stupa in the background 5.2 The Granary or Great Hall on Mound F at Harappa, Indus Valley 11.1 Roman Fora 11.2 Street intersection in Pompeii 12.1 Seal of the commune of Meulan, end of 12th century 13.1 Nancy, early 18th century 13.2 View of Heidelberg, early 18th century 14.1 Mosque of Ahmad ibn Tûlûn, Cairo, 876–879 14.2 Wakâla of the Mamluk sultan, Cairo, 1504–1505 14.3 Algiers 15.1 Izmir: street scene 15.2 Istanbul: covered bazaar 16.1 Scene by the bridge in the northern Song capital of Kaifeng 18.1 ‘Ochanomizu’: the former moat around Edo Castle 24.1 Birdseye View of Cairo, 16th century 24.2 Map of Edo: sheet 1, 1670 24.3 Sixteenth-century Ottoman miniature of Istanbul 25.1 Birmingham, c.1889 25.2 Potsdamer Platz, Berlin 27.1 Map showing the location of the twelve US Federal Reserve banks 28.1 Chengdu, China: street-scene, 1928 28.2 A construction site in Shanghai, 2010 30.1 European quarter, Calcutta, 1922 30.2 Skyline of present-day Chennai, India 33.1 Aerial view of the old city of Kano, Nigeria 33.2 Kibera slum, outside Nairobi, Kenya 39.1 Still from Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Grossstadt (1927) 39.2 Still from Frank Capra’s Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) 39.3 Still of New York City in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) 40.1 Central Post Office, Casablanca, by Adrien Laforgue, 1920 40.2 Layout of Delhi 41.1 The Paraisópolis favela, São Paulo, Brazil 41.2 Gated luxury apartments, Rajarhat New Town, near Calcutta, India 43.1 East India House, Leadenhall Street, London c.1760; headquarters of the British East India Company 43.2 Hamburg shipping connections, 1925 44.1 Piazza Navona, Rome, aerial view 44.2 Metropolis by George Grosz (1917) LIST OF REGIONAL MAPS PART I I.1 Mediterranean Europe I.2 Middle East I.3 Africa I.4 South Asia I.5 China PART II II.1 Europe 214 II.2 Middle East II.3 Africa 216 II.4 South Asia II.5 East Asia II.6 Latin America II.7 North America PART III III.1 Europe III.2 Middle East III.3 Africa III.4 South Asia III.5 East Asia III.6 South East Asia and Australasia III.7 Latin America III.8 North America LIST OF TABLES 1.1 Estimated Urbanization Rates 1 st Century CE 1.2 Estimates of Urbanization c.1800 1.3 Estimates of Urbanization c.2000 13.1 Estimated Mean Urbanization Levels in Europe 1500–1800 20.1 Population of Selected Latin American Urban Centres (according to Census Reports or Official Estimates) 16th–18th Centuries 21.1 Key Indicators of Urban Development in Europe, the Middle East, and East/North Africa 800–1800 25.1 The Growth of Big Cities in Europe, 1800–1910 25.2 The Growth of Big Cities in Europe, 1950–1990 26.1 Latin America: Urban Share of Population in Selected Countries 1930–2010 26.2 Urban and Overall Population Growth Rates 1950 to 2010 26.3 Latin American Cities with More Than 4 Million Inhabitants 2010 26.4 Concentration of the National Population in Large Cities 1950, 1980, and 2010 26.5 ‘Formal’ and ‘Informal’ Employment in Selected Latin American Urban Areas 1990–2008 26.6 Urban Homes with Electricity, Water, and Sewerage in Selected Latin American Countries 1990–2006 26.7 The Incidence of Poverty in Latin American Cities 1970–2009 26.8 Poverty in Selected Latin American Countries by area 2007–2009 27.1 North American Urbanization 1850–2001 28.1 Nonagricultural, Agricultural, and Total Population of China’s Cities and Towns, 1949 to 2010 29.1 Proportion of the Japanese Population Living in Cities and Densely Inhabited Districts 1903–2000 29.2 Population Growth in Japanese Cities with a Population of over 1 Million in 2000 29.3 Value of Manufacturing Output in Japan as a Proportion of the Total by Geographic Area, 1909–1980 29.4a Households Served by Gas Supply in Selected Tokyo Wards 29.4b Households Connected to Electricity Supply in Selected Tokyo Wards 29.5 Index of Average Prices of Urban Land: Japan 1980–2010 30.1 South Asian Urban Population, 1950–2007 30.2 Mega-Cities in South Asia, 1950–2007 31.1 Populations of Main Cities in South East Asia and Australia 1850–2010 31.2 Representation among World Top-25 Ranking of Container Shipping, Air Passenger, Air Cargo, and Internet Hubs 2008 32.1 Demographic Growth of Key Middle Eastern Cities (1800–1950) 33.1 The Largest African Cities at the End of the 20th Century 33.2 Populations of the Largest Cities in Sub-Saharan Africa in the Late Colonial Period 34.1 Great Divergence in GDP Share, Population Share, and Ratio of GDP per capita to World Average, East and West 35.1 Urbanization Levels in Japan, the Middle East, Europe, and China 1800–1890 35.2 Urbanization Levels in Europe 1700–1870 in Percentages 35.3 Levels of World Urbanization (20,000>) by Region and Year: 1920–2000 35.4 Urbanization Levels (percentage) in Africa 1975–2001 36.1 Percentages of Population Living in Poverty by Urban and Rural Area: Selected Countries 2005–2007 41.1 Metropolitan Cities (above 1 Million) 1800–2020 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Carl Abbott is Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University in Oregon. His research and writing have centred on the interactions between urban growth and regional development and identity in North America. His publications include The New Urban America: Growth and Politics in Sunbelt Cities (1983), Political Terrain: Washington DC from Tidewater Town to Global Metropolis (1999), and How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Growth in Western North America (2008). Mohammad al-Asad is an architect and architectural historian, and the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Built Environment (CSBE) in Amman, Jordan. He taught at the University of Jordan, Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. He is the editor of Workplaces, The Transformation of Places of Production: Industrialization and the Built Environment in the Islamic World (the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 2010), and author of Contemporary Architecture and Urbanism in the Middle East (forthcoming). Bas van Bavel is Professor of Economic and Social History of the Middle Ages at Utrecht University and head of the section of Economic and Social History. His research activities focus on reconstructing, analysing, and explaining economic growth and social change in pre-industrial Europe, emphasizing longterm transitions and regional diversity, and using comparative analysis—both over time and across regions—as the main tool. More specifically, he aims to find out why some societal arrangements are successful and others not, and what drivers the formation of these arrangements. In 2010 Oxford University Press published his Manors and Markets. Economy and Society in the Low Countries, 500– 1600. J. A. Baird is Lecturer in Archaeology in the Department of History, Classics, and Archaeology at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her current research involves integrating architecture, artefacts, and textual evidence to examine ancient daily life and responses to Roman rule. Her recent work has focused on the site of Dura-Europos, where she has worked for several years, both in the field and in the archive at Yale. Her recent publications include writing on the history of archaeological photography (American Journal of Archaeology, 2011) and a co-edited volume on Ancient Graffiti in Context (2010). Wim Blockmans has been a history professor at Rotterdam and Leiden Universities, and Rector of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. Among his books relevant in this context: Cities and the Rise of States in Europe, A.D. 1000–1800, ed. with Ch. Tilly (1994), A History of Power in Europe. Peoples, Markets, States (1997), The Promised Lands. The Low Countries under Burgundian Rule, 1369–1530, with W. Prevenier (1999), Emperor Charles V 1500–1558 (2001), Metropolen aan de Noordzee. Geschiedenis van Nederland 1100–1560 [Metropoles at the North Sea. History of the Low Countries 1100–1560] (2010). Bruno Blondé is a research professor at the Centre for Urban History of the University of Antwerp. He has published especially on the economic growth and social inequality of early modern urban societies in the Low Countries, the history of material culture and retailing from the late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century, transport history, and urban history in general. Leonard Blussé is Professor of East and South East Asian History at Leiden University, where he is teaching and doing research on the history of Asian–European relations. His present research focuses on Chinese seafaring and emigration in early modern time. His publications include Visible Cities: Canton, Nagasaki and Batavia and the Coming of the Americans (2008), Bitter Bonds, A Colonial Divorce Drama of the Seventeenth Century (2002) and Strange Company, Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in VOC Batavia (1988). Marc Boone is Professor of Medieval History at Ghent University and has also taught in France. He has been a member of the Royal Academy in Brussels since 2008 and of its committee for urban history (pro civitate). Recent publications include ‘A la recherché d’une modernité civique. La société urbaine des anciens Pays-Bas au bas Moyen Age’ (2010). He acted as President of the European Association for Urban History 2008–2010. He currently chairs the Belgian inter-university research programme on urban history (see: http://www.cityandsociety.be/). Maarten Bosker is Assistant Professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. His research focuses on empirically establishing the role of geography in economic and urban development. Recent projects look at the long-run development of cities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, the role of geography in the origins of the European city system, and the spread of civil war across international borders. His research has been published in the Economic History Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Geography, and Journal of Urban Economics. Ebru Boyar is Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, where she teaches Ottoman and Turkish history. She is also the academic adviser at the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on Ottoman and early Turkish republican social and diplomatic history. Her books include Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans: Empire Lost, Relations Altered (2007) and A Social History of Ottoman Istanbul (2010), co-authored with Kate Fleet. Eltjo Buringh is a researcher at the Centre for Global Economic History at Utrecht University. He tries to unravel the drivers of urbanization, trade and economic development from Roman times to c.1800 in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. He has published in Science, Journal of Economic History, Economic History Review, and Review of Economics and Statistics. His latest book, Medieval Manuscript Production in the Latin West, was published in 2011. Peter Burke is an active practitioner of comparative history. He was Professor of Cultural History, University of Cambridge until his retirement and remains a Fellow of Emmanuel College. His contributions to urban history include Venice and Amsterdam (1974); Antwerp, a Metropolis in Europe (1993); and ‘Imagining Identity in the Early Modern City’, in Christian Emden, Catherine Keen, and David Midgley, eds., Imagining the City (2006), vol.1, 23–38. Xiangming Chen is Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies and Paul Raether Distinguished Professor of Sociology and International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, as well as a Guest Professor in the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. His co-authored and co-edited books include: The World of Cities (2003; Chinese edn., 2005), As Borders Bend (2005), Shanghai Rising (2009; Chinese edn., 2009), and Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience (2012; Chinese edn., 2012). Peter Clark is Emeritus Professor of European Urban History, University of Helsinki and Visiting Professor at Leicester University. He has written or edited numerous books on urban, social, cultural, and environmental history including European Cities and Towns 400–2000 (2009) and (general editor), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain 700–1950 (3 vols., 2000). For 20 years he was Treasurer of the European Association for Urban History. Penelope J. Corfield studies urban, social, and cultural history, as well as approaches to time and history. She is Emeritus Professor at Royal Holloway, London University; and has held visiting posts in Australia, Hungary, Japan, and the USA. She is also Visiting Professor at Leicester University’s Centre for Urban History; and Vice-President of the International Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Publications include The Impact of English Towns, 1700–1800 (1982), Power and the Professions in Britain, 1700–1850 (1995; 1999); Time and the Shape of History (2007); and a collaborative project on Proto-Democracy: London Electoral History, 1700–1850 (2012). For more details, see www.penelopejcorfield.org.uk. Hilde De Weerdt is Reader in Chinese History at King’s College, London where she teaches Chinese and comparative history. Her past and current research focuses on imperial political culture, information technologies, social networks, and intellectual history. Her publications include Competition over Content: Negotiating Standards for the Civil Service Examinations in Imperial China (1127–1276) (2007) and Knowledge and Text–Production in an Age of Print—China, Tenth–Fourteenth Centuries (with Lucille Chia, 2011). She has been engaged in several comparative history projects focused on the medieval period. Howard Dick, an economist and economic historian, is Honorary Professorial Fellow in the Faculty of Business and Commerce at the University of Melbourne and Conjoint Professor in the Faculty of Business and Law at the University of Newcastle (NSW). With Peter J. Rimmer he is co-author of Cities, Transport and Communications: The Integration of Southeast Asia since 1850 (2003), which examines the impact of technological change on South East Asia’s city systems and systems of cities, and also of The City in Southeast Asia (2009), which explores ways of moving beyond the paradigm of the third world city. Felipe Fernández-Armesto teaches at Notre Dame University. He has published widely on global environmental history, urban history, comparative colonial history, Spanish history, maritime history, and the history of cartography. His recent books include Civilizations: Culture, Ambition, and the Transformation of Nature (The Free Press, 2001) and 1492: The Year Our World Began (Bloomsbury, 2010). Henry Fitts graduated from Trinity College in 2012. He started in the Cities program, attended the Megacities of the Yangtze River summer programme in China, and double majored in sociology and urban studies. Bill Freund is Emeritus Professor of Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. His books, including The African Worker and The Making of Contemporary Africa, and numerous shorter contributions, cover a wide range of topics in African and South African history. His The African City: A History was published in 2007. Alan Gilbert is Emeritus Professor at University College, London. He has published extensively on housing, poverty, employment, and urban problems in developing countries and particularly those in Latin America. He has authored or co-authored ten books, edited four others and written more than 150 academic articles. He also acts as adviser to many international institutions including the Inter-American Development Bank and UN-HABITAT. Marjolein ’t Hart is Associate Professor in Economic and Social History at the University of Amsterdam. She has published widely on the history of early modern state formation and revolts. Her recent research interests focus on ecological history and global history. Her major publications include The Making of a Bourgeois State. War, Politics and Finance during the Dutch Revolt (1993), A Financial History of the Netherlands (1997, with Jan Luiten van Zanden and Joost Jonker), and recently Globalization, Environmental Change, and Social History (2010, with Peter Boomgaard). Carola Hein is Professor at Bryn Mawr College (Pennsylvania) in the Growth and Structure of Cities department. Her current research interests include transmission of architectural and urban ideas along international networks, focusing specifically on port cities and the global architecture of oil. With an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship she investigated large-scale urban transformation in Hamburg in international context between 1842 and 2008. Her books include: The Capital of Europe (2004), European Brussels. Whose Capital? Whose City? (2006), Brussels: Perspectives on a European Capital (2007), Rebuilding Urban Japan after 1945 (2003), and Cities, Autonomy and Decentralisation in Japan (2006). Marjatta Hietala was Professor of General History at the University of Tampere 1996–2011 and has also taught in the United States. She has published extensively on urban history, the diffusion of innovations and on the History of Science including Services and Urbanization at the Turn of the Century: The Diffusion of Innovations (1987); Helsinki—The Innovative City. Historical Perspectives (with Marjatta Bell) (2002); and Helsinki Historic Towns Atlas (with Martti Helminen and Merja Lahtinen). She is currently President of the Comité International des Sciences Historiques (since 2010). Ho-fung Hung is Associate Professor of Sociology at The Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Protest with Chinese Characteristics: Demonstration, Riots, and Petitions in Mid-Qing Dynasty (2011) and editor of China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism (2009). His articles have appeared in American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, New Left Review, Review of International Political Economy, Asian Survey, etc. Jussi S. Jauhiainen is Professor of Geography at the University of Turku and Associate Professor of Human Geography at the University of Tartu. His past and current research focuses on urban geography, regional development, and innovation networks, of which he has published extensively. He has been engaged in several research projects on regional development in Finland and Estonia, and the Baltic Sea region. Prashant Kidambi is Senior Lecturer in Colonial Urban History in the School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester. His research explores the interface between British imperialism and the history of modern South Asia. In addition to a number of journal articles and book chapters, Dr Kidambi is the author of a major study of colonial Bombay entitled The Making of an Indian Metropolis: Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bombay, 1890–1920 (2007). Ray Laurence is Professor and Head of the Classical and Archaeological Studies section, University of Kent at Canterbury. He previously held posts at the Universities of Reading and Birmingham. He has taught and published widely on Roman history. He is Chair of the Canterbury Heritage Partnership with Canterbury City Council. Andrew Lees is Distinguished Professor of History at the Camden Campus of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. His research has focused on the intellectual and social history of modern Germany, on German perceptions of urban society in Britain and the United States, and on urban history more generally. His more recent publications include Cities Perceived: Urban Society in European and American Thought, 1820–1940 (1985); Cities, Sin, and Social Reform in Imperial Germany (2002); and, with Lynn Hollen Lees, Cities and the Making of Modern Europe, 1750–1914 (2007). Lynn Hollen Lees is Professor of History and Vice Provost for Faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications pertain to the history of Europe: Exiles of Erin: Irish Migrants in Victorian London (1979); The Making of Urban Europe (with Paul M. Hohenberg, 1994); The Solidarities of Strangers: The English Poor Laws and the People, 1700–1948 (1998); and, with Andrew Lees, Cities and the Making of Modern Europe, 1750–1914 (2007). She is currently working on the social and economic history of British Malaya, on which she has written several articles. Luuk de Ligt studied at the Free University of Amsterdam and Cambridge. In 2002 he became Full Professor of Ancient History at the University of Leiden. He is the author of Fairs and Markets in the Roman Empire (1993) and of Peasants, Citizens and Soldiers (2012). Volumes edited or co-edited by him include Viva Vox Iuris Romani (2002), Roman Rule and Civic Life (2004), and People, Land and Politics (2008). Mario Liverani is Professor of Ancient Near East History at the University of Rome, La Sapienza. Internationally known for his work on Mesopotamia and the Levant. Publications include Myth and Politics in Ancient Near Eastern Historiography (with Z. Bahrani). Leo Lucassen holds the chair of Social and Economic History at Leiden University. He specializes in global migration history, urban history, state formation, and socio-political developments in modern states. Key publications are: The Immigrant Threat. The Integration of Old and New Migrants in Western Europe since 1850 (2005); Migration History in World History. Multidisciplinary Approaches (2010) ed. with Jan Lucassen and Patrick Manning; and Living in the City. Urban Institutions in the Low Countries, 1200–2010 (2012), ed. with Wim Willems. James McClain is Professor of History at Brown University, where he teaches courses on Japan and Korea. His research focuses on urban cultural history. He has received numerous grants from international foundations and has been a visiting scholar at Doshisha University, Keio University, Kyoto University, Tokyo University, Tokoku University, and Yonsei University. His publications include Kanazawa: An Early-Modern Castle Town (1982), Edo and Paris (1997), and Japan: A Modern History (2001). He is currently working on a history of the middle class in Tokyo in the twentieth century. Kevin MacDonald is Professor of African Archaeology at the UCL Institute of Archaeology where he has taught since completing his PhD at Cambridge in 1994. He has worked in Mali for over twenty years on field projects ranging from the Late Stone Age to Historic era, principally in the Gourma, Méma, Haute Vallée, and Segou regions. His main ongoing research focuses on the historical geography and archaeology of Mande statehood west of the Inland Niger Delta. Since 2001, he has also worked on the historical archaeology of the African Diaspora in Louisiana. His books include Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory (with Paul Lane). Augusta McMahon is Senior University Lecturer in Mesopotamian Archaeology and History at the University of Cambridge. She has participated extensively in archaeological fieldwork in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen, at a range of settlements from a Neolithic village through complex urban centres to imperial capitals. Her publications include Settlement Archaeology at Chagar Bazar (2009) and The Early Dynastic to Akkadian Transition (2006). Since 2006, she has been Field Director of the Tell Brak Project, Syria. Her research interests include early urbanism, urban landscapes, prehistoric violent conflict, and human response to climate change. David Mattingly is Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Leicester. He has written extensively on aspects of urbanization in the Roman world. More recently, his research has also extended to the archaeology of early urban societies in the Sahara. He is the author or editor of twenty-two books and a Fellow of the British Academy. Martin V. Melosi is Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen University Professor and Director of the Center for Public History at the University of Houston, Texas. His areas of research interest include the urban environment, energy history, history of technology, and environmental justice. He has been the president of the Urban History Association, the American Society for Environmental History, the Public Works Historical Society, and the National Council on Public History. He is the author or editor of nineteen books. His most recent book is Precious Commodity: Providing Water for America’s Cities (2011). Thomas R. Metcalf, Professor Emeritus of History of the University of California, Berkeley, taught Imperial, Indian, and South Asian history there from 1962 to 2003. His research has focused mainly on the history of the British empire, and the Raj in India, during the nineteenth century. His published works include An Imperial Vision (1989); Ideologies of the Raj (1995); and Imperial Connections: India in the Indian Ocean Arena (2007). He is co-author, with Barbara D. Metcalf, of A Concise History of Modern India (3rd edn., 2012). Robin Osborne is Professor of Ancient History in the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of King’s College and of the British Academy. His work directly relevant to the history of the city includes Demos: The Discovery of Classical Attika (1985), Classical Landscape with Figures: The Ancient Greek City and Its Countryside (1987), and (ed. with B. Cunliffe) Mediterranean Urbanization 800–600 B.C. (2005). Cameron A. Petrie is Lecturer in South Asian and Iranian Archaeology at the University of Cambridge. His past and current research focuses on the rise of socio-economic complexity, the social and economic aspects of state formation, the impact that the growth of states and empires has on subjugated regions, and the relationships between humans and the environment. He is co-editor of the journal Iran, editor and co-author of Sheri Khan Tarakai and Early Village Life in North-West Pakistan (2010), and co-editor and co-author of The Mamasani Archaeological Project Stage One (2nd edn., 2009). Peter J. Rimmer, an economic and human geographer, is Professor Emeritus in the School of Culture, History and Language and Fellow in the Research School of Asian and Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. William T. Rowe is John and Diane Cooke Professor of Chinese History, the Johns Hopkins University. He works on cultural, intellectual, economic, and political histories of China from the 14th to the 20th centuries. He recently completed a book on the consciousness of the governing elite of the Qing dynasty in the 18th century. He is interested in studying China in the comparative context of other world histories. Hannu Salmi is Professor of Cultural History at the University of Turku and Director of the International Institute for Popular Culture (IIPC). His publications include Kadonnut perintö. Näytelmäelokuvan synty Suomessa 1907–1916 [Lost Heritage: Emergence of Finnish Fiction Film, 1907–1916] (2002), Wagner and Wagnerism in Nineteenth-Century Sweden, Finland, and the Baltic Provinces: Reception, Enthusiasm, Cult (2005), Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Cultural History (2008), and Historical Comedy on Screen: Subverting History with Humour (2011). Kristin Stapleton is Director of Asian Studies and Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Her research interests include Chinese and comparative urban administration, the history of Chinese family life, and the place of non-US history in American intellectual life. Her publications include Civilizing Chengdu: Chinese Urban Reform, 1895–1937 (2000) and The Human Tradition in Modern China (2008). She is currently writing a book on the 1931 best-selling novel Jia (Family) by the Chinese New Culture activist and anarchist Ba Jin. N. Steinhardt is Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has taught since 1982. She is author or co-author of Chinese Traditional Architecture (1984), Chinese Imperial City Planning (1990), Liao Architecture (1997), Chinese Architecture (2003), Reader in Traditional Chinese Culture (2005), and Chinese Architecture and the Beaux-Arts (2011), and more than 70 scholarly articles. Steinhardt is currently involved in international collaborations in China, Korea, and Japan. David L. Stone studies the archaeology and history of North Africa in the Roman empire. He has published Leptiminus (Lamta). Report no. 3, the Field Survey (Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplement 87, 2011) and Mortuary Landscapes of North Africa (2007). He has also contributed several articles on the economy, epigraphy, and landscape archaeology of North Africa. His current research focuses on agency theory, imperialism, and the rural landscape of the Roman province of Africa Proconsularis. Dominique Valérian is Professor of Islamic Medieval History at the Université Lumière-Lyon 2 and a member of the CIHAM (Centre interdisciplinaire d’histoire et d’archéologie médiévales). He is a specialist of the medieval Maghreb and the Mediterranean, and his research focuses on port cities and trade networks. He published Bougie, port maghrébin, 1067–1510 (2006) and Les sources italiennes de l’histoire du Maghreb médiéval (2006) and edited Espaces et réseaux en Méditerranée médiévale (with Damien Coulon and Christophe Picard, 2 vols., 2007–2010) and Islamisation et arabisation de l’Occident musulman, VIIe–XIIe siècle (2011). Ilja Van Damme is a postdoctoral research member of the Centre for Urban History, Antwerp and appointed postdoctoral fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO-Flanders). He has published on issues related to urban development in the Low Countries from the 17th to the 20th century, and studies the history of changing consumer preferences, shopping, and commodity exchange. Mercedes Volait is CNRS Research Professor at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris, where she heads the unit devoted to architecture and antiquarianism in the modern Mediterranean. Her current research focuses on the intersections of architecture, knowledge, and heritage in nineteenth-century Cairo. Her publications include: Urbanism, Imported or Exported? (2003, co-edited with Joe Nasr), Architectes et architectures de l’Egypte moderne (1830–1950) (2005), Fous du Caire: Architectes, excentriques et amateurs d’art en Egypte (1867–1914) (2009). She currently chairs the European COST network ‘European architecture beyond Europe (19th–20th centuries)’. Paul Waley is a senior lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leeds. He writes on the history of Tokyo as well as on contemporary issues in the urban geography of Japan and East Asia. His research has focused in particular on urban change in the periphery of Tokyo. Recent publications include ‘Distinctive patterns of industrial Urbanization in modern Tokyo, c. 1880–1930’ (Journal of Historical Geography, 2009, vol. 35, no. 3). He co-edited Japanese Capitals in Historical Perspective: Place, Power and Memory in Kyoto, Edo and Tokyo (2003). Andrew Wallace-Hadrill is Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; previously Director of the British School at Rome. He has written extensively on Pompeii and Augustan Rome. In 1994 he was awarded the James R. Wiseman Award for his Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994). Anne Winter lectures on early modern and urban history at the Vrije Universiteit, Brussels and is Director of the research team Historical Research into Urban Transformation Processes (HOST). Her research focuses on social-economic problems of the early modern period and the nineteenth century in an internationally comparative perspective. Important publications include Migrants and Urban Change: Newcomers to Antwerp, 1760–1860 (2009) and Gated Communities? Regulating Migration in Early Modern Cities, with Bert De Munck (2012). Jan Luiten van Zanden has been Professor in Economic History at the University of Utrecht since 1992. He has carried out extensive research on global economic history. He recently published Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective, 1000–1800 (2009). Shaohua Zhan is a doctoral researcher at the Johns Hopkins University, and previously worked as an assistant research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His research has covered a range of issues including rural development, labor migration, social policy, historical-comparative sociology, and world-systems analysis. His dissertation deals with the issues of the industrial revolution in China in history and at present. IMAGE PERMISSIONS REGIONAL MAPS The Regional Maps at the start of each part of the book are principally intended as a guide to the location of urban centres referred to in the chapters. The problems of fragile population data, the extended time periods, and differences between regions mean that the categorization is imperfect; also note that city names change over time. The maps are not comprehensive nor are they designed as a geography lesson (thus regional and state boundaries are omitted). Cities in the Regional Maps for Parts I and II are mainly based on data from authors with additional reference to specialist maps. Cities in the Regional Maps for Part III have been mostly ranked according to the population data for c.2000 derived from the UN World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision. Cities that had passed the 1 million line by 2005 were included. In a few cases data were checked against national statistical series. Location data are from Perry-Castañeda Collection, University of Texas/CIA, when available, and otherwise mainly from Google Maps. Mediterranean Europe location data are partly from The Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, edited by Richard Talbert (Princeton University Press, 2000). PLATES We are grateful to copyright holders for giving permission for publication of the following: Plates 4.1 © David Mattingly;. 4.2 © Kevin MacDonald; 5.1 and 5.2 © J. M. Kenoyer/Harappa.com, courtesy Department of Archaeology and Museums, Govt. of Pakistan; 11. 1 and 11.2 © Ray Laurence; 12.1 © Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak, History Department, University of New York; 13.1 and 13.2 from Nicolas de Fer, Tables des forces de l’Europe (1723), reproduced with permission from the University of Antwerp, Preciosa Library; 14.1 and 14.2 © Dominique Valérian; 14.3 © Jack and Barbara Sosiak, Spring City, PA 19475; and the Jack and Barbara Sosiak Collection, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania (with thanks to John Pollack); 15.1 and 15.2 © Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies, Newnham College, Cambridge; 16.1 © Palace Museum, Beijing; 18.1 © ‘Ochanomizu’: from Edo meisho zue by Gesshin Sait; with the permission of the Early Modern Digital Library at the National Diet Library, Japan; 24.1 Author Matteo Pagano. Civitate Orbis Terrarum by Braun et Hogenberg, 1572. wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cairo_map1549_pagano.jpg; 24.2 Reproduced from the digital collection of the National Archives of Japan; 24.3 © Istanbul University Library; 25.1 in public domain. Reproduced by and with the permission of the Paul Robeson Library, Camden Campus, Rutgers University; 25.2 © Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesit z & Art Resource Inc. New York; 27.1 in public domain; 28.1 © United Church of Canada Archives, Toronto, 98.083P/25N, Picture of a typical street in Chengtu, China before street widening; 28.2 © Zhang Chunhai; 30.1 George Grantham Bain collection, Library of Congress in 1948. In public domain; 30.2 VtTN: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chennai_Skyline_Anna_Salai.jpg; 33.1 from Tschadseeflug by Walter Mittelholzer (1894–1937), published in 1932 in Switzerland (publisher: Verlag Schweizer Aero-Revue, Zürich). In public domain because copyright expired; 33.2 Schreibkraft, wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nairobi_Kibera_01.JPG; 39.1 in public domain; 39.2 Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, © 1939, renewed 1967 Columbia Picture Industries. Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures; 39.3. Taxi Driver, © 1976, renewed 2004, Columbia Picture Industries, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Courtesy of Columbia Pictures; 40.1 the editor and author of Ch.40 have made all due diligent efforts to locate the copyright owner of this image without outcome. The owner is requested to contact the editor; 41.1 © Tuca Vieira; 41.2 © Ratoola Kundu; 43.1 © Peter Clark; 43.2 © Carola Hein; 44.1 Myrabella ://en.wiki-pedia.org/wiki/File:Piazza_Navona_1.jpg; 44.2 © Museo Thyssen/Bornemisza, Madrid. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION PETER CLARK IN 2008, for the first time, the majority of the world’s inhabitants lived in cities rather than the countryside. The world has become, in some measure, truly urban. No less striking is the proliferation of large cities. Currently (2011) there are nearly 500 cities and urban agglomerations with over a million inhabitants, and 26 mega-cities exceeding 10 million, compared to only one city (Edo, modern Tokyo) with about a million people in the early 18th century.1 How has this critical transition come about? How did city systems evolve and interact in the past? What was the role of cities within societies and how did this compare between regions? Why were some urban communities more successful, more creative than others? What did it mean to be a town dweller in Ancient Greece, Meiji Japan, or in industrial and postindustrial Europe? How have urban patterns in the past impacted on those of the contemporary world? In this Handbook we try to answer these questions through the first detailed analysis of the evolution of major urban systems in the world from early times to the present.2 There is no idea of offering an encyclopaedia of urban developments, even less a conspectus of individual city histories. Rather the strategy is two fold: first, to present case studies of the main trends in the principal urban systems; second, to offer a comparative analysis of some key variables—power, population and migration, representations, environment, commercial networking, and so on—that help to explicate, distinguish, and interconnect those systems and networks. Developments and processes are examined over three broad periods: the early era from the origins of cities to around 600 CE; the pre-modern era up to the 19th century; and the modern and contemporary period, from the 19th century to the present time. Given the complexity and specificity of area developments, the chronological analysis cannot be perfectly synchronized. This introduction will first discuss the value and problems of a comparative approach to the history of cities and a number of the core themes and questions that need to be explored; and then set out a brief schematic overview of the main trends in urban development from early times to the present, with an introduction to the chapters that follow. What is clear is that while recent times have seen a growing degree of convergence between urban regions, urban systems, and urban structures across the world, the disparities and differentiation are still very striking. Thus, whereas the Americas, Japan, Europe, and Australasia have urbanization rates well above 70 per cent, the rates in Africa and Asia including the Middle East lag behind. Again the distribution of the urban population living in mega-cities is highly variable—much greater in Asia and the Americas than in Europe or Africa. In terms of the standard of urban life the variations are no less striking. Of the top 30 cities offering the best quality of life in 2007, seven were in Europe, six in North America, and none in Asia or Latin America; again many of the world’s leading tourist destinations are located in Europe. On the other hand, almost all the urban agglomerations whose territory exceeds 5,000 km2—decentralized cities often vulnerable to poor civic governance and acute social and environmental problems—are to be found in Asia and Latin America.3 To comprehend these variations and contrasts, we need to understand where cities, urban networks, and urban society have come from: the historic rollercoaster of urban growth, the evolution of urban hierarchies, and the way a range of key factors have shaped the formation of cities and urban networks. We need to be able to compare developments in China, Japan, India, and the Middle East, as well as in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. There is no teleological agenda, no reductionist idea that cities develop along the same trajectory. There are many different types of city, many different urban inventions, most notably in the early period; by later times there may have been greater urban confluence. However, it is the fundamental contention of this work that the comparative study of the world’s urban communities in the past is a prerequisite for comprehending contemporary and future urban development on a global basis. COMPARATIVE APPROACHES TO URBAN HISTORY We are confronted by many challenges in a comparative approach—related to literature, definition, and conceptualization. First, literature. One of the paradoxes of urban studies, particularly urban history, is that 40 or 50 years ago there was lively interest in comparative research. One early influence came from Robert Park and the Chicago School which tried in the 1920s to construct a general model of the city, but their comparative analysis was superficial and largely geared to American cities. A more important impetus came from the French Annales School which after World War II was increasingly interested in urban studies. Following the example of Fernand Braudel’s La Méditerranée et le Monde Méditerranéen a l’époque de Philippe II (1949) which compared developments across southern Europe, North Africa, and (fleetingly) parts of the Near East, a series of French area studies shed comparative light on Middle Eastern and European cities with incidental illumination of Indian cities.4 Another major stimulus for comparative research derived from the English translation of Max Weber’s The City in 1958. First published in 1921 Weber’s study argued strongly for the distinctive civic and communal identity of the European city rooted in its medieval Christian heritage with significant levels of urban autonomy—an ‘urban community in the full meaning of the word’; elsewhere in the Middle East and Asia communal identity and action was variable and incomplete without the distinctive civic burgher leadership of European towns.5 Though his argument has provoked continuing debate (see in particular below, Chs. 9, 12, 21, 23), Weber’s work gave important momentum to comparative work on Islamic and Chinese cities. A third influence in the 1950s and 1960s was the exciting research being done by social anthropologists on, for instance, contemporary American and African towns. This encouraged historians to highlight possible similarities between the cities of early modern Europe and present day urban structures and developments.6 One of the most ambitious attempts to construct a model of the pre-modern city on a global, cross-temporal basis was Gideon Sjoberg’s The Preindustrial City, Past and Present published in 1960.7 By the 1980s, however, comparative studies had started to run out of steam—for at least two reasons. One was the post-modernist reaction against broad comparative histories, so-called meta-narratives, as a kind of colonialist construct, an imperialist project. Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) argued that such an approach distorted our understanding of the Middle East and its world (though he says little about cities as such). Subsequent writers were even more critical of comparative area studies.8 Another reason was the extraordinary upsurge from the 1980s of specialist literatures, boosted by the growth of research institutes, specialist journals, and the like. Within Europe, for instance, we recognize a flowering of research by French, German, British, and other national schools. Driven increasingly by the pressures of the academic employment market and public research policies, work of this generation has frequently taken the form of highly specific, close-focused studies.9 Even more problematic has been the way that national research communities have formulated their own distinct agendas of research prioritizing particular periods and themes. Trying to undertake comparative analysis across Europe is thus fraught with difficulty, certain urban topics being completely ignored in some countries but lavishly explored in others. A similar explosion of specialist output on the history of cities has occurred in many countries across the world. The challenge is how to direct this upsurge of specialist literature into a new comparative analysis of cities. Certainly the last decade or so has seen a revived appetite for comparative urban studies, fed in part by growing interest in globalization and the role of metropolitan cities in that process, and pioneered by sociologists and geographers.10 More recently research on the pre-history of globalization, in which Asianists and economic historians have been influential, has opened up crucial discussions, not just about the so-called Great Divergence between Asia and the West in the late 18th and 19th centuries, but about global living standards, manufacturing, marketing, and much else: in this analysis cities have steadily moved to centre stage. Other challenges confront the student of global urbanization. Major difficulties are associated with defining what is meant by a city or town. Weber defined cities largely in institutional or communal terms. The German geographer Walter Christaller in the 1930s created a Central Place theory that used the provision of service functions for other settlements as the key criterion for urbanism; work that influenced researchers on China as well as Europe. Demographers like Josiah Russell and Kingsley Davis writing in the post-war era deployed population thresholds to define cities.11 Such simplicity can be treacherously misleading. Given the great diversity of cities and towns across the world and the important demographic, economic, and other changes between the ancient period and present day, it would seem sensible to adopt a non-prescriptive framework, recognizing the multi-functionality of urban communities over time. On this basis we might expect cities and towns, usually but not invariably, to have a relatively dense population concentration; a range of economic functions; complex social and political structures (but not necessarily institutional ones); a cultural influence extending beyond community borders; and a distinctive built environment—often distinguished by important public buildings and public spaces. But not all these definitional markers would be present at the same time. This kind of catholic definitional matrix avoids the rigid urban modelling that the post-colonialist critics of early comparative studies excoriated. It is not a perfect solution. Contemporary sprawling, mega-city regions do not fit easily into this picture, though at their centre there is often a multi-functional core on this model. One final set of conceptual issues needs to be raised. As we noted, we are interested in examining and understanding the di