The Second World War was a global experience, yet histories of the home front remain confined to individual nations and national mythologies. This chapter argues instead that most home fronts were transnationally constructed between the 1920s and 1945, as planners in each nation systematically investigated how allies and enemies were mobilizing their civilian populations for “total war.” Despite differences in political regimes, home fronts came to resemble each other in food rationing, civil defense, labor mobilization, neighborhood associations, mobilization of women and youth, mass evacuations, and war savings campaigns. Japanese military and civil officials were particularly active in investigating European and US home-front policies during the First World War. Their observations contributed to the construction of a “dual-use home front.” During the interwar decades, the Japanese state mobilized the populace for economic development and social stability. But its top-down organizations could just as easily be redeployed for war, as they were in the conflicts with China and the Western Allies (1937–1945).

This chapter traces the process by which villages became cities and city-states, which grew in some places into larger-scale states and empires, with a focus on the social institutions and cultural norms that facilitated these developments, including hereditary dynasties, hierarchical families, and notions of ethnicity. Writing and other means of recording information were invented to serve the needs of people who lived close to one another in cities and states. Oral rituals of worship, healing, and celebration in which everyone participated grew into religions, philosophies, and branches of knowledge presided over by specialists, including Judaism and Confucian thought. Social differences became formalized in systems that divided enslaved and free, or that grouped people into castes or orders, distinctions that were maintained through marriage and cultural ideologies. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity were created and then expanded in the cosmopolitan worlds of classical empires, shaping family life and social practices.

Most of the classical empires collapsed in the middle of the first millennium, but despite this collapse various regions of the world became more culturally, commercially, and politically integrated in the millennium that followed, a process traced in this chapter. Mercantile and religious networks, including Islam, linked growing cities and glittering courts, where hereditary rulers and their entourages of elites developed institutions and ceremonies that strengthened royal authority, and created courtly cultures with distinctive codes of behavior. All of these relied for their wealth on a spread and intensification of agriculture, which happened in both the eastern and western hemispheres, and was interwoven with changes in social and gender structures. Cites such as Constantinople, Tenochtitlan, and Hangzhou grew into large metropolises, and religion, trade, and diplomacy motivated people to travel, creating regional and transregional zones of exchange in goods and ideas.

This chapter introduces the various processes by which the Song government obtains resources from its people to pay for its expenses, and also how the Song state, in pursuit of its interests, is able to manage economic activities. After outlining the dynamics of Song society and the economy, it introduces tensions generated by the various goals the fiscal administration pursued at different political and military periods. The third and main section of the chapter offers an overview of the different taxes and tax mechanisms that the state used to extract revenues from the various sectors of the economy. Emphasis is placed on the state tea and wine monopolies which were crucial both for public finance and for guidance of the Song economy. The conclusion offers some answers to the problems raised by the tensions within this system.

The chapter describes colonial India’s unique urbanization story. In 1750 India had big urban centres such as Hyderabad and Delhi and urbanization was close to the global average. While urbanization in India increased over the next two centuries, the increase was small compared to the rest of the world and Indian urbanization had fallen significantly below the global average by 1950. Yet the modest temporal change masks the important shift in urban centres from inland in the 1700s to the eastern and western coasts by the 1900s. As British rule expanded, the port cities of Bombay and Calcutta emerged as the new centres of administration, trade and commerce. More generally, cities close to railways grew faster than cities close to rivers. Unlike rural India, colonial towns and cities were characterized by more educated residents, more industrial and service sector jobs, male-biased sex ratios and growing political influence.

Olympiodorus provided his students in Alexandria in the sixth century with a handy summary of political science which I discuss and develop in Chapter 14. The following themes are introduced: the domain of political science (the realm of praxis, the life of soul in the material world, in the state or city, where political science directs other subordinate expertises); law (the primacy of law in an ideal city for humans); practical wisdom (its use of theoretical wisdom and difference from it); the goal (‘political’ happiness, involving the political virtues and preparing for a higher life); earthly and heavenly cities; the place of the philosopher in the city; Platonist texts concerning political science.

Why are states evil? In Chapter 17 I approach this question in relation to Plato’s analogy between soul and city, as this analogy was interpreted by Platonists in Late Antiquity. I indicate first that individual souls belong originally, according to the Platonists, to a transcendent, intelligible community, a city of souls where they enjoy an ‘intelligible love’, a ‘divine friendship’. However, souls, in their presence in the material world, can become alienated by this world, alienated from their original community and from each other. I show that a relation is made between Plato’s account of successive stages of degradation in political constitutions in the Republic Books VIII and IX and stages of moral alienation in souls. Corrupt souls produce corrupt states and corrupt states can corrupt souls.

How does culture interact with cities – their growth, their beauties, their imaginaries – in recent times (mid-nineteenth century to the present)? How do writers represent cities in both narrative and poetic texts? How do visual artists depict them in paintings, drawings and photography? And what happens when cities are presented by both text and image at the same time?

Beyond representation, cities are also a playground for artists, a stage and a place to challenge the urban imaginary. The city is a dream topic and a dream place for illustrated books, magazines and hybrid works of art such as movies and performance, but also for street art. It is also a proper character of both visual and textual representations. What if it is considered as an intermedial object per se?

This chapter emphasises the imaginary dimension of the city, showing in particular how the city has been considered by writers and artists as the paragon of modernity since the mid-nineteenth century. Each of its five sections focuses on one issue of the urban experience in art and literature and on a particular genre of art.

Cities are not a mere backdrop to historical events; rather, they stimulate a range of felt experiences, defined as the way we feel in and about places and the felt relationships we have to and within them. Cities provoke emotional responses, foster emotional attachments, shape emotional communities and the norms that govern them, and influence how and why decisions about the urban are made. This chapter examines the role of felt experiences in urban history scholarship and calls for more engagement with the emotional dimensions inherent in people–place relations. To achieve this, the chapter examines three foundational themes within urban history: experiencing, planning and remembering through the lens of the felt and the emotional.

This chapter explores the stories of urban and rural protesters, female boycotters and spinners, Black rebels and runaways, and Indigenous combatants who engaged in protests, boycotts, and mob action to assert their political and personal legitimacy on the eve of the American Revolution. The study of material culture demonstrates that the quest for liberty became central to American life through things; objects ranging from the mundane to the elite made the lofty, abstract goals of political protest tangible to men and women throughout the British colonies. Physical artifacts – whether built spaces, printed visuals, homespun fabrics, seized cargo, or tokens of war – illustrated a convergence of material culture and collective action in the 1760s and 1770s. The material culture and performance of protest played an important role in fueling the social and political unrest that pushed the colonies toward revolution.

This chapter traces British American cities as distinctive political spaces that helped pioneer the concept of citizenship, a term that originally meant a city resident, and stood at the forefront of much of the political protest leading to the war for independence. However, from their inception, most American cities were subordinated to their provincial legislatures which were dominated by rural interests. Meanwhile the concept of citizenship came to be associated more with a set of actions rather than a place people lived. All the largest cities were occupied during the war, forcing residents to make difficult decisions and heightening the distrust leveled against them after the war. After the war, most urban residents remained minorities subordinated to the interests of mostly rural polities. Once the cradles of citizenship, most cities were not further empowered as polities by the American Revolution, but continued to be or were more sharply constrained by rural elites after the war concluded.

This chapter focuses on the urban engines of the Revolution, America’s cities. Exploring the whole panorama of urban life provides a proper understanding of the role towns played in setting the Revolution in motion. Towns were anchors of an Atlantic world in which, as dynamic and expanding places, they were a source of novelty, tension, and disorder. The question is, therefore, why and how did this dynamic fuel a revolutionary movement in the thirteen colonies of mainland North America but not in the cities of the British Caribbean or indeed Britain itself? To address this conundrum is to understand better the part played by towns in the development of an American Revolution. More specifically, it helps historians grasp the settlements’ importance not only as towns, but as colonial towns.

The relationship between states, cities and international organizations is a useful prism to assess broader trends of the development of the international system. Engaging with sub-national actors like cities and their networks adds a level of complexity to the question of how independent an organization is and how it relates to the preferences of its member states. This chapter provides historical context to this current debate. It looks at how a conceivable international role of cities became an issue in the interwar era. In particular, it looks at how the ‘Union Internationale des Villes’, founded in 1913, sought some form of formal recognition from the League of Nations, but also fostered more modest ties with the International Labour Organization (ILO). This historical episode might not equip us with straightforward ‘lessons’ for today. But it might help us to adopt a more nuanced and informed perspective on current debates about international institutional reform and the promise that cities and their associations and networks can play in this regard.

In the coming decades, cities and other local governments will need to transform their infrastructure as part of their climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. When they do, they have the opportunity to build a more resilient, sustainable, and accommodating infrastructure for humans and non-humans alike. This chapter surveys a range of policy tools that cities and other local governments can use to pursue co-beneficial adaptations for humans, non-humans, and the environment. For example, they can add bird-friendly glass to new and upgraded buildings and vehicles; they can add overpasses, underpasses, and wildlife corridors on transportation systems; they can reduce light and noise pollution that impact humans and nonhumans alike; they can use a novel trash policy to manage rodent populations non-lethally; and more.

This chapter examines the critical role of renewable energy and energy efficiency in circular economy liveable cities. As cities account for the majority of global energy use, transitioning to renewable energy and improving energy efficiency are essential for achieving climate goals and sustainable urban development. The chapter emphasises how circular economy principles can enhance energy systems by promoting the use of renewable energy, reducing resource consumption, and minimising waste. Areas of focus include the integration of renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and waste-to-energy systems, into urban infrastructure. The chapter discusses innovative technologies like smart grids, energy storage solutions, and shared mobility systems that can optimise energy use and reduce environmental impacts. It explores energy-efficient practices in the built environment, such as green building design, retrofitting, and modular construction, which help minimise cities’ energy footprint. The chapter highlights case studies from European cities that have successfully implemented circular energy systems, demonstrating the effectiveness of combining renewable energy with circular economy practices. It concludes by addressing the challenges and opportunities for cities to foster sustainable energy transitions, emphasising the importance of policy support, public–private partnerships, and community engagement in achieving long-term energy efficiency and renewable energy goals.