Northern Europe was the site of another great medieval experiment in statecraft, the Hanseatic League of cities that monopolized trade in the Baltic and North Seas. In a time and place of weak central authority, German-speaking cities in the northern tier of the Holy Roman Empire were the most powerful force in Northern Europe. They waged war against territorial states, winning steep concessions from the Danish Empire in 1370 that marked the league’s zenith. What was the source of Hanse power? Lübeck in northern Germany was the de facto capital. This city was the product of German migratory conquests in a vast Christianization effort. Soon it was an alpha city in a far-flung network that controlled trade from England to Russia and points between. The league led by Lübeck was locked in a zealous, centuries-long struggle to gain and protect trading privileges in the burgeoning financial centers of a new urban age. The Hanse cities formed a network within a network, establishing strongholds in the globally significant nodes of Bergen, Bruges, London, and Novgorod.

The analog age of cities is over, giving way to a digitally linked network of cities that has been so thoroughly theorized by world cities scholars. This is one of the most politically precarious periods in history, as climate change washes away any sense of permanence in intercity relations. The archipelago of cities as we know it could be reconfigured beyond recognition during this century if current patterns of greenhouse gas emissions hold. In that case, alpha cities will do what they once did: Manage resource scarcity and consolidation rather than abundance. This chapter reiterates the importance of understanding intercity relations from the past in order to better understand the sweeping changes that may come – especially if the city returns to its original form as a key autonomous player in world politics, as world cities studies predict. It revisits the book’s cases, emphasizing the hopeful potential for cities in an urban age, and taking into account theoretical implications within world cities studies.

The layout of Tang Chang’an and the daily routines it fostered were stunning expressions of state power at the heart of an urban network. The city was a microcosm of the vast empire it managed, down to the tightly controlled rural growing regions, with trading routes reaching far west. It was an empire rooted in spatial order, the city’s modular layout designed to conform as closely as possible to the cosmos, the emperor at the heart of the city mandated to rule all under heaven. For all these zealous efforts at social control, Chang’an was paradoxically the world’s most cosmopolitan city. The imported religions of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism existed alongside Chinese Taoist and Confucian thought. In all, dynastic China engaged in unparalleled expansions of urban bureaucracy through the Qin, Han, Sui, and Tang dynasties. This chapter explores the complex cultural interactions between urban civilization and nomadic societies, exploring in particular the role of the Great Wall in urban governance.

This chapter outlines attempts by global cities scholars to explain historic networks. Research in global cities studies shows that we are living in an urban age, a high period for intercity relations that promises a reconsideration of history. Today’s world city network emerged in tandem with major shifts in the global economy, along with the gradual erosion of national borders in many spheres of politics. Global cities studies pose two major questions for cities today: First, how are cities shaping globalization? Second, how is globalization shaping lived experiences in cities? Global cities studies, led by John Friedmann, Saskia Sassen, Manuel Castells, and Peter J. Taylor presciently posed these questions in the midst of drastic contemporary changes in the architecture of the world economic system. The emphasis on late capitalism in world cities studies creates problems in the literature in need of challenge. This chapter stresses the need for a political history of city networks, identifying the absence of history of the literature as a flaw in need of change. Today’s world city network is far from a steady state or “end of history.”

The caliph Al Mansur literally forged the city plan in fire in 762 CE. His Round City was an architectural symbol of order in a vast combustible empire. Ninth-century Baghdad had relations extending from the Atlantic to China, with tranches of coins found as far afield as Scandinavia. The city was by design the heart of a vast city network at a time of pronounced urbanization, an urban golden age by standard reckonings. At the height of Abbasid power its population was an estimated 840,000. It thereby stretched the geographic boundaries of time and space across Eurasia, a Silk Roads terminus in its own right. Baghdad was one of the world’s preeminent “open cities,” incubating trade, knowledge in art, astronomy, mathematics, amidst a myriad of other cross-cultural exchanges. It attracted generations of scientists, philosophers, planners, and literati, especially from Central Asia. Migratory flows included a durable revolving network linking Baghdad to Merv and other key centers of learning and trade along the Silk Roads. Rapidly expanding Islamic civilization had to develop new forms of city building to spread Dar al Islam (the realm of Islam) across vast disparate realms.