Urban World History: An Economic and Geographical Perspective

Chapter 13 - Poles and Route s through History

CHAPTER 13 Poles and Routes through History© 2009 – Presses de l’Université du Québec Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Québec, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél.: (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.ca Tiré de: Urban World History, Luc-Normand Tellier, ISBN 978-2-7605-2209-1 • G1588 Tous droits de reproduction, de traduction et d’adaptation réservés G1588_ch13_EP4.indd 521 G1588_ch13_EP4.indd 521 10/02/09 13:41:54 10/02/09 13:41:54 © 2009 – Presses de l’Université du Québec Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Québec, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél.: (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.ca Tiré de: Urban World History, Luc-Normand Tellier, ISBN 978-2-7605-2209-1 • G1588 Tous droits de reproduction, de traduction et d’adaptation réservés G1588_ch13_EP4.indd 522 G1588_ch13_EP4.indd 522 10/02/09 13:41:54 10/02/09 13:41:54 So far, world history has been presented in this book through the poles, routes, and trajectories that marked it. The time has come to look at the evolution of the poles and routes in the light of world history. The words city, agglomeration, metropolis, urban system, road, route, and corridor refer to realities that have evolved through time. Let us try to see how by attempting to characterize the poles and routes which have prevailed at various stages of the history of urbanization. Talking about a pre-urban city of 6,000 inhabitants is manifestly not tantamount to evoking a modern city of 30 million. The concept of city is so flexible that, originally, the boundary between it and the concept of village was as fuzzy as is today the boundary between the concepts of great city and region (the notion of “metropolitan area” is an expression of this confusion). Equally obvious is that a modern city of 100,000 inhabitants completely differs from a city of the same size that existed 3,000 years ago. Cities have metamorphosed through history. Their location, functions, and form have profoundly changed, as did the communication routes. This is the question that will now be addressed. s THE EVOLUTION OF CITY LOCATIONS The pre-urban cities were located upstream, like Çatalhöyük and Jarmo, or in desert zones, like Jericho. On the other hand, the first urban cities were fluvial cities in Mesopotamia (Eridu, Ur, Uruk), in the Indus Valley (Harappa, Mohenjo-Daro, Kalibangan), as well as in the Chinese Loess Plateau (ChanganXi ’an, Luoyang, Kaifeng). The first urban cities were also frequently cities of canals, like the Sumerian cities of Eridu, Ur, and Uruk or the city of Chengdu in the Chinese Red Basin. However, in pre-Columbian civilizations, the fluvial cities were very rare. There the first cities were located in the mountains at high altitudes, as in the cases of Teotihuacan, Cuzco, and Machu Picchu, in the jungle, as for Uxmal, or in the plain, as in the case of Palenque.© 2009 – Presses de l’Université du Québec Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Québec, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél.: (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.ca Tiré de: Urban World History, Luc-Normand Tellier, ISBN 978-2-7605-2209-1 • G1588 Tous droits de reproduction, de traduction et d’adaptation réservés G1588_ch13_EP4.indd 523 G1588_ch13_EP4.indd 523 10/02/09 13:41:54 10/02/09 13:41:54 524 Urban World History© 2009 – Presses de l’Université du Québec Édifice Le Delta I, 2875, boul. Laurier, bureau 450, Québec, Québec G1V 2M2 • Tél.: (418) 657-4399 – www.puq.ca Tiré de: Urban World History, Luc-Normand Tellier, ISBN 978-2-7605-2209-1 • G1588 Tous droits de reproduction, de traduction et d’adaptation réservés Pre-urban cities served most of the time as shelters, refuges, or watersupply centers, as in the case of the oasis-cities. With fluvial cities, the commercial functions progressively prevailed, and more the modes of transportation and irrigation improved the more fluvial cities developed downstream. That evolution continued till the appearance of true maritime cities. Little by little, the latter established their growing ascendancy west of the Persian Gulf, where the Phoenician, Greek, and Italian cities of the Mediterranean Sea took over from the fluvial cities of Mesopotamia, as well as in China, where fluvial cities from the Loess...