Review of George
Modelski’s (2003) World Cities, -3000 to 2000, Washington, DC: FAROS 2000. 245 pages, $20.00
Christopher Chase-Dunn
and Daniel Pasciuti December 6, 2004
George Modelski’s main fame stems
from his studies of the rise and fall of great powers in the modern world
system (Modelski and Thompson 1988, 1996). His recent book World Cities,
-3000 to 2000 shifts the focus of attention to human social evolution over
the the past 5000 years. It is a formulation and testing of a theoretical model
of human social evolution that focuses on the growth of world cities and it is
also presents to results of a huge empirical effort to expand our knowledge of
the population sizes of the largest settlements on Earth since the Bronze Age.
Modelski utilizes the data on city growth to evaluate his new theory of social
evolution. The growth of cities is a useful indicator of world system evolution
because the ability of a society to produce and maintain a large settlement is
a major accomplishment. We can trace the emergence of social complexity by
knowing where the largest human settlements are at any point in time. Beginning
with Uruk, the first “world city’ five thousand years ago, Modelski traces the
emergence and spread of large cities from Mesopotamia and Egypt to East Asia,
South Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Modelski’s evolutionary approach
focuses on a single world system that begins with the first cities and states
in Mesopotamia 5000 years ago, and spreads out to become global. In focusing on
this single system he ignores the differences between regions and civilizations
that are of interest to other world historians, but his focus on world cities
across large expanses of time allows him to see patterns that other analysts
miss.
Regarding the city population data,
Modelski has extended and improved the work of that most eminent coder of city
sizes, Tertius Chandler (1987). For
students of urban and world history this work is of immeasurable value. Modelski
has labored hard to produce the best comprehensive compilation of estimates of
city population sizes now available.
Modelski’s careful improvement upon earlier
efforts to estimate the population sizes of ancient cities is a huge step
forward. He uses estimates of the built-up area of a city and a population
density factor (see p. 11 and Note 5 on p. 17) to estimate the population
sizes. He adds considerable depth, especially to the coverage of the Bronze
Age. These data are presented in the new book under review and early versions
of the data from the ancient period and from East Asia are available from
Modelski’s Evolutionary
World Politics web site.
In the “ancient era” (-3000 to –1000) world cities
are defined as those that reach a population size of 10,000 or more. In the
following “classical era” (-1000 to 1000) cities must be at least 100,000 in
population size to count as world cities. And in the modern era (since 1000)
the cut-off point is one million.[1]
Modelski observes a phenomenon, also noticed by Roland Fletcher (1995), that a
few cities are the first to reach a whole new scale, and then a size ceiling is
encountered during which cities in other regions catch up to the new scale. The
current maximum seems to be around twenty millions and the phenomenon of
catching up is now occurring. Some of the world’s largest cities are now in
developing countries such as Mexico, Brazil and India.
Modelski’s study
of the phases of urbanism is convincing regarding the contention that
urbanization has been neither random nor linear. Instead it has followed a
recurring pattern of rapid growth followed by slow growth or decline. A phase
of fast growth concentrated in one or a few regions is followed by slower
growth and the diffusion of large cities to other areas. Rapid and concentrated
growth is followed by leveling off and dispersal due to “countervailing
forces.” These countervailing forces emerge from what Modelski terms the
“Center-Hinterland” divide of a regional world system. The first growth phase
emerges in a center that eventually encounters limits to growth from resource
exhaustion, environmental stress and “failures of knowledge.” The leveling
process occurs as these limits are reached, weakening the old center. Incursions
from the hinterland increase, taking advantage of the center’s weakness. This
allows the semi-hinterland, a region adjacent to the old center with smaller
cities, to catch up to the urban scale of the old center.
Modelski
also compares his phases of urban growth with existing estimates of overall
population size and growth. He finds that the overall population growth phases
correspond in time with the urban expansions of the three eras. This study
leads to what Modelski calls a “manifest case of evolution.” The three phases
of urbanization correspond to periods of world system evolution: cultural,
social and political. The ancient cultural phase saw the creation of a learning
structure based on cities, writing and calendars, resulting in a platform for sustained
and intensified human interaction on a large scale. The classical social phase
brought about a more extensive, inclusive and integrated system. Expanding
during Karl Jaspar’s “ Axial Age,” the cities of the classical period can be
grouped according to the world religions that dominated social structures
during that era. The modern political
phase poses choices regarding an evolutionarily stable structure of world
organization. Modelski predicts that the future fourth phase will be an
economic one that will see a “stabilization and consolidation of the economic
and material basis” of world society.
While this learning model of human social
evolution may seem a bit too functionalist or Whigish to some, it has original
theoretical elements, such as the center-hinterland dynamic, that have been
absent from most earlier evolutionary models. This, plus its monumental
empirical contribution, makes this an extremely valuable step forward toward
our comprehension of the human experiment with complexity.
References
Chandler, Tertius 1987 Four
Thousand Years of Urban Growth: The Edwin Mellen Press. Fletcher, Roland
1995 The Limits of Settlement Growth: A Theoretical Outline.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Modelski, George and
William R. Thompson 1988 Seapower
in global politics, 1494-1993. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Modelski, George and William R. Thompson. 1996. Leading Sectors and World Powers: the Coevolution of Global Economics and Politics. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
George Modelski’s
“Evolutionary World Politics” web site is at http://faculty.washington.edu/modelski/worldcities.html