So this is actually a neat question that gets at a continuing debate about the origin of cities (and from there, states): what were cities for?
There tend to be three answers to this question: cities were for chiefs, cities were for temples, and cities were for markets. 1/
There tend to be three answers to this question: cities were for chiefs, cities were for temples, and cities were for markets. 1/
In each case the question is actually 'how does a society develop specialization?' because the dense settlement of cities reflect a population that isn't engaged in subsistence activities (like agriculture) and has instead specialized. 2/
So in the first case, cities are the product of 'big men' - the chiefs in a society who accumulate wealth and resources (mainly agricultural land) so that they can specialize, that is they own enough land to subsist off of its rents and thus do not need to work. 3/
These elites tend to be political and military leaders and of course those positions of leadership provide more opportunity to accumulate landed wealth.
The idea here is that these fellows tend to congregate in a defensible place to enable effective administration...4/
The idea here is that these fellows tend to congregate in a defensible place to enable effective administration...4/
...and for the purpose of defense and when they congregate like that, the locus of disposable agricultural surplus they have creates the economic basis of the city: elites have the resources to support other specialists (artisans, full-time thugs, later scribes). 5/
That 'cities form around clusters of military-political elites' has some evidence to back it up, particularly when later literate societies run into societies that aren't as far along in city formation; e.g. what we know about oppida in pre-Roman Gaul. 6/
On the flipside, when we look at the *oldest* cities, for instance in Mesopotamia (and Egypt, but Egypt is strange w/ urbanism), at the earliest period we can see them clearly, the outsized role is played not by the king but by the temple.
Maybe cities were for priests? 7/
Maybe cities were for priests? 7/
Here the theory runs much the same way as with elites: temples provided the nexus of surplus resources (again, mainly food): farmers either customarily gave a portion of their crop to the temple or the temple was itself a large landholder (or both). 8/
Then the temples, run by a (often hereditary) priesthood elite, are in the position of disposing of that surplus and likewise use it first to support leisured elites (the priests, of course) who then hire other specialists (artisans, scribes, later full-time thugs). 8/
The third case - cities are for markets - is the most intuitive (lots of people together create markets for goods that are necessary but not everyday staples and loci for long distance trade) and also the trickiest historically. 9/
Generally speaking from what we can see historically, the earliest economies in the ancient world are substantially 'redistribution economies' wherein a central political actor - either a king or a temple - is pulling in most of the surplus via taxes or rents...10/
...and then redistributing that back out as they see fit. Lately (last few decades) the evidence for market-based interactions in the early cities of Mesoptamia and Egypt has gotten a fair bit better and so the 'redistribution economy' tend to come with caveats...11/
...but while there are clearly markets *in* these societies, it doesn't seem to be fair to say they were market *driven.* Also, to be clear, the things resources were being redistributed to were war, religious observance and monumental construction. Not social programs. 12/
What all of this suggests is that yes, the earliest cities 'were for people' but they weren't for *you* - they were for the people who *ruled over you.* This is the classic Max Weber 'consumer city' - a parasite that subsists primarily off of the rents on the peasantry. 13/
Now I'd argue that even in the late bronze age, we see cities growing beyond this Weberian consumer city mold and becoming economic centers with broader benefits, but at least from my best look at the evidence that shift comes later as the space for the market increases...14/
...and the role of the redistribution economy tends (not uniformly or deterministically) to decrease over time. On the flipside the emergence of large states also gives us a new kind of parasite city too: the imperial capital subsisting off of imperial rents. 15/
All of that background actually hints at why I think 'capitalism' is a pretty useless term in all of this. If 'capitalism' here means there's private ownership of productive assets for profit, then those very first rentier-chiefs are doing that. 16/
Elites have been using their wealth to acquire land to get other people to farm it in order to get more wealth for as long as we can observe elite behavior; the earliest law codes (e.g. Code of Hammurabi) are deeply concerned to regulate (but by no means abolish) that process.17/
In that sense, 'capitalism' has been with us forever and indeed may have been a driving force in the formation of early cities (under the 'cities are for chiefs' model). You can even model dynastic proto-states as 'family businesses' with armies; king as mafia don. 18/
Of course the response is to define capitalism very narrowly: it requires modern finance, joint-stock companies, etc. But that hard division is tougher to maintain against evidence of increasing financial sophistication in pre-modern and non-European economies. 19/
Speaking from the Roman evidence, the Romans don't have joint-stock, but they do have complex in investment structures (e.g. the societates publicanorum); Pliny the Younger trades in literal grape futures (pre-selling harvests years in advance under contract)...20/
...there was shipwreck insurance (as part of a public-private partnership with tax breaks, no less!) and things like the Puteoli tablets reveal some fairly sophisticated financing to support profit-seeking investment in trade, land, etc. 21/
The past 30 or so years of research into ancient Mediterranean economy - Roman esp., but increasingly also Greek and Mesopotamian - tends to suggest that hard lines between 'modern' capitalist structures and 'ancient' non-capitalist structures obscure more than they explain. 22/
Not that there weren't other economic games in town, although they mostly replaced metaphorical 'wage slavery' with very literal actual slavery or at least non-free bonded forms of labor like serfdom, in service to rentier-elites who also wielded political power. 23/
Still, the evidence suggests cities were not, initially, 'for people' but 'for people who ruled people.'
Not that we can't make cities something better: 'cities for markets' after all do a lot more 'for people' than 'cities for rulers,' a step forward, not back. /end
Not that we can't make cities something better: 'cities for markets' after all do a lot more 'for people' than 'cities for rulers,' a step forward, not back. /end
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