CityReads | Max Weber on the nature of the city

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MaxWeber on the nature of the city

The city as the fusion of fortress and market.

Max Weber. The City. New York, NY: FreePress, 1966.

Martin E. Spencer, 1977. History andSociology: An Analysis Of Weber's The City, Sociology.

Source: 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/003803857701100305

In The City Max Weber examines the role of the city as a "carrier" of the modem capitalist economy and as a precursor to the modem state. His method is to focus on the rise and fall of various groups and the forms of societal and political organization they develop. He traces the political (or "power") relationships of these groups (i.e. guilds, phratries, clans, sworn confederations, etc.) and the kind of economic activities in which they engage.

Weber defines the city in economic and political terms, as a "fusion of fortress and market". Its distinguishing features are that it costitutes, in political terms, an administrative unit, and, in economic terms, an aggregate in which the dominant economic activity is based upon exchange relationships.

From this point Weber traces two major lines of historical divergence in the development of the city: the first between the development of the occidental and the oriental city: the second between the ancient and the medieval city in the occident. Weber observes that it is only in the occidental city that a true urban community appears; an association of city-dwellers who identify themselves as 'citizens'. The significance of this is that such an urban association is the necessary basis for the autonomy of the city—for the constitution of the city as an independent political unit. In the orient various factors such as magical and religious barriers to fraternization and the vigor of caste and clan are adduced by Weber as explanations of why the urban community failed to develop there. An important consequence of this failure was the weakness of the forces of rational capitalism which, being carried by politically impotent city strata, could not achieve their fullest development.

In the west, Weber draws significant similarities and contrasts  between the ancient and the medieval city. The similarities are political; the differences are economic. The political parallels are drawn between the patrician and plebeian city in the ancient and medieval worlds. In  economic terms, Weber emphasizes solely the difference between the two types of cities. The ancient city was based upon a booty economy of  war and piracy; in the medieval city the significant economic activity was that of rational capitalism.

The conclusion Weber draws is that the ancient city could not lead to the modern state and the modern capitalist economy whereas the  medieval city was an important factor in the emergence of both.

The following is an edited excepts from chapter 1, The nature of the city.

THE MANY definitions the of city have only one element in common: namely that the city consists simply of a collection of one or more separate dwellings but is a relatively closed settlement. This massing of elements interpenetrates the everyday concept of the "city" which is thought of quantitatively as large locality. In itself this is not imprecise for the city often represents a locality dense settlement of dwellings forming a colony so extensive that personal reciprocal acquaintance is lacking.

Economic character of the city: market settlement

Economically defined, the city is a settlement the inhabitants of which live primarily off trade and commerce rather than agriculture. However, it is not altogether proper to call all localities "cities" which are dominated by trade and commerce. This would include in the concept "city" colonies made up of family members and maintaining a single, practically hereditary trade establishment such as the "tradevillages" of Asia and Russia. It is necessary to add a certain "versatility" of practiced trades to the characteristics of the city. However, this in itself does not appear suitable as the single distinguishing characteristic of the city either.  Economic versatility can be established in at least two ways: by the presence of a feudal estate or a market.

Thus, we wish to speak of a "city" only in cases where the local inhabitants satisfy an economically substantial part of their daily wants in the local market, and to an essential extent by products which the local population and that of the immediate hinterland produced for sale in the market or acquired in other place. The city is a market place.

Types of the city: consumer city, producer city, trade city and merchant city

In all similar cases one may describe the urban form as a consumer city, for the presence in residence of large consumers of special economic  character is of decisive economic importance for the local tradesmen  and merchants.

A contrasting form is presented by the producer city. The increase in populationand purchasing power in the city may be due to the location there of factories, manufactures, or home-work industries supplying outside territories.

The trade city and merchant city are confronted by the consumer city in which the purchasing power of its larger consumers rests on the retail for profit of foreign products on the local market, the foreign sale for profit of local products or products or goods obtained by native producers or the purchase of foreign products and their sale with or without storage at the place to the outside.

The actual cities nearly always represented mixed types.

Relations of the city to agriculture

The relation of the city to agriculture has not been clear cut. There were and are "semi-rural cities" (Ackerburgerstaedte) localities which while serving as places of market traffic and centers of typically urban trade, are sharply separated from the average city by the presence of a broad  stratum of resident burghers satisfying of their food needs through  cultivation and  even producing for sale.

While today we justly regard the typical "urbanite" as a mam who does not supply his own food need on his own land, originally the contrary was the case for the majority of typical ancient cities. In contrast to the medieval  situation, the  ancient  urbanite was quite  legitimately characterized by the fact that a kleros, fund us which he called his own, was a parcel of land which fed him. The full urbanite of antiquity was a semi-peasant.  

The politico-administrative concept of the city

The economic concept ' previously discussed must be entirely separated from the political-administrative concept of the city. Only in the latter sense may a, special area belong to the city. A locale can be held to, be a city in a political-administrative sense though it would not qualify as a city economically. In the Middle Ages there were areas legally defined as "cities" in which the inhabitants derived ninety percent or more of their livelihood from agriculture, representing a far larger fraction of their income than that of the inhabitants of many localities legally defined as "villages."

It is very significant that the city in the past, in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, outside as well as within Europe, was also a special fortress or garrison. At present this property of the city has been entirely lost, but it was not universal even in the past.

The city as the fusion of fortress and market

In the first stage of its development into a special political form the fortified city was incorporated in or dependent upon a castle, the fortress of a king, noblemen, or association of knights. Such nobles either resided in the fortress themselves or maintained a garrison of mercenaries, vassals, or servants therein.

Civile conomic population is complicated but always decisively important for the composition of the city. Wherever a castle existed artisans came or were settled for the satisfaction of manorial wants and the needs of the warriors. The consumption power of a prince's merchants. Moreover the lord was interested in attracting these classes since he was in position to procure money revenues through them either by taxing commerce or trade or participating in it through capital advances. At times the lord engaged in commerce on his own, even monopolizing it. In maritime castles as ship owner or ruler of the port the lord was in a position to procure a share in piratical or peacefully won sea-borne profits. His followers and vassals resident in the place were also in position to profit whether he voluntarily gave them permission or, being dependent on their good will, was forced to do so.

Differences between the occidental and oriental city

Neither the "city," in the economic sense, nor the garrison, the inhabitants of which are accoutred with special political-administrative structures, necessarily constitute a "community." An urban "community," in the full meaning of the word, appears as a general phenomenon only in the Occident. Exceptions occasionally were to be found in the Near East (in Syria, Phoenicia, and Mesopotamia) but only occasionally and in rudiments.

To constitute a full urban community a settlement must display a relative predominance of trade-commercial relations with the settlement as a whole displaying the following features: 1. a fortification; 2. a market; 3. a court of its own and at least partially autonomous law; 4. a related form of association; and 5. at least partial autonomy and autocephaly, thus also an administration by authorities in the election of whom the burghers participated.

In the past, rights such as those which define the urban community were normally privileges of the estates. The peculiar political properties of the urban community appeared only with the presence of a special stratum, a distinct new estate. Measured by this rule the "cities" of the Occidental MiddleAges only qualify in part as, true cities; even the cities of the eighteenth century were genuine urban communities only in minor degree. Finally measured by this rule, with possible isolated exceptions, the cities of Asia were not urban communities at all even though they all had markets and were fortresses.

All large seats of trade and commerce in China and most of the small ones were fortified. This was true also for Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Indian centers of commerce and trade. Not infrequently the large centers of trade and commerce of those countries, were also separate jurisdictional districts. In China, Egypt, the Near East, and India the large commercial centers have also been seats of large political associations—a phenomenon not characteristic of Medieval Occidental cities, especially those of the North. Thus, many, but not all of the essential elements of the true urban community were at hand. However, the possession by the urbanites of a special substantive or trial law or of courts autonomously nominated by them were unknown to Asiatic cities. Only to the extent that guilds or castes (in India) were located in cities did they develop courts and a special law. Urban location of these associations was legally incidental. Autonomous administration was unknown or only vestigial.

If anything, even more important than the relative absence of autonomous administration, the appearance in the city of an association of urbanites in contradiction to the countryman was also found only in rudiments. The Chinese urban dweller legally belonged to his family and native village in which the temple of his ancestors stood and to which he conscientiously maintained affiliation. This is similar to the Russian village-comrade, earning his livelihood in the city but legally remaining a peasant. The Indian urban dweller remained a member of the caste. As a rule urban dwellers were also members of local professional associations, such as crafts and guilds of specific urban location. Finally they belonged to administrative districts such as the city wards and street districts into which the city was divided by the magisterial police.

As a matter of fact, local individual participation in self-administration was often more strongly developed in the country than in the relatively large commercially organized city.

In the village, for example, in China, in many affairs the confederation of elders was practically all-powerful and the Pao-Chia was dependent on them, even though this was not legally expressed. Also in India the village community had nearly complete autonomy in most significant circumstances. In Russia the mir enjoyed nearly complete autonomy until bureaucratization under Alexander III. In the whole of the Near Eastern world the "elders" originally of the family and later chiefs of noble clans were representatives and administrators of localities and the localcourt. This could not occur in the Asiatic city because it was usually the seat of a high official or prince and thus under the direct super vision of their body guards. However, the city was a princely fortress and administered by royal officials who retained judicial power.

Citizenshipas a specific status quality of the urbanites is missing. In China, Japan, and India neither urban community nor citizenry can be found and only traces of them appear in the Near East. In China the city was a fortress and official seat of imperial authorities in a sense completely unknown in Japan.

So far as sound information extends, in Asiatic and Oriental settlements of an urban economic character, normally only extended families and professional associations were vehicles of communal actions. Communal action was not the product of an urban burgher stratum as such.

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