Commercializing and Globalizing Cities

IA 310 - Mapping World Cities

Overview

  • Interurban trade within large regions common in history
  • Some very long-distance overland trade via caravans (Silk Road) for milennia
  • Major transformation of role of cities with early globalization/colonialism
  • Spanish Imperial areas in Latin America become major sources of silver to Europe and China
  • Emerging credit and financial markets give European cities increasing financial power starting in 1600s
  • Growing trade and colonial footprints reshape power relations driving urban geography

The expansion of water transport

“Silk Road”

Really, lots of different connections, both overland and by sea that tracked goods back and forth between major population centers in China and Roman Empire

Main Silk Road route (Case, Wikimedia Commons, 2010)

“Maritime Silk Road”

Major oceanic Silk Road routes (Wikimedia Commons)

The Grand Canal (circa 600 CE)

The Grand Canal (Lincoln, An urban history of China, 2021, p. 51)

Changing urban patterns

  • Around 1200, China may have had an urbanization rate around 10-12%, not equaled in Europe until 1500s1
  • Hangzhou, port city and capital of Southern Song dynasty, may have had 1.5 million people
  • Zhang He’s treasure fleet missions in the early 1400s span the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean

Statue of Zheng He in Malaysia (Wikimedia Commons))

Zheng He’s voyages

Map of Zheng He’s voyages (Wikimedia Commons)

European colonial shipping networks

Location records from European ship logs in the CLIWOC database (Visual Capitalist, 2023)

Improvements in navigation

Mercator world map, 1569 (Wikimedia Commons)

The Spanish Empire, silver, and the first global cities

Potosi

  • Mined using forced indigenous labor starting in 15451
  • May have produced half the silver in the world from 1575-1635
  • Silver helped bankroll Spanish Empire
  • One of the only things that Europeans had that Chinese buyers felt was worth trading for
  • China converting to a silver-based monetary system boosted demand; as much as 33-50% of silver from the Americas may have wound up in China2

Potosi, in contemporary Bolivia (Wikimedia Commons)

Potosi

“Cerro Rico and the Imperial Municipality of Potosí” (Miguel de Barrio, 1758)

Silver in Spain

Estimated price changes for basic consumption goods in early modern Toledo (Agudo, Social Science History, 2019)

Manila galleons1

  • Trade shipments from Manila to Aculpulco, 1565-1865
  • Primary route for Asian goods in the Spanish Empire
  • Silver brought to exchange for these goods from Aculpulco
  • San Jose, shipwrecked in 1694, was carrying cargo valued at approximately 1.5% of the GDP of the entire Spanish Empire
  • Due to overloading and late departures, about 1/5 of the ships leaving Manila were shipwrecked

Manila galleons route.

Militarized port cities

  • Generally sought protected bay for loading and unloading cargo, defensible both via ocean and land
  • Divided into fortified European settlements and broader areas where indigenous and non-European merchant inhabitants lived
  • European colonial authorities restricted Chinese merchant access and fomented massacres of overseas Chinese populations (Batavia/Jakarta in 1740, Manila in 1603/1764)1
  • Frequently would segregate spaces and differentiate allowable behaviors among different ethnic groups

Cartegena, Atlantic Coast of Colombia

18th Century map of Cartegena (Pinzon & Gardella, Planning Perspectives, 2023)

Acapulco, Pacific Coast of Mexico

Inset map of Acapulco port, 1740 (David Rumsey Map Collection).

Manila

  • Very rich and diverse entrepot city for Asian commerce with the Spanish Empire
  • About 40,000 people by 1620, only about 6% Spanish, with about 50% Filipino and 40% Chinese1

Detail of a Manila map, 1734 (Wikimedia Commons).

Life in Manila

“Between late October and late April each year, ships from Japan brought cargoes of finely woven silks, decorated screens rendered in gilt, folding fans and lacquerware, finely wrought armor, lances and swords, delicately worked boxes and trinkets, teakettles and wooden bathtubs, skylarks, quality wheat flour, salted meats, tuna, and fresh pears. From Malacca, Bengal, and Cochin, Portuguese ships arrived laden with treasures—spices, precious jewels and gemstones, a diversity of textiles from thin cotton muslins and gauzes to soft wools, Turkish and Persian tapestries and carpets, and a rich assortment of fruit preserves, almonds, and wines. Filipinos sought out the boats from Siam, Cambodia, and Borneo, which carried benzoin, camphor, rhinoceros products (horn, hide, hoof, and teeth), intricately woven palm mats, sago, black-glazed jars, and slaves. The majority of ships, of course, were from China. Usually making two visits each year that were timed to take advantage of the monsoon winds, Chinese ships arrived in squadrons of thirty to forty, packed with exquisite things and rarities: luxurious fabrics—in addition to the softest silks were brocades, taffeta, damasks, satins, and velvets; musk and ivory; pearls, rubies, and sapphires; fresh and preserved oranges, peaches, pears, and chestnuts; copper and cast-iron utensils; cargoes of live animals, including different types of fowl, horses, mules, donkeys, buffaloes, and birds with the ability to talk and perform tricks.”1

Other European colonial cities

Malacca

Fortified areas in Malacca (GAHTC).

Batavia (now Jakarta)

Batavia in 1681 (GAHTC).

Rio de Janiero, the largest slave trading port

Region around Rio de Janiero (GAHTC).

Rio de Janiero, the city

Rio de Janiero map (GAHTC).

Europe’s unique(ish) urbanization trajectory

Semi-obligatory settlement scaling slide

Tax revenue scaling in Tudor England, 1524/1525 (Cesaretti, et al., Historical Methods, 2020)

Europe’s economic center of gravity shifts north

European city wages (Lopezlosa & Piquero Zarauz, European Review of Economic History, 2020)

European urbanization indicators

Urbanization in Europe and China

European urbanization indicators

Urbanization in Europe and Middle East/North Africa

Emergence of European financial centers

  • Double-entry accounting, bills of credit, insurance, and joint stock companies start making the construction of financial networks more feasible
  • Antwerp emerges as a major financial center, giving loans to the Spanish government, in particular, in the early 1500s1
  • Dutch forces cut off Antwerp from its port in 15852
  • Genoa, Italy, takes on major role as lender to the Spanish crown for about a century as Antwerp declines3
  • Much of Antwerp’s merchant capital moved to Amsterdam, which develops a sophisticated and stable silver-based currency system4
  • London begins to develop corporate finance as a result of emerging trades of English East India Company (founded 1601) stock5

European population shifts north

Overview

  • Interurban trade within large regions common in history
  • Some very long-distance overland trade via caravans (Silk Road) for milennia
  • Major transformation of role of cities with early globalization/colonialism
  • Spanish Imperial areas in Latin America become major sources of silver to Europe and China
  • Emerging credit and financial markets give European cities increasing financial power starting in 1600s
  • Growing trade and colonial footprints reshape power relations driving urban geography