‘In 2008, for the first time, the majority of the world’s inhabitants lived in cities rather than the countryside. The world has become, in some measure, truly urban,’ wrote historian Peter Clark in the opening to the edited compilation The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (2013). There is no denying the importance of cities in the present world, but a substantive body of urban history literature is still under construction. Clark’s book, for example, declares itself to be the first attempt to analyze in detail the evolution of major urban systems in the world from early times to the present. Comparative urban history analysis, according to Clark, was a stirring interest 50 years ago, but it met a sudden halt, or at least a deviation (Clark, 2013, p. 2). To revive such analyses, Clark’s handbook used two strategies: first, the provision of case studies, and second, the offering of key variables that help explicate, distinguish, and connect urban systems and networks.
The present volume also aims to be a handbook, or rather a toolbox, by providing case studies for urban historians that will hopefully lead to effective comparative research. The primary attention here is on what we call urban logistics, by which we mean urban management and operations of flow as well as circulation of goods and people, in particular, the systems and networks made out of them. This book is primarily about the interconnections between trade and transport and between urban systems and networks.
Surprisingly, trade and transport networks are not emphasized in the above-cited Handbook of Cities in World History. As Clark (2013) admits, with the rise of mega-cities, the focus of urban history research shifted more and more towards urbanization and how large cities emerged and grew. Phenomenal works on Global Cities strengthened the trend to look at large cities as well as international flows of capital and migrations (Sassen, 1991). The situation was much different 30–40 years ago. There was a boom in the historical analysis of urban networks for European history that was connected with trade and transport history, as if they were siblings. Numerous case studies were written; models were discovered and tried. At the present time, however, one cannot deny the relative stagnation of urban network research in history and the lack of synthesis of the research that does exist. A critical review linking existing theories on the formation and evolution of urban networks in the long term with historical studies on transport and distribution is needed in order to provide a new interpretation of the role of gateways. Such an effort has already recently been undertaken by Mizushima, Souza, and Flynn (2014), which may set a precedent for this volume. Reflecting the results of new insights coming from other regions to European history and laying down stepping stones for global comparison is one of the aims of this volume.
This book’s strategy is to provide bottom-up case studies that give insights into how to deal with urban networks and systems. Our analysis focuses on the regions of Italy, the Low Countries, the British Isles, Western France, Scandinavia, Russia and the Baltic regions. These regions have nurtured historical urban network studies, yet their major population centres are not often treated as mega-cities. Each chapter in this volume closely reviews existing theories and models, makes references to specialized historiographical literature, stimulates pragmatic discussion, calls attention to gaps in the literature, and proposes new perspectives, thereby operating as a comprehensive and useful toolkit for researchers to use in their study of urban networks.
Urban Network Theory: A Historiography from the 1930s to the 1990s
To further define our research questions, we must take a closer look at the relevant historiography and describe how urban network theory was formed. The notion of urban network theory in historical scholarship became established in the 1980s, but it was based on earlier work, and the models that inspired the theory were not confined to the field of history. Some early models were proposed by economists, sociologists, and geographers. The American economist William Reilly created one of the first approaches to urban systems to include the dimension of urban hinterlands. In his book The Law of Retail Gravitation (1931), Reilly asserted that the extent of a city’s sphere of influence depended on its economic and demographic weight. This Newtonian model, better known as Reilly’s Law, rapidly received considerable criticism. One of the main objections was that Reilly’s Law did not explain the phenomena of centralization and the hierarchization of cities.
In 1933, German geographer Walter Christaller set up a new model that included the centralization process, the hierarchy, and the configuration in the geographic space of urban systems. This model is known as the central place theory or the central place system (1933, 1966). Although Christaller developed his models for geography, historians enthusiastically adopted his approach, particularly in the 1960s. The original models were multifaceted, explaining market, transport, and political systems, but historians were most frequently drawn to his market system model. Using his model, the centralization of local and intra-regional trade was explained, as were the inter-urban relationships therein. Because Christaller’s model did not include international trade, however, the deduced inter-urban relationship was limited to the point of intra-regional trade. Furthermore, despite the discussion of centralization, the urban nodes Christaller’s models described remained considerably isotonic, with each node expected to have the same operations and functions.
In an attempt to overcome the limitations of Christaller’s central place theory, James Vance Jr. and other scholars commenced research that opened a new paradigm in urban history during the 1960s and 1970s. In The Merchant’s World: The Geography of Wholesaling (1970), Vance attempted to link long-distance international trade flows to central places by explaining the development of the American urban system. What was inspirational about Vance’s reasoning was the way in which he introduced long-distance trade. Long-distance trade, in his view, was the result of producers trying to find a market for their products and consumers seeking access to these goods. In the process, both producers and consumers were helped by wholesalers and middlemen, who created a system of staples, depots, entrepôts, and transport infrastructure to forward or establish the flow of goods from producers to consumers. In this way, urban nodes were incorporated into the process of long-distance trade. Vance established a heterogeneous geographic environment that included rivers and oceans as well as nodes and infrastructure built upon commercial relations and historical dynamism. Among the scholars preceding Vance, Guido Weigend made a model for flows in the maritime worlds. We will discuss these concepts further in the following sections.
In 1967 (at approximately the same time as Vance’s work), the Australian geographer Peter Rimmer created a model explaining the development of Australian seaports. Rimmer did not adopt Christaller’s central place system; he focused on the impact of inland transportation routes and maritime trade on the development of seaports, thereby ultimately clarifying how urban networks are formulated through transport. Initially, the coastline was dotted with small and scattered seaports, which were only very loosely connected to the...