City-state

The term “city-state” refers to an independent, sovereign state consisting of an autonomous city and its attached or surrounding territory. This includes all of its dependencies, such as villages, land, and estates. The modern concept of the city-state was born in ancient Greece as a socioeconomic and political structure surrounded by agricultural settlements. Known as the polis and considered the ideal sociopolitical form, its economy was based on land ownership. Only citizens of the polis could own land, giving rise to an oligarchy, a political system in which most of the resources in the land were in the hands of a small, elite group of people. The rise of powerful estates in Europe in the Middle Ages transformed the model of the city-state, which evolved in a variety of ways to include monarchies, republics, centralized states, federations, and myriad other forms of political and economic organizational structures across Europe.

Background

Although political entities throughout the world have been considered city-states, the term itself is most commonly associated with the cities of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Asia Minor and of medieval Italy. Those city-states consisted of independent sovereign cities and their surrounding territories and served as hubs of political, economic, and cultural life.

Originally, the term “city-state” was used to describe the political entities that arose during the classical period of Greek civilization. The city-state was known in ancient Greece as the polis. At the time, the territory of a polis was often relatively small. However, city-states soon developed throughout the Greek peninsula, the Aegean Islands, and parts of Asia, accumulating more territory as they established themselves as strong social and political forces.

From the time of the ancient poleis to the nineteenth century, two basic types of state existed: macrostates, which comprised a number of cities, and city-states, each consisting of an urban center and its surrounding lands. Whole regions were often divided into a number of city-states. A region with city-states that interacted formed a city-state culture.

Overview

In the fifteenth century, the Middle Ages were declining, and with them the traditional feudal system. The Germanic Holy Roman Empire was fragmenting into myriad smaller states. A political transformation took place in Italy toward the end of the thirteenth century, as it separated from the imperial power of the Holy Roman Empire and divided into various city-states, many of which shifted from a communal regime in which the city was ruled by civic groups to a nobility regime in which the city was ruled by aristocratic families. Later, some of those cities became commercial or economic hubs and presented different political models of modern city-states. The cities of Venice and Florence, for example, were republics, while Milan was a duchy and Naples a kingdom. The Papal States, most notably Rome, were city-states under the control of the pope.

Analysis of city-states often focuses on the relationship between the city-state’s interior and its surrounding territories. Some city-states managed to gain dominance over their territories, while others did not. Some cities did not have defined external territories but nevertheless had grown so much and acquired such economic clout that they were considered city-states as well. The traditional city-state model did not develop in more consolidated nations such as France, Spain, and Russia, in which a strong monarchy managed to impose itself on its nobility and maintain its hegemony.

The new city-states were characterized by the prevalence of trade or industry, centralization, administrative bureaucracy, and, often, the organization of a military or naval force. The economic base of continental Europe and most of the city-states was agriculture; however, commerce grew in strength and reach, particularly through the efforts of Mediterranean city-states such as Venice, Marseilles, and Naples and northern European cities such as Amsterdam and Hamburg, the latter of which was a member of the Hanseatic League of mercantile cities. The commercial and economic growth of these cities helped create huge family fortunes, allowing families such as the Fugger family of Augsburg to become bankers and advisers to great monarchs and influence national economies. The Medici family of Florence wielded similar power and even established a foothold in the Catholic Church.

The city-state model depended more on diplomacy and trade than on military force, but it did not dispense with the latter. Military action was more prevalent in the Italian city-states, especially those ruled by noble families. Cesare Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, led the Papal military forces and acquired dominions by both military conquest and diplomacy. On the other hand, city-states ruled by a merchant class favored policies that benefited a wider segment of the population in order to protect and encourage markets and property rights. The inception of the city-state model in Europe is often described as heralding the economic growth of the modern capitalist system.

Europe between the Renaissance and the early modern era was the arena for the dramatic rise of powerful princes and aristocrats. The development of absolutism, a rule that placed complete power in the hands of the ruler, was a serious threat to the freedoms won by medieval urban centers, which were rooted in the ancient Greek concept of the polis. Thus, the military victories of princely armies vying for territorial and economic primacy fueled great social change. However, the concept of European republicanism survived and was of great significance to the development of modern Western political culture, as was the enduring concept of the city-state. European sovereign city-states of the twenty-first century include Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City. Political entities outside of Europe, including Singapore, have also been considered city-states.

Bibliography

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