Cities in World History Chapter 7 - Economy PDF

----ECONOMY---The onset of urbanization led to an intensification of: Agricultural production An expansion of long-distance trade The formation of a managerial class The creation of a workforce producing specialized crafts The contraction of population in the territory surrounding the cities The eco...

----ECONOMY---The onset of urbanization led to an intensification of: Agricultural production An expansion of long-distance trade The formation of a managerial class The creation of a workforce producing specialized crafts The contraction of population in the territory surrounding the cities The economic power of the ruling class tended to increase, but at the same time new opportunities to acquire wealth were created When early cities regressed, as many did, one can often detect a reversal of the process of economic growth in their decline. The chapter first considers the ideas which have formed the basis of previous scholarship. It then shifts to an examination of the results of new scientific research and the parallel development of new theoretical approaches, both of which are making a profound impact on the study of early cities today. It explores these in relation to five areas of importance to the economy: stratification the countryside prestige goods and long-distance trade specialist production; and decline. The definition of the economy adopted is ‘the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption for the provisioning of society’. Three types of primary sources inform us about the economy of early cities: written texts frequently appeared at about the same time as early cities, as we can see in the discussions of Mesopotamia, the Mediterranean, and China in this volume (Chs. 2, 3, and 6), and as is also true of Egypt, the Maya, and other societies Written texts provide much information about the administration of the: economy taxation staple crops although they tend to privilege the perspective of elites The material remains of cities themselves attest trade, Labour, and local production and consumption Environmental evidence survives in the landscape around early cities, or in excavated remains, and can be used to study ecology, climate, and agricultural practices It is helpful to adopt a worldwide comparative focus in discussing the economy of early cities. Comparison can identify similarities in the origins and functions of cities, assess what links them to and distinguishes them from small towns and villages, and posit reasons for their growth and decline Equally, the comparative approach permits the identification of commonalities among cities which may not share the same culture or be located in a similar region, and the establishment of the range of variation among them What constitutes an ‘early city’? As many of the chapters in this volume propose, the definition of ‘city’ must not be absolute, but starts from the premise that individual cases vary and do not demonstrate all of the characteristic features Generally speaking, it was a place with a population density well above nearby settlements. Its residents included upper classes and workers not directly involved in food production, although a large percentage of its other inhabitants may have been engaged in agricultural activities The performance of non-agricultural functions distinguished a city from the surrounding countryside in the urban center: leaders made political and administrative decisions religious rituals were performed feasts were held long-distance trade took place specialized commodities were manufactured ideology was disseminated When the city-state Uruk reached a size of 100 hectares (3200–3000 BCE), agricultural surpluses from the surrounding countryside supported the production of specialized ceramics and the provision of services Temples, and those who managed them, emerged as the largest entities in society, owning land, directing workers, as well as collecting, storing, and redistributing the surplus. ----THEORIES ABOUT THE ECONOMY OF EARLY CITIES---Karl Wittfogel’s ‘hydraulic hypothesis’ is perhaps the best-known theory about the economic growth of ancient cities. Wittfogel posited the emergence of cities and stratified societies in locations where low annual rainfall required people to control sources of water to produce dependable harvests (he named Ancient Hawaii, Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India, Mesoamerica, Inka Peru, Byzantium, and Tsarist Russia among these). Wittfogel thought that irrigation must have begun in small-scale activities carried out by farmers, but once successful was exploited by rulers, who organized the mass labour necessary to build large-scale irrigation systems and then imposed taxes, from which they profited Large irrigation works generated agricultural surpluses which gave rise to major cities through population growth, the formation of armies, and the employment of specialized craftspeople As the surpluses grew, rulers became ‘despotic’ and ‘totalitarian’ The historian Mikhail Rostovtzeff put forth the view that ancient and modern cities were similar in his analysis of the classical world Underscoring the colonialist conclusions present in Weber’s work, Rostovtzeff regarded Roman cities as aiming ‘at the largest possible comfort for their inhabitants; they looked like some of our modern Western cities rather than like the cities and villages of the East at the present day’. He attributed their wealth to features of capitalism such as: world commerce a market for cheap goods the decentralization of industry influential men who amassed huge sums of money Rostovtzeff believed the Roman empire had achieved a high degree of prosperity in the 2nd century CE because its economy operated in a rational manner This position has been described as a ‘formalist’ or ‘modernist’ one Karl Polanyi took a different view, commonly regarded as a ‘substantivist’ or ‘minimalist’ one Noting that in early cities land was often owned by institutions or groups rather than private individuals, and that merchant middle classes were very rare Polanyi envisioned a powerful role for the government in the administration of land and trade He thought the government redistributed to those in need and closely controlled the supply of luxury goods, while reciprocal or redistributive transactions were more significant than market exchange Polanyi is associated with a Marxist perspective because he regarded the ancient economy as ‘embedded’ in social relationships and institutions In this view, when past peoples acted, they aimed to create, maintain, or adjust relationships, and not to seek profit The previous theories were influenced by modern political thought, and relied heavily on evidence found in ancient texts. In many parts of the world, however, cities originated at the same time as, or earlier than, the first writing, making archaeological material especially important for consideration of urban origins When Gordon Childe compared archaeological data for ancient societies across the world, he isolated ten traits of early cities: large size and population workers not engaged in full-time food production taxation of agricultural surpluses monumental public buildings a ruling class writing counting systems artisans importation of scarce raw materials a political and economic community Childe’s ‘urban revolution’ theory regarded technological advances and the development of irrigation as the likely stimuli for urbanism. Bruce Trigger and Michael Smith have sought to deploy both textual and archaeological data in a much broader fashion Trigger has gathered information about: political administration class systems agricultural regimes tax and tribute systems urban morphology craft specialization trade religious practices beliefs legal systems writing systems of seven ‘early civilizations’ (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Shang China, the Maya, Aztec Mexico, the Inka, and the Yoruba) Through in-depth analysis of each feature in all seven civilizations, he concluded that, in politics, economy, and culture, there were many similarities among early civilizations, but equally many idiosyncratic traits Some of the similarities Trigger noted were: the presence of either of two forms of political organization (city-states or territorial states) a tendency for leaders to accumulate enormous surpluses of wealth an adherence to religious beliefs that required leaders to expend vast sums on temples, ceremonies, sacrifices, and cult paraphernalia in order to regulate supernatural forces to their advantage Differences emerged in agricultural practices, since each civilization adapted to its own local conditions. Likewise, the population density of early civilizations exhibited much variation, and no specific density of population was found to spark urbanization Trigger’s conclusions provide grounds for rejecting overly deterministic neo-evolutionary views that similar adaptive human behaviours led to the rise of cities throughout the world They also counter the relativist position that each culture (or ‘early city’) arose on its own terms and therefore cannot be compared Trigger has instead shown that patterns do not fit neatly into a single explanatory framework, but nonetheless have much in common Michael Smith, in a review of ‘ancient state economies’, also emphasized variation For him, the key differences were the type of political organization and the extent of ‘commercialization’ in the economy, rather than the size of the state. He identified four types of political organization: ‘weak states’ city states territorial states empires He also identified four commercial levels: uncommercialized low pre-capitalist intermediate pre-capitalist advanced pre-capitalist UNCOMMERCIALIZED Uncommercialized economies lack money, marketplaces, and independent merchants; they may have full-time craft specialists and long-distance traders working for the state. Government control is strong in economies with a low commercial level; they do not have private ownership of land, but they may have merchants and marketplaces INTERMEDIATE PRE-CAPITALIST Intermediate commercialization can be characterized by the presence of money, markets, and merchants, but the absence of private property or control of Labour ADVANCED PRE-CAPITALIST It demonstrates widespread markets for goods, extensive private land ownership, and institutions such as banking and credit By correlating political type and commercial level, Smith was able to graph the spectrum of complexity of economic activity in early cities At the low end, one finds the Indus Valley and the Maya. At the opposite end are the Assyrian empire, the Roman empire, and Classical Greek city-states. In between, lie Ancient Egypt, the Shang Dynasty of China, early Mesopotamian city-states, Teotihuacán, and the Inka empire Smith’s concept of commercialization seems to take two important steps forward. 1. First, recognizing the impossibility of separating economic matters from political ones in the study of early states, it offers a means of considering them together 2. Second, it compares states to each other, rather than to ‘primitive’ or ‘modern’ economies, as formalist and substantivist positions did. ----CITIES AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION---The specific trajectory from hunter-gatherer band to village to city varied across the globe, but at key stages, economic factors, along with social and environmental ones, lay behind a series of ‘revolutions’ in human lifestyles that accompanied the rise of cities Central to the urban revolution is the development of stratified societies Early cities emerged in many parts of the world at approximately the same time as exaggerated social stratification, which we may define as a combination of economic, social, and political inequality Ernest Gellner’s model of social structure in agrarian societies suits early cities, which drew their subsistence and primary source of wealth from agricultural surpluses (Fig. 7.1). The model depicts ‘stratified, horizontally segregated layers of military, administrative, clerical and sometimes commercial ruling classes’ positioned above ‘laterally insulated communities of agricultural producers’ Stratification = The arrangement or classification of something into different groups. Recent studies have shown it to exist especially among hunter-gatherers in ‘transegalitarian’ societies, in which competitive behaviour in relation to the production and deployment of prestige goods and food surpluses was practised. Most commentators agree that stratification increased after people began to cultivate wild plants, bringing them back to campsites, and selecting those best suited for harvest each season. As people grew to depend on domesticated plants for a larger portion of their diet, and also hunted and captured herd animals which could be tamed and domesticated, they occupied campsites for longer periods during the year, and these became the first permanent villages. The first farmers could support larger populations in their villages by exploiting land more intensively, and therefore became more powerful than smaller hunter-gatherer bands. Over time, some members of agricultural villages managed to produce more food than they needed either due to advantageous landholdings, more intensive cultivation techniques, or favourable harvests. In this way they accumulated a surplus of food—the basic form of wealth in both early villages and early cities. They exchanged this surplus with other community members in return for goods or labour, or they gained prestige by offering food at feasts; over time they gained power, while other members of the community became dependent on them. Anthropological studies indicate that farming villages developed into early cities in a variety of ways, yet at the core of each was a small ruling class which had put into practice means of acquiring agricultural surpluses to support the growing population of a city. As the leaders of these communities gained more control, they could subordinate smaller, neighbouring villages, at times in warfare, and further increase population ----CITIES AND COUNTRYSIDES----Since farmers in the countryside created much of the wealth of early cities through production of agricultural surpluses, the appropriation of those surpluses from the countryside was an essential ingredient for control of ‘economic power’ Trigger’s cross-cultural examination has suggested that ruling classes in early cities appropriated a portion of the total agricultural surplus which varied from about one tenth to onefifth. In Shang China (1600–1100 BCE), farmers handed over one-ninth of their crop to the king, regional governor or local official. They were also required to perform one month of labour (corvée) once the harvest was complete. Ancient Egypt had similar requirements for taxes and labour; its most famous monuments, the pyramids, were built by corvée labourers, as were irrigation channels along the Nile. Mesopotamians paid taxes or rents on harvests, and taxes on traded goods, and also had labour requirements. The Inka, on the other hand, collected agricultural surpluses entirely through a corvée system. In addition to working their own lands, Inka subjects were required to cultivate plots belonging to the state, to tend herds of llamas and alpacas, to perform military service, to build roads and bridges, or to manufacture textiles, pottery, and other goods. Collection of basic agricultural products which could be used to pay bureaucrats, skilled craftspeople, unskilled labourers, armies, and to nourish the rulers themselves, is often called ‘staple finance’. That rulers needed to appropriate agricultural surpluses is clear, but it is not obvious why the inhabitants of early cities tolerated the imposition of taxes, rents, and labour. In return for these appropriations, the rulers of early cities provided ‘services’, generally in the form of urban administration, protection during warfare, and intercession with the divine on behalf of the community. The last of these was the most important, when inhabitants of early cities regarded the rulers as ‘serving’ the community, they were willing to hand over their surpluses Reporting on one of the earliest systematic surveys, Robert Adams wrote that ‘Mesopotamian cities grew at the expense of smaller rural settlements in their hinterlands’. By this, he observed that the process of urbanization was accompanied by a contemporary, and opposing, ‘ruralization’. A sampling of results from Mesopotamia, the Basin of Mexico, Central Italy, and Peru shows that the process was common to several early cities. Changing patterns of settlement and the imposition of taxes, rents, and labour requirements had consequences for the lives of both urban and rural inhabitants. Many of the new urban residents continued to work as farmers, almost certainly journeying farther to the fields. In their spare time, they might find opportunities for part-time work: - construction - weaving - ceramics - basketry A few would develop skills in jewellery, sculpture, and metalworking which they could use on a full-time basis. Others, perhaps by virtue of wealth or family connections, received positions as administrative officials, such as: scribe tax-collector overseer property manager military commander For the population remaining in the countryside, there were different consequences. Greater productivity in the rural landscape was often required, and the result was frequently changes in patterns of landholding. It was not unusual for land to be removed from collective control and placed under the control of important ‘interest groups’ in private, temple, or state properties. Rural landholdings near to a city appear to have undergone an ‘intensification’ of production, even as populations declined. Farmers may have worked land more thoroughly, through additional weeding, irrigation, ploughing, or fertilization, to maximize harvests close to the town, where transport costs were low. Land at a greater distance may have been exploited for grazing animals, since meat could be transported to urban markets ‘on the hoof’. Such a process is considered ‘extensification’. In this way, the formation of a city led to the development of its antithesis—a countryside. ----CITIES, LONG-DISTANCE TRADE, AND PRESTIGE ECONOMIES---Many early cities were located in environments well-suited to the production of staple foods, but less well-endowed with valuable raw materials. To obtain scarce commodities, they needed to trade Phoenicians sought metal ores from Spain and Italy The Maya obtained obsidian from Central Mexico Egypt acquired gold and ebony from Nubia and cedar from Lebanon Without detailed textual documentation of the sort present in Mesopotamia, it is difficult to ascertain that trade in other early cities was market-oriented. The position of merchants in Aztec society is strongly suggestive of their ability to profit from trade, but Egypt and the Inka appear to have controlled the activities of merchants more closely Trade introduced both finished products and raw materials to cities ‘Wealth finance’ refers to the procurement and manufacture of prestigious luxury items, often via long-distance trade and by skilled artisans. By employing artisans in urban workshops, rulers controlled the processing of valuable imported materials into ‘prestige’ objects which could be tailored to send messages appropriate to their own societies. Long-distance trade in prestige goods was common among many early cities, including those at all four of Smith’s stages of commercialization, but acquisition of staple foods via trade was restricted to advanced stages of commercialization Imperial Rome, with a population near 1 million for four centuries, is perhaps the best-known example. Rome’s authorities developed a wide-ranging system to produce, extract, and import first grain, and later also wine, olive oil, and pork; it provided these to urban residents for free. The supply originated in several regions of the empire, chief among them Egypt, Spain, North Africa, and southern Italy. The system spawned development of infrastructure within the empire (roads, ports, ships), as well as networks of officials and associations of merchants. While the system flourished, economic investment at provincial settlements contributing the staples was high ----CITIES AND SPECIALIST PRODUCERS---Specialist craftspeople, the producers of metalwork, pottery, basketry, jewellery, textiles, and other items, provide information about the complexity of economic activities in early cities Childe argued that cities could develop when farmers produced sufficient surplus to support fulltime resident specialists whose products in turn would be more sophisticated as they attained skills in sculpture, painting, or metalworking that surpassed part-time workers in earlier societies Reconsideration has been directed to issues Cathy Costin categorized as the ‘scale’, ‘context’, ‘concentration’, and ‘intensity’ of production. Scale describes the organization and size of facilities for production, which can range from small (household) to large (factory). Context considers the economic affiliation of producers: do they work independently, or are they attached to patrons (as often in the case of specialists making prestige goods for rulers)? ‘Concentration’ refers to the loci of production ‘Intensity’ to the amount of time craft workers laboured As our understanding of specialist production has been revised, studies have moved from rigid typologies (household/workshop/factory) to more flexible ones that acknowledge that production could be organized in a great variety of ways Concentration, intensity, scale, and context are variable, and therefore not simply to be identified, but also to be explained. One example of variability among early cities relates to the location of workshops for production. Archaeological survey at Mashkan-shapir, a southern Mesopotamian city of the early 2nd millennium BCE, identified a street across the centre of town along which copper fragments and slag were found; it appeared to be the locus of copper workshops. Pottery and lapidary production was concentrated in the south-eastern area of the settlement, within the city walls. In early cities of the Indus Valley, evidence suggests a more dispersed pattern of production A common factor in these studies is the preference for locating workshops for prestige goods in the urban centre close to the palace, and the desire to place polluting industries on the edges of settlements, but not so far from the urban centre that transport was difficult or expensive, or that goods could not be controlled ----THE DECLINE OF CITIES---The economies of early cities could indeed be fragile. Urban rulers depended on continuous extraction of resources from farmers to maintain their positions (as discussed above). But such systems were by no means lasting, and they were vulnerable to contestations of authority from exploited subjects Three Important Theories on Societal Collapse 1. Environmental Conditions 2. Moral decay and outside attacks 3. Social Theory: Elite Competition It has recently become a trendy topic, perhaps due to the instability, whether real or perceived, of early 21st century economies. Jared Diamond has proposed that, in the face of collapse, the key to success (or failure) is addressing (or neglecting) worsening environmental conditions. Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee have objected, arguing that societies rarely collapse utterly. Instead, according to Yoffee, ‘the most frequent result of the collapse of ancient states was the eventual rise of new states that were often consciously modeled on the state that had done the collapsing’. Words Stratification - the arrangement or classification of something into different groups Provision - the action of providing or supplying something for use. Idiosyncratic - relating to idiosyncrasy; peculiar or individual. Despotic - tyrannical.