The City in History (HIST3302)

Week 1: COURSE INTRODUCTION

This lecture introduces the basic approach of the course, its key concepts and learning activities, and explains the assessment tasks. We also consider the problem of definition: what actually is a "a city"? Please note there are no tutorials in our course this week.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 2 EARLY CITIES: ORIGINS & FUNCTIONS

This lecture outlines the origins of cities in the ancient world, and explores some of their enduring features and functions.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 2: Perspectives on the City

Question: According to Mumford, "the city is the form and symbol of an integrated social relationship." What do you think is meant by this?

Activity: Identify one feature of a specific historical city, that for you encapsulates an essential aspect of cities in time and space. Can you relate this feature to a city of your own experience? Be ready to explain your choice and experience to another member of the class. 

Required Readings: 

Roger W. Caves, ed., Encyclopedia of the City (London: Routledge, 2005), "Introduction," pp. xxi-xxx. 

This is a basic introductory chapter on the city that alerts you to some of the issues, themes and ideas that historians have examined in recent decades. 

Mumford, Lewis, ‘Introduction’ to his The Culture of Cities London: Secker & Warburg, 1938, pp. 3-12 [Document Study].

Lewis Mumford's 'Introduction' to his highly opinionated and polemical work 'The Culture of Cities' (1938) captures many themes in C20th urban criticism. His later text 'The City in History' (1961) is a classic of the genre.

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

WEEK 3: CITIES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

With attention to key examples, the lecture this week considers the emergence of 'city-states' and urban-centred kingdoms around the world. It also focusses on the classical form and functions of iconic cities in the Mediterranean such as Athens and Rome.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 3: Rome and the Roman Imprint

Question: What defining characteristics were shared by ancient cities, and specifically featured in Roman urbanism? 

Activity: Prepare a plan, image or description of a new city on the lines recommended by Vitruvius (see Course Reader). What do his preoccupations tell you about classical ideas about city form? Be ready to explain your insights to another member of the class.

Required Readings: 

Robin Osborne and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, 'Cities of the Ancient Mediterranean' in The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 49-65. 

This is an authoritative overview of the emergence of cities and their forms in the Greek and Roman civilizations, emphasising a range of factors, networks and functions that shaped their development. What are the key relationships that can be seen as important in shaping these cities? What are the main tensions between dependence and independence that they exhibit?

Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, Book 1, Chapters iv-vii (Morris Hicky Morgan trans.) New York: Dover Publications, 1960, pp. 17-32 [Document Study].

In preparing for the tutorial this week, you should consider Vitruvius's recommendations for the design of an ancient city (chapters 4-7 of Book 1 in his Ten Books on Architecture). What does his advice tell us about classical ideas of city form?

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 4: URBAN LIFE IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

The Week 4 lecture examines the collapse of the urban framework of Roman Europe (the so-called Dark Ages)’, the contrast with developments further eastwards in Constantinople and the Islamic world, and the circumstances of the European 'urban revival'.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 4: Constantinople, Venice and the Urban Revival

Question: Henri Pirenne famously argued that European cities revived along with Mediterranean and northern European commerce. Is this explanation comprehensive? and if so, what were the implications of this for medieval city life?

Activity: In preparing for the tutorial this week, you should read the Pirenne chapter with a map of the Mediterranean Sea close at hand. What zones can we identify in that map? What were the main networks and connections? We will have a map handy in the tutorial, so some of these features can be discussed in class.

Required Readings:

Girouard, Mark, ‘The Revival of the West’ in his Cities & People: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 3-14.

Pirenne, Henri, ‘The Revival of Commerce’ in his Medieval Cities: Their origins and the revival of trade New York: Doubleday Books, 1956 [orig. 1925], pp. 55-74.

Both readings this week deal with the new urban vibrancy in the Mediterranean Sea around the year 1000. In the tutorial we will discuss Pirenne’s proposition that trade connections were the key to city growth at this time. Is this explanation comprehensive? What does it leave out? What were the 'internal' implications of this for medieval city life?

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 5: CITIES AND ISLAM

This lecture considers the rise of Islam, and the tremendous vitality of early islamic cities

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 5: Mosque and Marketplace: Islamic Cities in a ‘Golden Age’

Question: why did Islamic cities experience such extraordinary growth during the medieval period? 

Activity: use Google Earth to consider the form and spatial arrangement of one of the key Islamic cities discussed this week (as it appears today). Do the visible elements suggest a distinctive urban identity? Be prepared to explain your views to another member of the class.

Required Readings: 

Valérian, Dominique, ‘Middle East: 7th – 15th Centuries’ in The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 258-74.

This week you should start by reading Valerian's brief but very informative overview of the dramatic emergence of Islamic cities in the medieval 'Middle East'. Scholars used to favour an 'essentialist' view of these cities, but now tend to explore variation and diversity within a general pattern. 

Maalouf, Amin, ‘The Cannibals of Ma‘arra’ in his The Crusades through Arab Eyes (Jon Rothschild trans.) (New York: Saqi, 2012), pp. 70-99 [Document Study].

This second reading is a visceral account of the Crusades from a Muslim perspective. The familiar events of the Crusades take on a very different aspect when we consider the evidence of non-Christian sources. In this account, part of a larger chronicle that details the events of 1099 in graphic detail, we gain insights into the urban culture of the Arab Islamic world as well as the violence and cruelty of the crusading era.

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 6: PRE-MODERN ASIAN CITIES

This lecture surveys a range of pre-modern urban centres in Asia and South Asia. These were 'pre-industrial' cities, but in many ways demonstrate highly industrious and sophisticated commercial societies of Japan, China, and India.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 6: Between Heaven and Earth: Cities in Imperial China

Question: What were the dominant trends in city development in China through this period, and how did Chinese cities change? Identify the key historical factors that influenced this process. In relation to the Marco Polo reading, what distinctive features are presented here of the great city of the Khan (during the Yuan dynasty)? What conclusions would European readers draw from this depiction?

Activity: conduct some initial research to identify another traveller to China before the twentieth century. What were the circumstances of this travel, and what is the historical value of their account? Be prepared to explain your evaluation of this source material to another member of the class.

Required reading:

Rowe, William T, ‘China: 1300-1900’ in The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 310-27.

For the Week 6 Tutorial, we focus on the characteristic features of Chinese cities in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Using the Rowe reading (‘China: 1300-1900’) as a guide, we will think about the competing demands being made on public space in these great urban centres. 

[from] Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo (Manuel Komroff, ed.), (New York: the Modern Library, 1926), Book II, chapters 11-13, pp. 130-6.

In the tutorial we will also be considering the venerable classic of travel literature, ‘The Travels of Marco Polo.’ The extract is from Book II, chapters 11-13. 

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 7: THE LATE MEDIEVAL CITY IN EUROPE

This lecture considers how, with the revival of long-distance trade, a whole new way of life sprang up within the walls of the medieval cities of Europe.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 7: Flowers and Florins: Medieval Florence

Question: What social and conceptual challenges did medieval cities pose to the traditional practices of landed society? How was social order established in a city like Florence, and what do we learn from its collapse (see Boccaccio)?

Activity: Identify a passage or quotation in Boccaccio’s text that, for you, provides the most compelling or unexpected insight into the urban life of Florence in the plague year of 1348. Be prepared to explain your selection to another member of the class.    

Required Readings: 

Martines, Lauro, ‘The Course of Urban Values’ in his Power & Imagination: City-States in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), pp. 72-93.

For the Week 7 Tutorial, we will consider the dynamism and character of the late-medieval Italian cities (such as, most famously, Florence) that after 1400 gave rise to the idea of the ‘Renaissance.’ You should read Lauro Martines’ subtle account of ‘The Course of Urban Values’, and consider how citizenship and urban experience were changing at this time. 

Boccaccio, Giovanni, [from] ‘Introduction’ to his The Decameron (Mark Musa and Peter Bondanella trans.) New York: Norton, 1982 [orig. 1350-52], pp. 5-15 [Document Study].

The Decameron, a famous medieval text by the Italian humanist Giovanni Boccaccio, is a marvellous evocation of the qualities of urban life for the Florentine elite. Written in the aftermath of the Black Death, Boccaccio's introduction captures the essential qualities of city life in Florence at this time, mainly by lamenting its collapse in the extreme pandemic conditions of 1348-49.

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 8: ABSOLUTISM AND THE RISE OF THE BAROQUE

This week the lecture surveys the new form of 'Baroque' urban planning that began in Rome and soon became associated with 'Absolutist' monarchies around Europe. The architectural style and characteristics of this new 'Grand Manner' were intrinsic to the period's public aesthetics and ceremonies.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 8: St Petersburg: Dreams and Nightmares

Question: Explain the ‘Slavophile’ hatred of St Petersburg, and its symbolic relationship to Moscow. 

Activity: You should prepare for the tutorial by reading Aleksandr’s classic narrative poem of 1833, ‘The Bronze Horseman.’ What vision of St Petersburg and its cult of authority is evoked here? Be prepared to explain your analysis of the poem to another member of the class.

Required Readings: 

Monas, Sidney, ‘St. Petersburg and Moscow as Cultural Symbols’ in Stavrou, T.F. (ed.), Art and Culture in Nineteenth Century Russia(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), pp. 26-36. 

This week we will consider the 'split personality ' of Russia's two historic capitals. Sidney Monas's chapter skilfully explores the contrasts between Moscow and St Petersburg, in a way that helps us to understand how cities develop distinct identities. In the tutorial, we will try to explain the nineteenth-century 'Slavophile' hatred of St Petersburg, by delineating its symbolic relationship with Moscow.

Pushkin, Aleksandr, ‘The Bronze Horseman: A Petersburg story’ in The Bronze Horseman: Selected poems of Aleksandr Pushkin (London: Secker & Warburg, 1982) [Document Study].

Pushkin imagines a statue of Peter the Great (the 'bronze horseman') coming fantastically alive, and through this device develops a deep meditation on the relationship between the individual and the Russian state. 

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Mid-Semester Break

Week 9: CITIES IN REVOLUTION

This lecture focuses on two dynamic European cities to capture the dramatic revolutionary events of the C18th and C19th centuries: Paris and London. This 'Tale of Two Cities' contrasts the history and appearances of these two imposing metropolises.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 9: London: Contrasts in the Victorian City

Question: For the Victorians, London was both an edifying spectacle of national progress and a terrible indictment of the age. What did the realities of urban life contribute to either of these viewpoints?

Activity: Using the Adam Matthew digital resource London Low Life: Street culture, social reform and the Victorian underworld(find under ‘Databases’ on the UQ library website), identify a document that encapsulates a key theme or experience in London’s ‘street culture’. Bring a copy of the document to class, and be prepared to explain the reasons for your choice to others.

Required Readings: 

Potts, Alex, ‘Picturing the modern metropolis: images of London in the nineteenth century’ History Workshop 26 (1988) 28-56.

For this week’s tutorial, we will consider (starting with Alex Potts’ article), how and why various representations of nineteenth-century London were generated. Using some of the vivid historical documents in the digital resource collection, London Low Life, we will explore the range and rhetorical intentions of urban representations in this period. What did these depictions of London’s extremes seek to achieve?

Mayhew, Henry, [from] ‘The Street-Folk’ in his London Labour and the London Poor (vol. 1) (London: Griffin, Bohn & Co., 1861)[Document Study].

Henry's Mayhew's incredibly rich journalistic accounts of mid-nineteenth century London life and poverty has long been celebrated for its sociological insights into ‘Dickensian London.’ While reading the section ‘Of the London Street Folk’ in preparing for the tutorial, consider Mayhew's motives and approach in preparing this account for newspaper readers. What insights do we gain into London’s social realities through this kind of evidence?

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 10: NO CLASSES - LABOUR DAY PUBLIC HOLIDAY

This lecture discusses the different sources that students can use for their research project and the different forms that it can take.

Week 11: IMPERIAL CITIES, EAST AND WEST

Starting with Michael Doyle’s definition of empire as a relationship, as “effective control, whether formal or informal, of a subordinated society by an imperial society”, this lecture examines how key cities contribute to (and so come to embody) the social, economic, and cultural networks of empire.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 11: Paris in the Age of Empires

Question: Evaluate Baron Haussmann’s objectives in reforming the Paris during France’s ‘Second Empire’ period. What was the symbolic and practical significance of this transformation? What did it represent to Walter Benjamin in his celebrated essay of 1935?

Activity: Source a contemporary (c. 1850-1900) image of the new streetscape of Paris – a painting, etching, photograph, etc. Bring a copy of this image to class. What does it imply as a representation of this new urban reality? Be prepared to explain your selected image to another member of the tutorial.

Required Readings: 

Hall, Peter, ‘The City of Perpetual Public Works: Paris 1850-1870’ in his Cities in Civilization (London: Phoenix, 1999), pp. 706-27. 

For the Week 11 Tutorial, we examine the iconic streetscape of modern Paris and the process by which it was formed in the 1850s and 1860s. You should read Peter Hall's quite exhaustive overview (in his majestic study Cities and Civilization), with a particular emphasis on pages 706-27. In the discussion we will be evaluating Baron Haussmann's objectives in radically reforming Paris during the reign of Napoleon III.

Benjamin, Walter, ‘Paris, Capital of the 19th Century’ New Left Review I, 48 (1968) 77-88 [orig. 1935] [Document Study]

This short essay by the German-Jewish cultural critic Walter Benjamin is one of the canonical texts of contemporary cultural studies. Why has it been so influential? What did the transformation of Paris represent to Benjamin in this seminal work of urban criticism, and what is the value of his approach?

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 12: CITIES AND MODERN AMERICA

The extraordinary growth and spread of urban centres is a key feature of North America's modern history. In this lecture we examine noted cities like New York, Boston, Chicago and Los Angeles, and reflect on what they have contributed to the myths and national identity of the United States.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 12: Los Angeles and Environmental Crisis

Question: Why were modern American frequently cities seen as a calamities, and as threats to “the future security of the democratic republics of the New World”? (as Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in 1835). More recently, what do the impacts of the 2025 fires in Los Angeles indicate about the city’s past, present, and future? 

Activity: As the epicentre of a global film industry, Los Angeles is a city that has been relentlessly mythologised. Use an image, a piece of text or film extract to explain to another member of the class what is meant by ‘noir’, in the C20th American context. Why is Los Angeles its natural environment? 

Required Readings:

Abbott, Carl, ‘North America’ in The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 504-21.

Davis, Mike, ‘The Case for Letting Malibu Burn’ in his Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1998), pp. 93-147.

In this tutorial we will explore aspects of modern American city life in the nineteenth century, building on Abbott's insight that "North American cities were born modern, growing to maturity in the sunlight of liberal capitalism" (p. 504). Yet cities like New York was commonly seen as calamitous and threatening. In the tutorial we will try to explain why this was the case, and what the unruly ‘freedom’ of American cities like New York and Chicago represented to contemporary observers. Turning our attention to the disastrous 2025 fires, we will also consider the deep ironies and continuities evident in this catastrophe. What lessons have been learnt?

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04

Week 13: OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE: COLONIAL CITIES

In this final lecture we consider the colonial cities of the British Empire, in both India and settler colonies such as Australia (including Brisbane). Please note there are no tutorials in our course this week.

Learning outcomes: L01, L03

Week 13: The Patterns of Urban History: Brisbane's past and present

Questions: What legacies of the colonial past continue to be a feature of modern Brisbane? Why did the myth of the 'big country town' persist for so long? When will we know that Brisbane has finally 'come of age'?

Activity: Identify one key feature or characteristic of Brisbane (avoiding familiar cliches like the river, or the climate) that to you is an unusual or distinctive marker of the city's urban identity and the lived experiences of its residents. This could be broadly generalised or highly specific. How and in what ways does this aspect capture something essential about Brisbane? Be prepared to explain your choice to another member of the class, using visual aids if that is helpful in making your case.

Required Readings:

Metcalf, Thomas R., 'Colonial Cities' in The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 753-69.

Lawson, Ronald, 'An urban society' in his Brisbane in the 1890s: A Study of an Australian Urban Society (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1973), pp. 1-18.

In this final tutorial we consider the urban implications of the colonial process, with particular focus on Australian cities such as Brisbane. It is well known that Australia was a highly urbanised society by the end of the nineteenth century, with its cities experiencing rapid growth through cycles of 'boom and bust.' Lawson's research in the early 1970s was intended to explode the myth of Brisbane as a 'big country town.' How did he seek to challenge that idea? Looking at Brisbane today, how can we trace the evidence of this colonial process in the physical fabric of the city around us? And what have been the implications for this for the experiences of people who live in them?

Learning outcomes: L01, L02, L03, L04