by Joel Kotkin
The Mongols thoroughly terrified their enemies but also spurred trade by providing an unprecedented degree of security over vast expanses of the Asian continent. Under their rule, one Muslim commentator noted, “a man might have journeyed from the land of sunrise to the land of sunset with a golden platter on his head without suffering the least violence from anyone.” 22
The Mongol spirit of religious tolerance also promoted widening commercial and intellectual contacts. Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths flourished in relative harmony. Mosques, hospitals, and bazaars, administered by Muslim qadis, or judges, operated in Guangzhou and Zhangzhou under Islamic commercial and civil law. Many Muslims, and even Europeans like the Polos, rose in the service of the Mongol emperor. 23
The growth of cross-cultural trade and contacts also accounted for much of the wealth that accumulated in the house of the great Khan. Although far from the coastal trading cities, the great capital and other major interior cities consumed vast quantities of the luxury goods of India, the Near East, and even Africa. “To this city,” Marco Polo wrote of Kublai Khan’s capital, “everything that is rare and valuable from all parts of the world finds its way.”24
CHAPTER NINE
OPPORTUNITY LOST
At the time of the Polos and, later, ibn Battuta, it would have been rational to assume that the future of cities and civilization lay in the East. Yet by 1600, the urban dynamism of China and Dar al-Islam—so evident from the docks and warehouses of Zhangzhou to the Qasaba of Cairo— was beginning to dissipate.
THE PROBLEM OF PROSPERITY
Why did the cities of Dar al-Islam and China squander this opportunity? Part of the problem lay in the very prosperity that so impressed European visitors to the East. Viewed from the perspective of a ruler in Beijing, Delhi, Istanbul, or Cairo in the sixteenth century, European cities would have seemed insignificant and backward. Chinese and Muslim technology, drugs, and tools of all kinds were, for the most part, far more sophisticated than those produced in Europe. The agricultural systems of the East, notably those in China, with its highly evolved irrigation and canal systems, also outproduced those in the West.
The leading cities of China and Dar al-Islam appear to have surpassed their European counterparts in both population and architectural magnificence. The Moguls, descendants of the Mongols who seized control of India in 1526, ruled from a capital, Delhi, that an Islamic historian described as “a garden of Eden that is populated.” Istanbul, the Islamic city that rested on the remains of vanquished Constantinople, possessed more riches and housed more people than any in Europe.1
The magnificence of Eastern capitals further validated long-standing attitudes of superiority. Typical were the attitudes of the Chinese imperial court: The farther one got from the capital city, they believed, one passed from the royal domains to that of princes, then to a “pacification zone,” followed by the realm of “half-civilized barbarians,” and, finally, the region of “cultureless savagery.” Europe, at the far end of the periphery, seemed barely worthy of consideration. 2
Elite opinion within Dar al-Islam frequently held equally dismissive attitudes toward foreigners, particularly Europeans. A survey of trade, written in Baghdad in the ninth century, mentioned Byzantium, Central Asia, India, and China as having valuable items to offer; the cities of Northern and Western Europe, in contrast, were useful only as sources of selected minerals or slaves. Remarkably, these attitudes did not much change until well into the eighteenth century, when European military and technical superiority was already becoming manifest.3
THE LIMITS OF AUTOCRACY
The predominance of autocratic power further slowed the evolution of Asiatic and Islamic cities. Even magnificent cities such as Córdoba in Spain or Chang’an in China all but collapsed when the ruling house was overturned. 4 Autocratic structure also made the Oriental cities particularly vulnerable to what ibn Khaldun described as the natural “life span” of regimes. Most ruling regimes in the Islamic world, he argued, were derived from virile nomadic peoples who had captured cities to plunder their riches. In the first generation, these nomads—early Arabs, Maghrebian tribes, Turks—often exhibited the high energy and imagination necessary for the building of great empires and cities.
The longer they tasted the luxurious life in long-settled places, the Arab scholar observed, the sooner these rulers inevitably lost both their martial spirit and moral resolve. Pampered offspring generations removed from life on horseback, he suggested, could not be expected to retain the virtues of their rougher-hewn ancestors.
When new nomadic invaders arrived on the scene, the results could prove catastrophic for even the most splendid cities. This was the fate of Baghdad in 1258 when Mongol invaders overwhelmed the forces of the enfeebled Abbasid caliphate. They not only executed the last caliph, along with much of his family, but massacred a large part of the populace. Much of the city was left in ruins. Baghdad was never again “the crossroads of the world.”5
Ibn Khaldun’s notions, drawn largely on examples in the Muslim world, could also apply to Chinese dynasties. At their origins, the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch’in each displayed considerable martial virtue and a capacity for effective rule. Yet over time, the regimes became increasingly weak and corrupt. Legions of privileged bureaucrats, aristocrats, and idle soldiers siphoned off the wealth of empire. This inevitably left the dynastic capitals vulnerable to new nomadic invasions.6
THE SUPPRESSION OF ENTREPRENEURS
This process of successive enfeeblement is not uniqe to Asian or Islamic societies. Aristocratic classes in Europe also often grew weaker after generations in power. Yet in contrast with the East, Europe’s rising urban merchant and artisan classes provided a vital alternative capable of invigorating the urban economy and often forcing changes in regime.
No such surge of middle-class power took place in Japan, Korea, China, India, or Egypt.7 Everywhere, autocratic regimes undermined the incentive for entrepreneurs through arbitrary taxation, confiscations, and favoritism shown toward court favorites.8 “Attacks on people’s property,” ibn Khaldun noted, “remove the incentive to acquire and gain property.”9
Commercially as well as politically, the capital cities were turning away from the world. Under the influence of neo-Confucianist scholars, China curtailed its bold explorations, to the detriment of its coastal cities. 10 Such decisions ultimately would leave oceanic commerce in the hands of European traders based in cities thousands of miles away.11
EUROPE’S REEMERGENCE
These debilitating trends in the East developed just as a new capitalist spirit was rising in European cities, first in Italy and later in Great Britain and the Netherlands.12 By the late sixteenth century, some of these cities had become as wealthy as those in the East—and the wind was at their backs.
The Chinese, Indian, and Muslim regimes had little knowledge of, or even much interest in, these developments. Wealthy and powerful, secure in their systems, those ruling the great cities of North Africa, the Near East, India, or China did not generally feel threatened when the adventurers from the West appeared in their coastal towns. After all, these were simply traders from a relatively backward part of the world, producing little valued in either the bazaars or the palaces.
Even the Europeans’ high-masted, tiny ships seemed unimpressive. Yet soon these little vessels appeared with alarming frequency, becoming progressively faster and capable of ever longer trips. By the end of the seventeenth century, Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch merchants had gradually seized control of trade with the spice-rich lands of Southeast Asia, capturing as well the lucrative commerce in African slaves, ivory, and gold.
No longer critical as trade entrepôts, cities like Cairo and Istanbul began to weaken commercially.13 Even coffee, originally an export of the Near East to the West, was being transported to Ottoman bazaars on Dutch ships stocked with beans grown in their Javan colonies. 14
The Westerners even began to establish a powerful presence in
the East. Small commercial settlements on the peripheries of China, India, and Africa evolved slowly into large, commercially vibrant cities. Gradually, the great interior Islamic and Chinese capitals, still magnificent in aspect, began to lose control of even their own domestic trade. Political power and finally cultural influence also would soon slip from their grasp. One era of urban civilization was drawing to a close, and a new one, dominated by Europeans and their descendants, was about to begin.
PART FOUR
WESTERN CITIES REASSERT THEIR PRIMACY
CHAPTER TEN
EUROPE’S URBAN RENAISSANCE
In the years following the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe possessed one powerful cohesive force—the Catholic Church. The Christian clergy, whose presence now sustained Rome in its stunted form, had always been ambivalent at best toward the old classical urban society. Yet in the midst of the collapse of the empire, it was the church that nurtured the first glimmerings of Europe’s urban renaissance.
THE SACRED ROOTS OF THE RENAISSANCE
The church contributed in both cultural and political spheres. Christian monks preserved the written languages, the ancient texts, and the traditions of intellectual rigor critical to Europe’s urban revival.1 Equally important, in many of the last surviving towns, diocesan structures served as the basis of urban boundaries and privileges; the bishops, whether in Paris, Rome, or elsewhere in Italy, most often offered the only recognized form of authority.2
A full resurgence of urban life required more than ecclesiastical blessings. Cities, as always, needed both a secure periphery and a vital economy. The church lacked the force to fight off invaders, whether Viking, heathen, or Islamic; its own theology was also often diffident, if not outright hostile, toward the commercial values upon which an urban economy depends.
THE RETURN OF THE CITY-STATES
Unable to rely fully on the church, and without strong empires capable of ensuring their security, Europe’s beleaguered urban communities were forced to rely on their own resources for survival. With marauding knights and brigands roaming the countryside, the first priority lay in erecting a defensive perimeter. An eighth-century description of Verona, in Italy, tells of a city “protected by thick walls and surrounded by forty-eight gleaming towers.” In the years before the introduction of cannons, strong city defenses could resist even the fiercest invaders.
Thus began a new golden age for independent European city-states. Merchants and artisans in places like northern Italy financed their own defensive armed forces.3 In a world where imperial boundaries were vague and often meaningless, cities constituted the one reliably defined space.4
Safe behind their walls, urban merchants and artisans enjoyed an independence unimaginable in the cities of the East. There was no emperor, caliph, or sultan to restrain the private property rights or the guild privileges of the commercial classes.5 In the West, the autonomous city and nascent capitalism grew together. “The love of gain,” writes Henri Pirenne, “was allied, in them, with local patriotism.” 6
Italy emerged as the focal point for the renewal of urbanism. Blessed with an urban infrastructure left over by the Romans, Italy in the early years of the second millennium became terra di citta, or “the land of cities.”7
The First Crusade in 1095 exposed these Italian cities to the model presented by their more advanced counterparts in the Islamic world. Ultimately unable to dominate the Muslims militarily, traders from cities such as Venice, Genoa, and Pisa procured spices, silks, and sophisticated manufactures from their erstwhile enemies.8 Inland cities like Florence and Padua participated in this commercial expansion not only by manufacturing textiles, but also by financing trade, all this at a time when usury remained largely unacceptable among both Muslims and Christians.9
The slow but steady decline of Constantinople opened new opportunities for the Italian city-states. Constantinople would remain Christendom’s largest city for centuries, but the old imperial center now lacked the energy to protect its own periphery.10 By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the capital city was losing control of the eastern Mediterranean, giving the Italian cities ever greater control of the critical trade routes to the East.
The greatness of these cities did not lie in their girth—even by the fourteenth century, Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan, or Bologna were home to no more than one hundred thousand souls. Instead, the Renaissance cities’ greatest assets lay in their powerful commercial spirit, their willingness to embrace the classical urban tradition, and, decisively, the creativity to improve upon it.
The Italian cities eagerly embraced the long-abandoned classical notions of civic nationalism. They drew on sources such as Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, a Roman architect from the time of Augustus, whose work was rediscovered early in the fifteenth century. Renaissance city builders enthusiastically devoured Pollio’s notions of the radial concentric city, with a defined core or forum and residential areas extending outward toward the city walls. 11
Not content merely to copy old traditions, Renaissance urban visionaries such as Leon Battista Alberti, Antonio Averlino, and Leonardo da Vinci advanced the old Roman art of urban infrastructure, developing new techniques for the construction of defensive fortifications and canals. Filled with pride in their accomplishments, the Italian urban centers— like their classical counterparts—vied with one another in fashioning the most arresting urban landscapes.
VENICE: “JEWEL BOX OF THE WORLD”
In this competition among cities, none exceeded Venice. With its magnificent Grand Canal, Loggia, and Rialto, the city became, as the historian Jacob Burckhardt put it, “the jewel box of the world.”12
Equally important, Venice also presaged the ultimate shape of the modern city, the greatness of which stems primarily from its economic power. Venice paid for its opulence not through imperial conquest or by its position as a sacred center. Instead, its wealth—like that of Phoenicia— derived almost entirely from its commercial prowess.
The city’s origins certainly were plebeian. No dominant religious or imperial figure forged the way to Venice’s ascent to greatness. Its own founding myth had little of saints or heroes; the first Venetians were said to be Roman refugees who hid amid the area’s marshy islands during a barbarian assault in 421.
From this small band of exiles, the Venetians developed their own urban culture, with each island parish serving as a neighborhood. Their fronts facing the sea, their backs to the mouth of the Po River, the Venetians developed skills as expert fishermen, traders, and seafarers.
Venice’s outward thrust initially relied on close ties with Byzantium. Links to the great city gave Venice unique access to the riches of the Levant at a time when most Europeans were largely isolated. Eventually, the Venetians chafed at imperial restrictions on their activities, which were interfering with their profits. Determined to go their own way, they established their own independent republic around 1000.
Essentially an elected oligopoly, the republic was run largely as a business concern, quick to take advantage of trade anywhere profits could be made.13 The Venetians developed a reputation for being self-serving in both business and politics. They traded with the Muslims when most of Christendom engaged them in bitter armed combat. In 1204, they took full advantage of the seizure of Byzantium by the Crusaders to further consolidate their hold on the eastern Mediterranean.14 Venetian ships eventually controlled Europe’s trade not only with the Arabs, but, frequently through Islamic and Jewish middlemen, also with India, South Asia, and China.
Not content to be merely middlemen or financiers, the Venetians also developed an elaborate production base, further enhancing the city’s economy. Long before the notion of specialized “industrial districts” became widespread elsewhere in the West, the Venetians broke up their neighborhoods along distinct functional lines, with specific residential and industrial communities for shipbuilding, munitions, and glassmaking. By the fourteenth century, more than sixteen thousand people worked in these varied in
dustries, making Venice not only the West’s trader and banker, but its workshop as well.15
By the early sixteenth century, this combination of commerce and industry had transformed Venice into by far the wealthiest city in Europe. 16 More remarkable still was the city’s distinctly cosmopolitan character. At a time when most of Europe was darkened by intolerance and violence toward strangers, Venice offered foreigners a “haven of comparative security.” 17 Merchants from Germany, Jews and Greek Christians from the Levant, and other outsiders crowded Venice’s streets, bringing goods, ideas, and techniques to the city.18
FLORENCE AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN URBAN POLITICS
The other Italian cities vied with Venice in the competition for money, talent, and industrial supremacy. Florence challenged Venetian supremacy in everything from banking to the textile trade. The Genoese battled for control of Mediterranean commerce. Smaller cities such as Prato concentrated on dominating specific industrial niches.19
The city-states were governed in many ways, more often than not despotically. Rival factions among the guilds, merchants, aristocrats, and clergy vied for control of the cities, often overturning one another with frequency. Yet the break with imperial and ecclesiastical traditions was clear; once again the city remained the supreme value, the basis for all political decisions. Regulations, particularly in reference to commerce, were designed for the economic benefit of the city, or its most powerful citizens, even if they violated traditional concepts of canon law.20
