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Digging down into the global urban past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2020

Emma Hart Open the ORCID record for Emma Hart [Opens in a new window]  and
Mariana Dantas
Emma Hart*
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, School of History, St Katharine's Lodge, The Scores, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9BA, UK
Mariana Dantas
Affiliation:
Ohio University, Department of History, Bentley Annex 452, Athens, OH45701, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In our introduction to this Special Issue on early modern cities and globalization, we explore the current place of cities before 1850 in global urban history and address the promise of a greater focus on their role. We argue that the interplay between the large scale and the small scale in the imperial global city is an essential dialogical force in the formation of each city's relationship to the wider early modern world. Furthermore, early modern global urban history can help explain the creation of spaces that facilitated connections between distant, global locations, as well as illuminate the emergence of networks of exchange between city communities around the globe. Yet, it also reveals the tense, messy negotiation of the meaning of these urban spaces, as well as the incredibly diverse communities they harboured.

Type
Introduction
Information
Urban History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 424 - 434
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

†

The authors would like to thank all the participants in the research network ‘The Global City, Past and Present’, which included the scholars in this special section. The network was made possible by an AHRC networking grant, AH/L012995/1.

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