Читать книгу Global Political Cities - Kent E. Calder - Страница 29

Within the integrated transcontinental trading network of the thirteenth century, which excluded the Americas, Africa, and Australasia but was otherwise remarkably global, a handful of cities assumed particular prominence. Among them were Bruges and Ghent in Flanders; Venice and Genoa in Italy; Constantinople, Baghdad, and Cairo in the Middle East; Samarkand and Bukhara in Central Asia; Calicut in India; and Canton in China.

These cosmopolitan cities of the Middle Ages had varied functions in the nascent transnational trading network of the period. Bruges and Ghent were industrial as well as trading cities—among the earliest large-scale textile producers in the world.¹¹ Samarkand, Bukhara, and Baghdad, not to mention Lubeck and Riga, were, by contrast, commercial centers, some of which, such as London, gradually became financial centers as well.

A handful of these cosmopolitan trading cities were so influential globally, and so activist in the political realm, that they could arguably qualify as the world’s first global political cities.¹² Most prominent among these trading centers were the maritime republics of the Mediterranean basin, headed by Venice and Genoa, and the sometime Chinese capital cities, Xi’an and Hangzhou. Venice, a dynamic trading and cultural center that enjoyed self-government for more than a thousand years, was especially active on the world stage, with a powerful navy and an active commercial diplomacy extending as far as China.¹³ The traders of Venice developed transnational networks that included both Catholic popes and Mongol sovereigns, such as Kublai Khan, among their membership.¹⁴

In contrast to global political cities of the twenty-first century, these cosmopolitan centers of the Middle Ages had few extremely long-distance linkages with other major world centers. Their direct contacts were mainly regional. Significant integration did exist in the global system, especially between 1250 and 1350, but that cohesion was mediated through regional hubs, such as Venice, Constantinople, Cairo, Calicut, Samarkand, and Malacca. It was precisely this coordinating role that gave global importance to these strategic trading hubs, which linked otherwise unconnected regions of the known world.¹⁵

The maritime republics of the Italian and Dalmatian Middle Ages, such as Venice and Dubrovnik, provide good examples of how political-economic circumstance can further the rise of cities in world affairs. Virtually the entire Mediterranean basin, of course, was part of the Roman Empire until the beginning of the fifth century AD. As the empire began to collapse, however, a political vacuum was created that was intensified and prolonged by the chaos surrounding barbarian invasions.

Amid this chaos, some communities, such as Venice, which was established in lagoons near the Adriatic shore by refugees from those invasions, were able to retain coherence and autonomy. The isolated geographical location of this outpost at the head of the Adriatic Sea aided its detachment from regional struggles, allowing the city to slowly gain economic strength in isolation. Initially, Venice paid allegiance to the Eastern Roman Empire in Constantinople, gaining trading privileges (chrysobulls, or Golden Bulls) throughout the Empire in return for supporting Byzantine resistance to Norman and Turkish incursions.

These trading dispensations allowed Venice to gain further economic strength, which the city judiciously converted first into military power and then into political autonomy. Venice also gained initial credibility and influence across Christendom by providing logistical and naval support for the Crusades, although often in notably self-interested fashion. During the infamous Fourth Crusade, for example, the Venetians turned their weapons against Christian Constantinople itself, the heart of a Byzantine Empire that had once been the Venetian protector—sacking that majestic capital rather than proceeding to the Holy Land to confront its Muslim occupiers.¹⁶ The Venetian occupation of Constantinople enriched Venice itself, as well as the adventurers who sacked the city. Yet the resulting Latin Empire in the East (1204–1261) quickly disappeared from history. And the whole self-interested episode, while enriching Venice, fatally weakened both the Byzantine Empire and the momentum of the crusader movement.

Meanwhile, pragmatic, amoral Venice was becoming the most prosperous city in all Europe—a position it had clearly reached by the late thirteenth century, following its betrayal of Byzantium. Apart from Paris, Venice was also the largest city on the continent and a major political-military power in the Mediterranean. Crete and Cyprus, as well as much of the Dalmatian and Istrian coasts of the Adriatic, were under its direct rule. Venice likewise controlled trading settlements (known as colonies) as far as Alexandria and Crimea. At the peak of its power and wealth, the city-state employed thirty-six thousand sailors operating thirty-three hundred ships and dominated commerce all across the eastern Mediterranean, as well as western reaches of the Silk Road to China.

Venice was by no means the only city along the Mediterranean littoral evolving during the Middle Ages from obscure city standing within the Roman Empire to powerful city-state positioning on the international stage of the day. The story of its sister maritime republics along the Italian and Dalmatian coast of the Middle Ages is quite varied, reflecting the different lifespans of the constituent city-states. Apart from Venice, Genoa and Ragusa also had long lives, remaining independent across most of the Middle Ages and up to the Napoleonic Wars. Pisa and Ancona kept their autonomy until the Renaissance, while less fortunate Amalfi and Gaeta lost their independence during the twelfth century, at the hands of the Normans.

In each Mediterranean case, a common causality prevailed. A geopolitical vacuum following the collapse of the Roman Empire, coupled with the economic opportunity afforded by the expansion of East-West commerce (including the Crusades), led to city-state prosperity. Conversely, war, revolution, and the related rise of nation-states—through the French Revolution, in particular—brought this medieval flowering of civic autonomy and prominence on the international stage to an end.

Meanwhile, a similar dynamic was playing out in northern Europe, also resulting from a revival of economic activity in the chaotic, decentralized political environment that had followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a network of cities known as the Hanseatic League gradually began emerging, to facilitate trade across the Baltic and North Sea regions.¹⁷ The city of Lubeck in northern Germany was the key member, with other confederates spread broadly across northern Europe, from Novgorod in the east to London in the west.

All the members of the Hanseatic League were cities, and most of them were politically independent. The member cities typically possessed armies of their own and had commercial vessels that were armed, when necessary, against both pirates and, on occasion, hostile cities and nation-states.¹⁸ Although the members of the league were thus individual cities—in some cases not formally sovereign—they did play security roles, particularly in combination, that resembled to a remarkable degree the current activities of nation-states. When circumstances warranted, the league could, for example, mobilize an army of up to three hundred thousand men to defend its trading routes.¹⁹

The Hanseatic League played an important role in the revival of long-distance trade across northern Europe, as the region began a slow recovery from the Dark Ages following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Individual members developed specializations, such as shipbuilding, fishing, trapping, textile manufacture, and credit provision, that established the economic rationale for long-distance commerce. The Order of the Teutonic Knights, for example, had a monopoly on amber trade and exported the lustrous stones from Riga and Tallinn in the Baltics to Lubeck and Bruges, where craftsmen turned them into luxurious rosaries.²⁰ Timber, wax, furs, rye, and wheat, together with textiles, were among the other major products traded.²¹