Megacity, Cosmopolis, Axis Mundi: Capital Comparisons and World History

Peter Fibiger Bang

“China now has more than 100 cities of over 1 million residents, a number that is likely to double in the next decade.”1 Our time is one of extraordinary urbanization, in some sense a culmination of a history which has its beginnings in antiquity.2 Rome, the imperial capital, was arguably the first urban agglomera- tion to reach the size that is now becoming commonplace across the planet. At the peak in the first and second centuries AD, the city towered high above the empire, caput mundi. A colossal concentration of people and monuments, of matter and waste, of slaves, soldiers and institutions of government, the seat of the Caesars represented the Roman world in what might, with a massive understatement, be described as impressive microcosm. If not the gleaming reflection of the rays of the sun in the gilded roofs of temples would dazzle the visitor, then surely the endless flow of river barges and wagons, carrying loads of oil, meat, wine, firewood, building materials and so much more, would have been enough to impress.3 The capital of the empire was a logistical feat of enormous proportions, a mega-city of the ancient world. Few other words from the modern vocabulary can adequately begin to convey the awe-inspiring dimensions of ancient Rome.4 Yet, in some respects, the capital city of ancient Mediterranean empire was an even bigger accomplishment than the modern phenomenon. The megaci- ties of today, counting their inhabitants in the 10s of millions, are the products of a demographic sea change. Modern medicine, industrial technology and telecommunications have combined to produce explosive population growth and enabled a dramatic transfer of people from the countryside to urban loca- tions. For the first time in recorded history, peasants have, in our generation,

1 The Guardian 20 March, 2017: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/mar/20/china-100 -cities-populations-bigger-liverpool (zuletzt abgerufen am 28. August 2018). 2 Hanson 2016 for a recent attempt to discuss the urban system of the Roman empire inspired, not least, by the recent global spurt of urbanization. The ERC project on Roman urbanism under Luuk de Ligt in Leiden is likely to revise many of Hanson’s conclusions, cf. De Ligt 2017. 3 Bradley 2012; Ewald/Noreña 2010 for two recent collections spanning in between them a wide variety of themes from impressive monumentality to urban waste. 4 Cf. the title used for the collection of studies by Nicolet/Ilbert/Depaule 2000.

326 Peter Fibiger Bang ceased to be in the majority on the planet as even more people now live in cities.5 Rome, by contrast, had to be built on the basis of a much smaller agrarian economy, wrestled, so to speak, out of penurious peasant societies and strug- gling against the constraints of distance and climate; it took a world empire to extract the necessary resources and the city was a monstrosity. When the empire disintegrated, it was impossible to sustain the metropolis at its previous level. For centuries, unable to fill out the old shell, the dwindling population was left to inhabit what had become an oversized quarry of ancient ruins. Im- perial Rome would find few matching parallels in later pre-industrial Europe- an history. It is simply difficult to shoehorn the imperial Titan into the smaller historical models offered by its European successors. By 1700 only London and Paris, with about half a million inhabitants each, came close among the cities of Western Europe.6 Of these, London drew on a much smaller territory and population base than ancient Rome. The same was, of course, true of Paris, and the nearby palace of Versailles, but at least their axis was at the heart of the most powerful and populous European territorial monarchy and had become established as a centre of civilization which elites across Europe aspired to emulate. Voltaire would soon conclude that Louis XIV had surpassed even Augustus because the France of the “roi de soleil” had established its lead against tough European competition while in the past Augustus had presided, in splendid solitude, over a world almost without rivals.7 However, there were other courtly centres around 1700 with even greater imperial majesty. Istanbul was still the metropolis of a grand imperial world, home of the Ottoman Caliph, Caesar and Padshah. Normally thought to have held some 700,000 people, re- ceiving its grain supply from Egypt just like in antiquity and founded as a seat of rule by Constantine the Great, the city on the Bosporus was the closest early modern parallel to imperial Rome.8 Constantinople formed part of a wider Eurasian universe of courtly imperial centres. “There are five lofty emperors whom because of their great- ness people call not by their name,” it is stated in a 17th century Perso-Indian, pseudo-history of Timur Lenk.9 One could make do simply with mentioning their title. The more important members of this exclusive league of super- monarchies, outlined in the text to the contemporary reader and the early 21st century student alike, would, in addition to the “Qaisar i Rum” or Otto- man sultan, have included a Persianising king of kings and ruler of Hindustan,

5 McNeill/McNeill 2003, 282–283. 6 De Vries 1984 for a basic overview of early modern European urbanism. 7 Voltaire 1957, 1982–1983; 616–617. 8 Necipoğlu 1993; Boyar/Fleet 2010. On Ottoman titulature, see Kolodziejczyk 2012. 9 Abu Taleb Hosayni, Malfūẓāt-e Tīmūrī (The Institutes of Tamerlane 1783, 130–131, the transla- tion of Davy from Persian, modified by this signature.