Why did commercial cities begin to emerge in Western Europe
as they did after 1100 CE? In this chapter, I review and synthesize
important thinking about the evolution
of commercial cities as a market economy
took hold. After discussing ideas about the state in prehistory
, I trace thinking about the economic functioning of communities in the ancient world
, Roman World
, early medieval
Western Europe
, and into the rise of commercial cities. I integrate the work of Abu-Lughod, Bairoch, Braudel, Cooley, Heaton, Hurd, Mann, Marshall, Power, Smith, Tawney, Tilly, and Weber. I am not so much interested in the historical
accuracy of their thinking as I am in how these writers each conceptualized a process
based on purposeful behavior
. Of particular interest to me is the how the notion and practice of the state changed and how this affected the formation of cities. I build this review around seven themes. Continuing from Chap.
1, I see these as follows: the importance of the governance of a nation to the urban economy; occupational division of labor, command and control, and power; decentralization
and entitlement within governance; the functioning of a community as settlement
, trading city
, or commercial city; the significance of transportation costs, the spatial division of labor
, and trade; importance of networks, routes, and nodes in circuits of trade
; and the conflicted role of the city.