Prologue: Symbols of Power
1 F. Braudel, The Mediterranean in the Ancient World (London, 2001), p. 83. Braudel points out that Morenz considered the divinity of the pharaoh to have been the central ‘political theory’ of ancient Egypt (S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (London 1973)).
2 N. MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (London, 2010), pp. 125–9.
3 This is really poetic licence on the part of Shelley since the statue actually conveys the impression of a benign ruler. More probably it was its colossal size and royal headgear which would have conveyed the impression of power to those who saw it.
4 See chapter Fifteen.
5 L. Mumford, The City in History (London, 1975).
6 This classification was implicit in the works of Halford Mackinder. The political geographer identified the main distinction as being between land empires and sea empires but he also pointed to the considerable political importance of the marginal areas located between the two. Mackinder’s theory is set out in his article, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, Geographical Journal, XXIII/4 (1904), and he later elaborated this in his book, Democratic Ideals and Reality: A Study in the Politics of Reconstruction (London, 1919).
7 J. Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (London, 2004), p. 33.
1 Persepolis and the Persian Empire
1 R. N. Sharp, The Inscriptions in Old Persian Cuneiform of the Achaemenian Emperors, Central Council of the Celebrations of the 25th Century of the Foundation of the Iranian Empire (Tehran, 1971).
2 H. Loveday, ‘Ferdusi and the Shahnameh’, in The Odyssey Illustrated Guide to Iran (Hong Kong, 1997), p. 38.
3 J. Gloag, The Architectural Interpretation of History (London, 1975), p. 58.
4 Sharp, Inscriptions in Old Persian Cuneiform, p. 87.
5 W. H. Forbis, Fall of the Peacock Throne (New York and London, 1980).
6 Sharp, Inscriptions in Old Persian Cuneiform, p. 87.
7 J. Hicks, The Persians (New York, 1975), p. 28.
8 G. Parker, Sovereign City (London, 2004), pp. 47–56.
9 Ibid., pp. 52–4.
2 ‘Three Romes’: City-state, Imperium and Christian Capital
1 The Apollinarians were a heretical sect, founded in the middle of the fourth century by Apollinaris of Laodicea, which denied that Christ had a human soul. This heresy was condemned by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Filofei must have believed that this was the cause of the fall of Rome but in reality it had little to do with it. The end of the western Roman Empire is generally considered to have taken place a quarter of a century later in 476 when the last emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a barbarian chieftain.
2 A. Voyce, Moscow and the Roots of Russian Culture (Newton Abbot, 1972), p. 16.
3 V. Cornish, The Great Capitals (London, 1923). Vaughan Cornish put forward the theory of the ‘forward capital’ which was close to the most dynamic or endangered frontier. Such a capital was well located for the direction of military activity in the frontier areas. If the frontier was an expanding one, and as a result territory was gained, such a capital would sometimes be moved forward to keep as close as possible to the new theatre of operations.
4 G. Parker, Sovereign City (London, 2004), pp. 64–5.
5 E. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776–88] (London, 1995), vol. III, p. 1062.
6 See Appendix on the terminology of empire.
7 Eusabius of Caesaria, Life of Constantine, from M. J. Cohen and J. Major, History in Quotations (London, 1904), p. 90.
8 E. Ludwig, The Mediterranean: Saga of a Sea (London, 1943), p. 202.
9 J. Gloag, The Architectural Interpretation of History (London, 1975), p. 127.
10 R. Browning, The Byzantine Empire (London, 1980), p. 29.
11 T. Hunczak, ed., Russian Imperialism from Ivan the Great to the Revolution (New Brunswick, NJ, 1974), pp. 106–7.
12 The Russian for Red Square is Krasnaya Ploshad, which also means ‘Beautiful Square’. In Russian, red is equated with beauty and this may have contributed to the amount of red in the centre of Moscow, most notably the great outer walls of the Kremlin. In the twentieth century this fitted in well with red being the chosen colour of revolution.
3 Constantinople and the New Lords of the Golden Horn
1 George Trapezuntios to Mehmed the Conqueror, 1466, quoted in P. Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire (London, 1995), p. 1.
2 P. Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World’s Desire, 1453–1924 (London, 2006), p. 21.
3 Ibid., p. 35.
4 From Karakorum to Shakhrisabz: Centres of Power of the Imperial Nomads
1 The Tartars were a tribe who lived near to the Mongols in their central Asian homelands. They were among the first to be defeated and brought into the growing Mongol Empire. The early Russian accounts of the Mongol invasions confused these people with the Mongols and from then on the Russians called them Tatars. The Mongol occupation of the Russian lands is known in Russian history as the period of ‘the Tatar Yoke’.
2 V. Yan, Jenghiz-Khan, trans. L. E. Britton (London, 1943), p. 254.
3 O. Steeds, ‘The Hidden Grave of History’s Greatest Warrior’, Newsweek (10 December 2012). The homeland of the Mongol people is the Onon-Kerulen region of eastern Mongolia and it is generally believed that Genghis Khan was buried there. This was generally thought of as being ‘sacred space’ by the Mongol people and many of the kuriltais, the great gatherings of the Mongol nobility, took place there. See chapter Six note 2.
4 P. Ratchnevsky, Genghis Khan: His Life and Legacy, trans. T. N. Haining (Oxford, 1991), pp. 96–8.
5 O. and E. Lattimore, Silks, Spices and Empire: Asia Seen through the Eyes of its Discoverers (London, 1975), p. 78.
6 Ibid., p. 79.
7 The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian, ed. John Masefield (London, 1911), p. 169.
8 Ibid.
9 O. and E. Lattimore, Silks, Spices and Empire, p. 89.
10 Samuel Purchas’s travel book, Purchas His Pilgrimage (1613), purports to be a history of the world in sea voyages and travel. Allegedly Coleridge was reading this book when he fell into a drug-induced sleep. Purchas paints a vivid picture of the palace of ‘Kubla Khan’, with its splendid natural surroundings. Much of Purchas’s writing was based on the work of Hakluyt and the accounts of early travellers.
11 He is known by various names but Timur or Temur appears to be the most accurate transliteration. The suffix Lenk, meaning ‘lame’, refers to the disability from which he suffered as a result of an injury sustained in an early battle. In his play, Christopher Marlowe altered his name to ‘Tamburlaine’ and this was a name by which he subsequently came to be widely known. The generally accepted spelling of his name today is ‘Tamerlane’.
12 J. Ure, The Trail of Tamerlane (London, 1980), p. 170.
13 Ibid., p. 189.
14 A. S. Beveridge, trans., Memoirs of Babur (London, 1922).
15 J. Marozzi, Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World (London, 2005), p. 227.
16 Ibid., p. 201.
17 G. Moorhouse, Apples in the Snow: A Journey to Samarkand (London, 1991), p. 161.
18 Marozzi, Tamerlane, p. 39.
5 Power over East Asia: The Forbidden City and the Middle Kingdom
1 V. Cornish, The Great Capitals (London, 1923).
2 O. Sirén, The Imperial Palaces of Peking, quoted in A. Cotterell, The Imperial Capitals of China (London, 2007), p. 226.
3 F. Dorn, The Forbidden City (New York, 1970,) p. 14.
4 O. Sitwell, Escape with Me (1939), quoted in The Travellers’ Dictionary of Quotation, ed. P. Yapp (London, 1983), p. 89.
5 Dun J. Li, The Ageless Chinese: A History (New York, 1965), p. 301.
6 Cotterell, Imperial Capitals of China, p. 25.
7 Quoted in A. Peyrefitte, The Collision of Two Civilisations: The British Expedition to China, 1792–94, trans. J. Rothschild (London, 1993), p. 192.
8 Ibid., pp. 303–4.
9 O. E. Clubb, Twentieth Century China (New York and London, 1965), p. 43.
6 Power over South Asia: The ‘Seven Cities’ of Delhi and the Saptusindhu Capital Region
1 P. Spear, Delhi (Oxford, 1945), p. 1.
2 The geopolitical term ‘core region’ means the historical centre or heart of a state or nation. In most cases the state will have been formed by expansion from this region. It is there that the capital city is normally located, together with other important features such as the principal centre of the national church, universities and cultural monuments. Its location is the result of a variety of factors, important among which are centrality and ease of communication. It can be thought of as being the brain in the body of the state. It may also be the economic centre of the state, although in modern times this has in most countries become less the case. It may also be seen as being the home of a nation or people and so will be vested with a special place in their affections. Over time it gains a rather mystic aura, and the term ‘sacred space’ has been used to describe this. In many cases, such as in the Persepolis region, it gives way to other regions but it will for long continue to retain its special and ‘sacred’ hold.
3 Spear, Delhi, pp. 26–9.
4 Ibid., p. 12.
5 Ibid., p. 28.
6 O.K.H. Spate and A.T.A. Learmonth, India and Pakistan, 3rd edn (London, 1967), p. 5.
7 Spear, Delhi, p. 33.
8 Ibid.
9 A. S. Beveridge, trans., Memoirs of Babur (London, 1922).
10 J. Fergusson, History of Indian and Eastern Architecture (London, 1910). James Fergusson was a Victorian architectural historian who spent much time travelling around the subcontinent. He rated Indian, and especially Mughal, architecture very highly. In addition to his comments on Fatehpur Sikri, he was of the opinion that, ‘The palace at Delhi is … the most magnificent palace in the East, perhaps the world.’ By the ‘palace’ he meant, of course, the Red Fort, and he condemned the British administration of the time for not doing more to preserve it and other Indian historical buildings.
11 Lovat Fraser, At Delhi (1903), in L. Nicholson, The Red Fort, Delhi (London, 1989), p. 80.
12 Nicholson, The Red Fort.
13 F. Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire, ed. A. Constable and V. A. Smith (Oxford, 1934), pp. 60–70.
14 J. Keay, A History of India (London, 2000), p. 334.
15 Spear, Delhi, p. 61.
16 Palam is a village a short distance away from Delhi. The couplet signifies that by the time of Shah Alam the territory of the Great Mughals, once the rulers of the greater part of the subcontinent, had shrunk to little more than the area around the capital itself.
7 Global Power: Philip II and the Escorial
1 G. Parker, Sovereign City (London, 2004), p. 158.
2 Ibid., p. 159.
3 A. F. Calvert, An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Spanish Royal Palace, Monastery and Mausoleum (London, 1911), pp. 27–8.
4 Ibid., p. 54.
5 J. H. Elliott, Imperial Spain, 1469–1716 (London, 1990), p. 253.
6 F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (London, 1972), p. 687.
7 H. Belloc, Places (1942), quoted in The Travellers’ Dictionary of Quotation, ed. P. Yapp (London, 1983), p. 766.
8 Elliott, Imperial Spain, p. 249.
8 Grandeur: Louis XIV and Versailles
1 H.A.L. Fisher, History of Europe (London, 1977), p. 628. The Count of Olivares was the chief minister of Philip IV of Spain in the middle of the seventeenth century. Together with his sovereign he attempted to revive the greatness his country had achieved in the previous century but was unsuccessful even in holding the Iberian peninsula together. In 1640 Portugal regained its independence and Catalonia continued to retain a strong sense of independent identity. Fisher attributes this lack of success to the fact that, unlike France, Spain lacked a really effective geographical centre of power which could be used to pull the country together.
2 D. Seward, The Bourbon Kings of France (London, 1976), p. 80.
3 A. Panicucci, The Life and Times of Louis XIV, trans. A. Mondatori (London, 1965), p. 36.
4 N. Pevsner, An Outline of European Architecture (London, 1978).
5 M. Ashley, Louis XIV and the Grandeur of France (1946), quoted in A.E.J. Morris, History of Urban Form Before the Industrial Revolution (London, 1996), p. 212.
6 Seward, Bourbon Kings of France, p. 71.
9 St Petersburg and the Imperial Vision of Peter the Great
1 L. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven and London, 1998), p. 210.
2 Ibid., p. 40.
3 Ibid., p. 212.
4 M. Raeff, Understanding Imperial Russia, trans. A. Goldhammer (New York, 1984), p. 47.
5 Ibid., p. 76.
6 J. H. Bater, ‘The Further Development of the City: The Important Role of the Masonry Commission’, in St Petersburg: Industrialisation and Change (Montreal, 1976). Extract published in L. Kelly, St Petersburg (London, 1981), p. 31.
7 Seleucus founded the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire in 305 BC. He took the title of Nicator and built his first capital just to the north of Babylon, giving it the name Seleucia-on-Tigris. Even before his new capital had been finished he transferred his seat of government to Antioch-on-Orontes, close to the Mediterranean. Toynbee considered this to have been a big mistake since it took the capital away from the richest part of the empire and its natural core region. A. Toynbee, Cities on the Move (London, 1970). See chapter Six note 2 on core regions.
8 A. Toynbee, A Study of History (Oxford, 1954), vol. VII, p. 195.
9 The political and historical geographer Halford Mackinder proposed a theory of history based on the idea that the greatest conflict throughout history has been that between the maritime and the continental powers. He examined the long conflict between the Greeks and the Persians which he considered to be an early example of this. By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the great global conflict was between the British and the Russian empires and this he considered to be the contemporary version of the age-old maritime–continental conflict which had dominated history. See G. Parker, Western Geopolitical Thought in the 20th Century (London, 1985), chapter Three.
10 Ghosts of Glory: Postscripts to Power
1 W. Schneider, Babylon is Everywhere: The City as Man’s Fate, trans. I. Sammet and J. Oldenburg (London, 1960), p. 211.
2 J. Saramago, Journey to Portugal, trans. A. Hopkinson and N. Caistor (London, 2000), p. 334.
3 R. Pattee, Portugal and the Portuguese World (Milwaukee, 1957), p. 147.
4 J. Kotkin, The City: A Global History (London, 2005), p. 74.
5 J. Morris, A Writer’s World (London, 2003), p. 68.
6 Schneider, Babylon is Everywhere, p. 221.
7 E. de Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (London, 2011), p. 113.
8 Ibid., p. 249.
9 I. Barea, Vienna: Legend and Reality (London, 1992), p. 241.
10 Ibid., p. 44.
11 A. Loos (1898), in Barea, Vienna, p. 257.
12 Quoted in de Waal, Hare with Amber Eyes, chapter Twelve, ‘Die Potemkinische Stadt’, pp. 116–17.
13 J. Fest, Not Me: Memoirs of a German Childhood, trans. M. Chalmers (London, 2012), p. 162.
11 Apex or Decline? New Delhi and British Imperial Power
1 The residence of the governor general and later the viceroy in Calcutta was built in 1799 during the period when Richard Wellesley was governor general and his brother Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, was the head of the Indian armed forces. It is in the style of an eighteenth-century English stately home and the one chosen as the model was Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire. This was the home of the Curzon family and Lord Curzon, one of the more remarkable of the viceroys, was a later occupant of the Calcutta residence. He must have been very much at home there and this may have been a contributory factor to his opposition to the move of the capital to Delhi, although the old capital would have been more suitable for the implementation of his foreign policy. See note 3.
2 Y. M. Goblet, The Twilight of Treaties (London, 1936), p. 101.
3 Lord Curzon, statesman and eminent geographer, was the viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905. He believed that secure frontiers were of paramount importance to the security of any state and formed the opinion that the security of the British Indian Empire could best be ensured by creating a line of friendly buffer states around its borders. This was one of the main reasons for his active support of the Younghusband Mission to Tibet in 1904. The main object of this was to bring that country into the British sphere of influence, thereby denying it to the Russians whom he was convinced had their eye on India. The mission to Tibet was a complete failure and Curzon’s aggressive frontier policy was not supported by the British Liberal government which came to power in 1906. It was reversed by subsequent viceregal administrations. See N. Curzon, Frontiers, The Romanes Lecture (Oxford, 1907).
4 J. Morris with S. Winchester, Stones of Empire: The Buildings of the Raj (Oxford, 1986), p. 80.
5 W. Dalrymple, ‘The Rubble of the Raj’, The Times (13 November 2004), Arts, pp. 18–19.
6 Morris and Winchester, Stones of Empire, p. 80.
7 W. Dalrymple, City of Djinns (London, 1993), p. 82.
8 P. Spear, Delhi (Oxford, 1945), p. 100.
9 Dalrymple, ‘Rubble of the Raj’.
12 Architects of Empire: Hitler, Speer and the Germania Project
1 Quoted in T. Friedrich, Hitler’s Berlin: Abused City (New Haven and London, 2012), p. 21.
2 Ibid., p. 26.
3 Ibid., p. 21.
4 Hitler’s Table Talk, 1941–44, ed. M. Borman, introd. H. Trevor-Roper (Oxford, 1988), p. 45.
5 Quoted in A. Richie, Faust’s Metropolis: A History of Berlin (London, 1998), pp. 470–71.
6 Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 710.
7 Quoted in Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, p. 471.
8 Ibid., p. 466.
9 Ibid., p. 467.
10 Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 523.
11 D. Sudjic, The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful – and their Architects – Shape the World (London, 2006), p. 12.
12 Hitler’s Table Talk, p. 81.
13 J. Morris, A Writer’s World: Travels, 1950–2000 (London, 2003), p. 66.
14 Quoted in E. S. Hochman, Architects of Fortune, Mies van der Rohe and the Third Reich (New York, 1989), p. 189.
15 Sudjic, The Edifice Complex, p. 30.
16 F. Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics (London, 2002).
17 D. Thomas, ‘From Art to Hate’, Newsweek (2 December 2002).
18 Richie, Faust’s Metropolis, p. 468.
13 Cyrus with Golden Caviar: Persepolis Revisited
1 J. Lowe et al., Celebration at Persepolis (Geneva, 1971), extract in P. Clawson and M. Rubin, Eternal Iran (London, 2005), p. 78.
2 The Cyrus cylinder was actually excavated in Babylonia and brought to Persepolis. It contains the proclamations of Cyrus written in cuneiform and covering a variety of subjects relating to the proper governance of an empire. It confirms that the founder of the Persian Empire had been a wise ruler and that the early success of the empire was in large part attributable to his actions. This was of great value to the shah as it depicted the ancient Persian Empire in the most positive way.
3 P. Kriwaczek, In Search of Zarathustra (London, 2002), p. 171.
4 M. Axworthy, Iran, Empire of the Mind (London, 2008), p. 256.
14 ‘Cities and Thrones and Powers’
1 Rudyard Kipling, ‘Cities and Thrones and Powers’, Puck of Pook’s Hill (London, 1906).
2 W. Dalrymple, City of Djinns (London, 1993), p. 82.
3 D. Sudjic, The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful – and their Architects – Shape the World (London, 2006), p. 21.
15 After Empire: Post-imperial Symbols of Power
1 Metropolis was a film directed by Fritz Lang in 1926. It presents a modern nightmare vision of a highly stratified society. In a fantastic futuristic city the workers toiling below ground have bleak and mechanistic lives while a small elite above enjoy lives of ease and pleasure. Eventually this was all destroyed by human refusal to accept such a tyrannical situation. Ceauşescu’s Romanian dictatorship was brought to an end in much the same way and for similar reasons.
2 Ulaanbataar replaced Karakorum as the capital of Mongolia in the nineteenth century. Its location reflected Russian penetration southwards along the most direct route from Siberia into northern China. It became an important centre for Russian trade and resulted in a steady increase in Russian influence. This eventually led to Mongolia moving from the Chinese into the Russian sphere.
3 Large numbers of Mongolians live in Inner Mongolia, which remained part of China when the Mongolian People’s Republic – Outer Mongolia – attained its independence. In line with the policy of the relatively liberal treatment of minorities – so long as they did not engage in anti-Chinese activities – Inner Mongolia was allowed by the Chinese to keep its own language, culture and history. As a result, Inner Mongolia enjoyed a far more liberal regime than that which existed in the Mongolian People’s Republic itself under Choibalsan and his successors. When the communist government came to an end in the Mongolian People’s Republic the Inner Mongolians’ knowledge of their history and culture greatly assisted the Republic in regaining its own national identity.
4 North Korea, officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, was formed from the Soviet zone after the partition of the country in 1945. Professing communism, it was from the outset aggressive, one of its main policy objectives being the reunification of the country as a communist state. In 1950 it launched a full-scale invasion of South Korea and so began the Korean War. North Korea was supported unofficially by the communist world while the South was in general supported by the West under the guise of the United Nations. The war went on for three years and ended in stalemate. An armistice was signed and the 38th Parallel border between the two Koreas was re-established.
5 From early in its history, Juche became the official political philosophy of North Korea. Invented by Kim Il-Sung, it is based on a combination of communism, nationalism and self-reliance.
6 The Museum of Lenin in Tashkent was opened in 1970 as part of the great celebrations that took place throughout the Soviet Union in that year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin. The Uzbek capital was one of the main centres of the celebrations which were intended to demonstrate the way in which Marxist-Leninist communism had triumphed in Soviet Central Asia.
7 Karimov is not himself an Uzbek, any more than Stalin was a Russian or Hitler a German. This did not stop any of these dictators from hailing the greatness of their adopted countries and of themselves as incarnating this greatness.
8 Akmolinsk was founded in 1830 as a Russian ostrog. Its origins were therefore similar to those of Moscow. The meaning of the name chosen for the new capital is uncertain. One suggestion is that it comes from the Kazak ‘White Mountain’. However, it is more likely to be derived from the old Persian astane, meaning ‘royal porte’. This suggests an interesting resemblance to the ‘Porte’ which was a symbol of the power of the Ottoman Empire.
9 This massive skyscraper is 381 m high and has 102 floors. It is built in the art deco style favoured at the time and rapidly became an American cultural icon.
10 F. Riesenberg and A. Alland, Portrait of New York (New York, 1939).
11 G. Moorhouse, Imperial City: The Rise and Rise of New York (London, 1988).
12 While a number of large cities in Germany fulfil the function of regional capitals, Frankfurt has moved into the position of being the country’s major economic hub. As well as being the headquarters of the Bundesbank, the city also has the Federal Audit Office and the country’s principal airport. It is also the location of the German Library and the National Archives and is the country’s most important publishing centre.
13 Hong Kong was actually a British Crown Colony but by the late twentieth century it had attained a high level of self-government. In 1997 it reverted to Chinese rule and, despite becoming part of China, the Chinese government has prudently allowed it to retain much of its independence, especially in the conduct of business and financial affairs.
14 G. Parker, ‘The Globalization of the City-state’, in Sovereign City (London, 2004), pp. 213–24.
15 Parker, ‘The Ancient Greek Polis’, ibid., pp. 28–46.