Susan in NC’s Reviews > Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention > Status Update

“ Destroyed by fire in 1666, the City of London that rose from the ashes was unlike any city that had been before. Densely populated and inordinately wealthy, it was Babylon reborn, a bewildering monster of a place beset by swarms of people and incessant traffic.”

“Amsterdam was an imperial metropolis, built on the wealth streaming in from Asia, Africa and the Americas….There are few great squares, bombastic statues, grand boulevards, palaces or imposing buildings on the scale of, say, a Rome or a Lisbon. Amsterdamers preferred a liveable and planned city—one of regular, neat streets, elegant bridges, advanced street lighting and convenient canals.”

“… the revolution occurring in Amsterdam was truly mind-blowing. Contemporary visitors puzzled why a small waterlogged city could become so rich and powerful so quickly. The answer had a lot to do with the city itself. The ethos of the city was moneymaking and the removal of obstacles to its fulfilment. Religious persecution was bad for business; free discussion and political liberties were good for it.”

“…at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the flow of goods transformed Amsterdam into a leviathan. Exiles from Antwerp brought with them large amounts of capital, but also sophisticated financial techniques…The Amsterdamsche Wisselbank (Amsterdam Exchange Bank), founded in 1609, invented many of the things we take for granted in modern banking…”

“ If one place on earth symbolised the shock of the new during the Renaissance and the collision of cultures, it was surely this city. Lisbon’s triumph meant the decline of Venice and a string of Asian metropolises, most notably Malacca. Here is the tale of one global city engrossing its rivals and growing fat on their carcasses.”

“Within a few years, Calicut, one of the world’s great cities, was ruined…Faced with this brutal and persistent intimidation, and without the means to defend themselves, the cities of the Malabar coast began to come to terms with the violent incomers. The Portuguese established a protection racket over the whole ocean, obliging ships to purchase certificates or face annihilation.”

“ Fuelled by the dreams of a visionary king, the desire for wealth beyond the horizon, and by religious zeal, Lisbon had been propelled from relative obscurity into the very first rank of European metropolises.”

“ In 1500 seven of the world’s twelve largest metropolises—Vijayanagara, Gauda, Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Hangzhou and Tabriz—were in Asia. Benin City in modern-day Nigeria, the largest city in sub-Saharan Africa, and Tenochtitlan in Mesoamerica were both bigger than Paris, which with 185,000 people was the only Christian European city in the top twelve. The urban heartland of the world remained in Asia.”

“ But where medieval cities excelled was in the development of humankind’s most technologically complex machine before the spacecraft: the ship. The evolution of the Venetian great galley, the Hanseatic cog and the Portuguese caravel and carrack as vessels, interchangeably, of war and commerce was the work primarily of the competing European maritime cities.”

“ Business always came first. The Hansa fought for gold and profit, not God and country; they were led not by kings, earls and knights, but by merchants, town councillors and mayors.”