Cities, Empire & History
Going all the way back to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and the water kingdoms of earliest history, the emergence of a city is the signature of a civilization’s “Golden Age”. The Great Cities in History, a compilation of short essays edited by John Julius Norwich, is an eye-opening romp through human history structured chronologically around the rise and fall (… and rise) of our great cities. Each essay is only three to five pages and is epoch (ancient … medieval … modern worlds) specific. This means that a few of the great cities in our history like Paris, London and Istanbul are treated more than once while many are there only in a ruin or your imagination. The majority are still alive and kicking, some kicking more than others. The essays are packed with good information but can be very inconsistent depending on who wrote it. In the end, it is a book that delivers a fresh synthesis of world history, one easily absorbed over lunches, on trains or in planes. There are many take home lessons one can take from each essay and the book as a whole. The following are a few of the broad and basic lessons I took from reading it. Certainly my notes will find their way on to my wall of history as this book is an elegantly structured version of my much more haphazard cut and paste effort.
WALLS … Our President’s obsession with his “Wall” is nothing new in history. The Great Wall of China is only one of many walls built by emperors around their cities and along their insecure frontiers. Constantinople remained the center of two empires (Byzantine & Ottoman) for 1600 years. Her walls were breached only once – in 1453 as one empire replaced another. City after city, ranging from ancient Damascus to medieval Paris, assumes its place in the list of great cities only after building a wall. Today the rich buy homes and surround them with walls and gates. Affluence around the world is retreating into the world of gated communities. Schools are building walls to make students and teachers feel safer. As the digital world breaks down and shrinks the old world, walls increasingly mark the emerging new world. Britain voted to step within its own walls, retreating from the open office landscape of the EU. Israel is walling off her Palestinian neighbors. Eastern Europe is replacing the Iron Curtain with a circle of walls to keep out both real and imagined immigrants. The history of our cities, of our empires and city-states, is a history of walls.
WATER … of the 65 cities covered in this book, only ONE, Samarkand, was built inland away from the coast or a principle waterway. And even Samarkand arose because not only of Tamerlane’s obsession and wealth but its location on the original Silk Road. For the other 64 cities, water brought people, prosperity, invaders, plague and change. No wonder that 40% of today’s population live within 40 miles of a sea or an ocean. If one throws in rivers and lakes, that number gets close to 70%. It made sense during 3000 years of environmental stability. With oceans predicted to rise at least three to four feet by 2100 (far from a worst case), our relationship with the remaining great cities of the world will likely change as radically in 100 years as it did over the previous 3000 years. Recorded history began with man harnessing water to build agricultural empires. Ironically, recorded history’s next greatest and most terrifying chapter may be about man once again trying to harness water in order to survive.
THE MASTER BUILDER … so often a great city was the inspiration of one man. Justinian turned Constantinople into an imperial city and finished the great walls that Constantine had begun 200 years earlier. Later, as the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Suleiman the Magnificent would build the mosques and markets that define Istanbul skyline to this day. Augustus built most of ancient Rome and set the precedent for imperial architectural grandeur. Yongle the great emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) laid the foundations of todays Beijing and began building its Imperial City. Herod rebuilt much of ancient Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Tamerlane built Samarkand within his lifetime while nobody was more responsible for a great city than Peter the Great. St. Petersburg would rise from the swamps, consume thousands of lives in its construction and would remain for 400 years Russia’s gateway to the West. Christopher Wren led a society of England’s best and brightest after the fire of 1651 to layout the glories of today’s Central London. The list is long and is an interesting footnote to the “great man” theory of history.
MELTING POTS… While walls were built to keep people out, the most dynamic cities were melting pots of wildly different peoples. The more diverse the population, the more successful the city. America has been just another, though on a grand scale, version of the melting pot. The ancient cities of Damascus, Cordoba, Baghdad, Constantinople and Alexandria are only a few examples of the commercial and cultural explosion that comes with open gates and tolerant policies. That very same diversity, unfortunately, too often becomes a magnate for violent reactionary forces. The wasting away of a great city once the society begins shunning immigrants, expelling the Jews or other vital minorities, is a pattern repeated throughout this book. Krakow disappeared as a cultural center of Europe once the Jews were expelled. London’s reemergence after the Great Fire of 1651 was, in no small part, the result of Cromwell encouraging the Jews to return. Cordoba and Lisbon’s brief golden ages ended after the Moors and Jews were driven out of Iberia. Given the fact that no great American city grew without the circulatory rush of immigrants only underscores this historical truth.
EMPIRES … this is a politically inflammatory word in today’s world. It smacks of white privilege, minority exploitation and economic violence – all true, by the way. However, the world was built on the back of empires. Within the broad expanse of an empire is the security required for the proliferation of trade and ideas. Within an empire’s reach are its great cities. Some of the lesser know facts of empire jump out at you as you read this book. The Polish Empire (1330-1550) was the real thing. It was a cultural and economic powerhouse covering much of Eastern Europe as remains a lost golden age in the collective Polish imagination. While we all know bits and pieces about the great Venetian city state, the stunning fact is that it remained an unconquered Italian city for 1000 years. The Arab or Muslim Empire (circa 650 – 1258) came out of nowhere in 610 AD and within 100 years stretched from Egypt to Spain to Turkey to India and even the steppes of China. While it would slowly splinter into separate caliphates, it (and China) were the cultural and economic center of the world until the Mongol invasions in the 13th century. This 600-year empire goes a long way toward understanding Islam’s resistance to the Eurocentric world that replaced it. Persia or rather today’s Iran has been the center of THREE empires. The modern American Empire has lasted less than half as long as Persia’s shortest lived version. No wonder they have so little respect for our presence in their world. Empires can be havens for tolerance and peace even with the burdens of taxation and war. The Ottoman Empire contained multitudes living in relative harmony. Baghdad and Damascus had huge thriving Jewish sectors while Jewish advisors ran much of the sprawling empire’s bureaucracy. Today, most everything within its now shattered boundaries has been ravaged by internecine warfare. The relatively small but wealthy Byzantine Empire (330-1453) centered in Constantinople remained a barrier behind which the backward remains of Roman Europe could slowly assimilate immigrants and consolidate into the aggressive city states and nations that would dominate the world for 500 years. Without the protective hinge of the Byzantine Empire, the vast armies of the East may have written a different history for Europe and, by extension, the Americas.
As a final ode to this informative book, here is a LIST of today’s countries that have been at the center of at least one empire during the course of human history. This list is from this book only and therefore is not exhaustive. It is illuminating however. Empires leave a people with a sense of lost glory and are often a part of what defines a people and binds them – for good and for bad reasons. They are a critical part of a society’s shared DNA.
Egypt ... Syria ... Peru ... France
Iran ... China ... Spain ... Britain
Iraq ... Sudan ... Portugal ... Sweden
Tunisia ... Palestine ... Turkey ... Poland
Sicily ... Italy ... Cambodia ... Nigeria
Greece ... Mexico ... Uzbekistan ... Mali
India ... Japan ... Russia ... Germany
Austria ... Hungary ... Netherlands
United States
The Great Cities in History
John Jules Norwich
341 pages
2009