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The city has had a rich and tumultuous history, evolving from a powerful political entity in ancient times to its modern role as a local hub of tourism and commerce. Sovereign City examines the nature of the city's ever-changing status, as Geoffrey Parker investigates the city-state as a geopolitical form and explores its distinctive niche within different types of states. This probing work analyzes the various forms of city-states throughout world history, from the Greek polis, which Plato and Aristotle considered the perfect type of state, to the Roman imperial capital, to the political role of the city in early Islamic society. Parker also considers the revival of the European city-state in late medieval and Renaissance Italy and northern Europe, which culminated in the Hanseatic League, and how the rise of the nation-state contributed to the decline of the city-state.Sovereign City is a wide-ranging and vigorous examination that seeks to understand the role of the city-state from the birth of Western civilization through its re-emergence at the dawn of the twenty-first century in the Far East and Islamic world.
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Sovereign City The City-State through History geoffrey parker s ov e r e i g n c i t y globalities Series editor: Jeremy Black globalities is a series which reinterprets world history in a concise yet thoughtful way, looking at major issues over large time-spans and political spaces; such issues can be political, ecological, scientific, technological or intellectual. Rather than adopting a narrow chronological or geographical approach, books in the series are conceptual in focus yet present an array of historical data to justify their arguments. They often involve a multi-disciplinary approach, juxtaposing different subject-areas such as economics and religion or literature and politics. In the same series Why Wars Happen Jeremy Black Mining in World History Martin Lynch A History of Language Steven Roger Fischer Landscape and History c. 1500–2000 Ian D. Whyte The Nemesis of Power Harald Kleinschmidt Geopolitics and Globalization in the Twentieth Century Brian W. Blouet Monarchies 1000–2000 W. M. Spellman A History of Writing Steven Roger Fischer The Global Financial System 1750–2000 Larry Allen China to Chinatown Chinese Food in the West J.A.G. Roberts A History of Reading Steven Roger Fischer Cinemas of the World James Chapman Navies in Modern World History Lawrence Sondhaus Sovereign City The City-State through History geoffrey parker reaktion books Published by Reaktion Books Ltd 79 Farringdon Road, London ec1m 3ju, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2004 Copyright © Geoffrey Parker 2004 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, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers. Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Parker, Geoffrey Sovereign city : the city-state ancient and modern. (Globalities) 1. City-states - History I. Title 321’.06 isbn 1 86189 219 5 Contents 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Nation, Empire and City: A Geopolitical Typology of States 7 The Birth of the City-State 17 The Ancient Greek Polis 28 The Hellenistic Foundations 47 No Mean City: Rome from Urbs to Imperium 57 Serenissima: Venice and the City-States of the Adriatic 78 Bishops, Dukes and Republics: The City-States of Renaissance Italy 92 Princes, Bishops and Republics: Cities and City-States in Russia 116 The German Hanse 132 The Comunidades of Castile 151 City, Province and Nation in the Netherlands 161 Third Rome versus City Republics: Moscow, Novgorod and