City-States and their towns/villages

For a city state, how many towns/villages do you think it might have under its control? Would controlling any make it more of a kingdom? Anyone know for the Greek city states like Athens/Sparta? I know Athens at one point had more of a small empire than a city state but....anyone? Thanks for the input.


On a side note, would a city state build fortresses around its borders or would it be more likely to rely on its walls for defense? Perhaps this is a case by case basis...anyway....

As many villages as needed to control/exploit the resourses it needs and or wants. City states and kingdoms differ only in management and self image.

I'd go with forts and walls. Forts and their garrisons being your first line of defense. The actual walls of your city the last.

Limper said:

As many villages as needed to control/exploit the resourses it needs and or wants. City states and kingdoms differ only in management and self image.

Click to expand...

If you don't mind my asking, what are some of these differences? I suppose that I don't really fully understand exactly what a city-state is - just a vague notion.

Thanks!

A city state would probably be best described as a small kingdom with an urban focus.

Which would make it stand out in a pre industrial society.

We still have a few of them today in Europe.

Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, San Marino, and Monaco I think. The vatican might qualify under some definitions but I'd say no as it's inside another nations city and lacks the immediate resources to be self sustaining (I think... I don't think it owns any sizable farmland inside it's territory within Rome itself.)


These are 'nations' which consist of one major population center surrounded by a few satellite populations which support it with vital resources.

In many classic cases the population was such that in the case of war the entire nation could hide within the city walls. I believe at least Athens followed that model.

In modern times the satellites are likely almost small cities themselves. I'd have to research the above examples to be sure.

In a preindustrial civilization to survive under agrarian terms (argriculture) you need to have a village nearly every 1-5 miles. Or rather; a days walk. Anyone more isolated than that will likely not survive long or if they gain enough population will likely become independant of your power structure.

In such a civilization you need to have dense populations. The middle ages averaged a good 80 to 90 for most of Europe. With a few oddballs like England at 42 (though actually higher because most of those people where clustered in a few key parts of the territorry they claimed to control) or France at 105.

That's on a wheat economy. The figures are vastly lower for a maize economy and vastly higher for a rice economy.

So while you're city state might be a city and a couple of villages and towns around it; it might still be no more than 10 to 20 miles across in size for the entire 'nation'. In that space you could fit (assuming 20x20 miles) 34,000 people assuming average medival population. For a city state put a normally absurd number of them in the city, say 40-50% (usually in the middle ages the urban population is only 1 to 8%, but a city state has an inverted focus; it only has enough rural people to support the food needs of the city).

Thanks a bunch Arcady. That's really helpful. How might the political structure differ from it's kingdom counterpart, assuming an era of feudalism? Considering that there's not really enough land to sustain a tiered feudal hierarchy, how might it hold together? Could it be analogous to a single barony?

You're missing the central point in my opinion: citizenship, which is verry different from population. These were the verry core, the soul if you wil, of the city state. In most city states they were the, hereditary, economic and political drivers af the state and constituted the army (Greece: hoplites, (early)Republican Rome: legionaries.)
Territory, population and economy are secondary to this in defining a city state. Luxembourg for example is nothing more than a smal nation-state, not a city state.
A city-state could be a republic (Rome, Athens,...), a monarchy (Sparta), a tirrany (Syracuse),...
A city state would try to extend its influence over the neighbouring country (most of these lands would be owned by its citizens) and over the surrounding city-states by means of treaties, be they mutally agreed or forcefully imposed. When we talk about the Athenian Empire, we are actually referring to the Attic coalition: several city states entering in a treatie relationship, at first dominated by Athens, later dictated by Athens.
The first real city-state growing into something of an empire was Rome. Rome not only exerted its influence by means of military power or treatie, but also by extending Latin or Roman citizenship upon others, cutting the historical link between citizenship and the actual city.
Without the central notion of citizens, with historical rights and duties, you can't really speak of a ctiy-state, but of a small country centrerd around a city.
(Hope this makes sense, English is not my native language )

Interesting Eben. So does that mean that a city-state has no place in a medieval world? How could such a thing co-exist next to large feudal kingdoms? Are there any historical examples?

There were "free cities" in the Medieval world. Legally, these cities had self-government; they were technically within a larger kingdom, but were usually ruled by some gorup of notables under a mayor (London, I believe, had this legal status).

Most of these governments (if my rather shaky memory serves me correctly) were rather mercantile in their outlook; they were centers of trade and manufacturing in a world where such things were not culturally central.

The 19th century anarchist Peter Kropotkin has high praise for these institutions in his book _Mutual Aid_. His argument is that their downfall came from not extending citizenship to newcomers, meaning that, over time, a greater percentage of the inhabitants of the city were frozen out of the benefits, making the leadership ripe for undermining when the king and his new armies came to town during the renaissance.

As for possible roleplaying hooks: some of the conventional ones apply well: these cities were centers of learning and trade, so would be much more cosmopolitan than the typical villageand the within-city factions may be much more intense. And there is always the built in tension between the city (whose power is based on trade) and the feudal aristocracy (whose power is based on land and military might).

As far as territorial control: that may be somewhat less important. The city would economically dominate the country around it (in a time of ineffective long-distance transport, where else are people going to sell their food?). More important issues would involve distance to (and control of) whatever raw materials wold be necessary for the local industry. The cross-channel wool trade (English sheep shorn, wool sent to Flanders for weaving into cloth and garments) was incredibly important economically during the Middle Ages (many English names-- Walker, Tucker, Weaver, etc-- are derived from occupational titles from the wool trade).

Although I agree there are certain similarities, I think we should be wary about comparing medieval cities to the true city-states in the ancient mediteranean.
Medieval cities had their own dynamic, which lead to greater economical power. This power enabled them to force their feudal lords to grant the city certain rights (taxation, militia, justice, government and in a few cases even the right to mint coins.) These charters were sometimes forced upon the lords, but in a few cases also used to extend the lords influence over territories that used to be semi-independant.
But we also see that lords will try their best to end the charter. Thats why these charters were mostly kept safe inside large stone (=fire-proof!) towers. (In Flanders we call those a "belfort".)

The cities in Flanders are an excellent example of this, as willpax noted. Viking raids in the 10th century made that the French king was unable to actually govern this region, so the local lords became autonomous (count of Fladers, Duke of Brabant, Prince-bishop of Liège, ...) To retain that autonomy he needed the support of the cities. When the French king manages to "reconquer" Flanders, we see that most of those cities lose those rights and some are even forced to dismatel their city walls. (I believe Ypres is one of those.)
Later, Flanders falls in Hapsburg hands (the Burgundians and later the Spanish) and we see that the new lords again grants many of those cities new rights. The reason being: they need the support and the taxes to hold their empire together.
So while cities were an important force in medieval times, they were never truly independent", they had priviliges, granted by a lord, and could only exist as "free" entities in a power vacuum.

Hellenistic city-states ("Poleis") were autonomous. There was nothing higher than the city in juditional terms. A city-state might have been governed by a tyrant (Syracuse in Sicily for example), but he would still be subject to the city. Rome had laws that said a dictator could be appointed in times of need. But this person in which resided all the power did not have the power to fundamentally alter the rights of the citizens (wheras a medieval lord did have this right, in theory at least.) Rome did not have an emperor until the Senate made it so.

While the Greeks fought many wars amongst themselves, they never truely conquered as we understand it. Even the colonies they founded in Sicily, Italy, France and Asia minor were never considered as being part of the state. Those became in effect new city-states that had religious ties with the mother city, but nothing more.
Rome changed all this gradually, but for a long time, at the heart of the Empire was the city of Rome itself. During the empire, the gradual influx of "barbarians" (germans) into the Roman population changed even this.

So if you want to use the concept of an independant city in your fantasy world, think about what law makes the city independant from the surrounding nations. Why is it independant (tactical position: island, mountain,...;magical, divine, ... the city-state Mayenne in Robert Jordans Wheel of Time series would be a well thought of example) and why is it governed by such fundamentally different laws than the neighbouring lands.
Dark Sun, with is biblical city states, was an interesting stetting in this respect.

Still reading this? Congratulations, I hope I made some sense along the way.

Actually, modern day Germany includes City-states. Like America, germany is composed of seperate states, and some, like Berlin, Hamburg or Bremen are actually City-states. The differences between the mediterainian city-states and the "Freie Reichsstädte" in medieval Germany are'nt THAT big. Both controlled large tracts of land to support them, and were - normally - contolled by councils or tyrants. Perhaps reading up the history of berlin, or frankfurt might enlighten you

-Alla