Potential City-States?

What places in time and space would be opportune for the existence of a city-state? It can either be a place that was underdeveloped IOTL, or was actually a city that was part of a larger entity and might've done better on its own.
 
There's an insane lot of possible city-states, not much because of underdevelloped areas (complex chiefdoms and ESM may be more likely to appear first there) or more or less random secessions, but mostly because the devellopment of autonomous urban communauties was quite widespread in mediterranean and European Antiquity and Middle-Ages.
An non-exhaustive list would be :

- Ethnic Greek states (Thessaly, Macedonia, etc.) don't maintain themselves up to the Vth century entierely, and at least coastal regions devellop either a colonial or native poleis system
- Carthage doesn't manages to get a protectorate and hegemony on other phoenician cities in North Africa, making the region being more on par with Greek colonies on Italian coast.
- Sicilian tyrannies never really manages to hold off, and the various poleis remain distinct politically
- Norse-Gael petty-kingdoms of Ireland (Dublin, Limerick, Cork, etc.) slowly become an Irish set of nobiliar city-states
- Southern taifas adopt a similar model than the IOTL Taifa of Cordoba, meaning the devellopment of a counciliar rule under an islamic equivalent of a podestat.
- Meridional communas remain largely autonomous, and cities as Toulouse, Marseilles, Montpellier, Avignon, etc. that were largely independent IOTL, remains so, while other urban communities are develloping.
- Rus' city-states, without Mongol invasions and raids, remain an important form of regional politics.

You had similar development in world history as well, but I know a bit less about it.
- Spring-and-Autumn Chinese city-states of the Yellow River survives as a set of autonomous urban communities
- Survival (how?) of North American and Mesoamerican city-states or complex chiefdoms centered on urban communities
- Without the rise of Islam, Eastern African city-states could be the dominant political model of Eastern Africa
- Ancient Indian city-states manages to thrive and without the IOTL development of Hinduism (and its political influence), you could see the maintain of urban mahajanapada, at least on a sub-political level.
- Sao culture survives (no Kanembu invasion) and Lake Tchad regions see a great expension of the local city-state model (see Kotoko city-states).
 
I'd like to find a way to get city states after the industrial revolution.

There are a few. Singapore is the one obvious case. However, the four Gulf emirates are effectively city states (Bahrein most obviously, but also no one in Kuwait lives outside of Kuwait city), but as oil cities people don't think of them that way. Belgium and the Netherlands are really federations of city states. You can add Panama and Hong Kong. I am excluding remote island sovereignties with low populations. But I would like to find a POD that makes them more common.

New York City could have wound up as a city state, with a complete collapse of the USA in the 1860s, or more likely in a Hong Kong type situation if the Americans are less successful in the war of independence and the British hold on to New York.
 
Jerusalem, starting in the 19th century, had a huge possibility of being a city state.

Probably a few more Southeast Asia ones, maybe with the help of colonial powers--maybe Penang?

New York City could have wound up as a city state, with a complete collapse of the USA in the 1860s, or more likely in a Hong Kong type situation if the Americans are less successful in the war of independence and the British hold on to New York.

New Orleans would also make for a good city state. It's a very likely result of the classic "Napoleon doesn't sell Louisiana" POD.

Speaking of France, what about Dakar? Could that make for a good city state under any circumstance?
 
I'd like to find a way to get city states after the industrial revolution.

There are a few. Singapore is the one obvious case. However, the four Gulf emirates are effectively city states (Bahrein most obviously, but also no one in Kuwait lives outside of Kuwait city), but as oil cities people don't think of them that way. Belgium and the Netherlands are really federations of city states. You can add Panama and Hong Kong. I am excluding remote island sovereignties with low populations. But I would like to find a POD that makes them more common.

New York City could have wound up as a city state, with a complete collapse of the USA in the 1860s, or more likely in a Hong Kong type situation if the Americans are less successful in the war of independence and the British hold on to New York.

Is anyone else thinking of an Alternate Later British Empire made up of GB + City-States, much easier to federalise and keep longer, after all if France can manage to make colonial possessions part of the Metropolitan Homeland?
(Smaller populations, more concentrated geography, more homogenous, ie. "White").
Retaining, New York is an interesting Idea, and to be fair some parts of the Empire were surprisingly reluctant to leave, Newfoundland stayed out of Canada until 1949, Singapore was not happy to be included in Malaysia ... look how that worked out, and Malta was virtually forced into independence.
Given the somewhat ramshackle organisation of the British Empire, entire countries were run by quasi-private enterprise, and not just India, retaining enclaves of often ambiguous status, see the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands, should be fun to explore. And there's no obstacle to them have some sort of local rule and still being part of the UK, it seems to sort of be working for Ulster and Scotland.
The total chaos makes it more British.
 
"In Scandinavia I would say Bergen, Stockholm and Copenhagen would have a big potential as city states."

Denmark, once Schleswig-Holstein were taken away and they let Iceland go, nearly made my list of effective city states. But it still has some rural areas.

I forgot that the 1919 Paris Peace conference came close to setting up some city states. Danzig and Trieste were set up as actual city states, and eventually absorbed back into Germany and Italy (and Trieste stayed as part of Italy past World War II). There are post-war ATLs where either could survive. If you handle the postwar period in Turkey differently, the British retain a protectorate over the Straights and results in Istanbul becoming a city state, other ways to get Constantinople as a city state would be to somehow save the Crusader "Latin Empire" or the Palaiologi kingdom but don't give them much territory beyond the city,which would need to have some stronger power protecting it. The Paris Peace conference separated East Prussia from Germany. That doesn't turn Konigsberg into a city state. But Potsdam/ Yalta attached the city to Russia, and then the Kaliningrad oblast became separated from Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Russian Republic hangs onto the area, but get a Russia screw/ worse post Soviet collapse and the oblast could wind up being split off. There are enough problems with the obvious alternatives of it getting absorbed into Poland, Lithuania, or Germany to keep the oblast independent.

Here is another scenario on these lines: the Whites (Yudenich) recover Petrograd during the Russian Civil War. The Reds were worried about this enough to move the capital to Moscow. With the aid of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, they manage to hold on to it after the Red Army has taken over the rest of Russia. Remember, the Communists won the Civil War but didn't recover alot of the outlying parts of the Tsar's empire, including what became the Baltic Republics. They settle for agreeing to leave Petrograd alone, for the time being, in return for international recognition and financing. The problem is that Stalin retakes Petrograd anyway in 1940, but you still are able to separate it from Russia for two decades. This scenario may affect Barbarossa, having just gotten Petrograd back, Stalin and the Red Army may decide to just evacuate and abandon it, since their prestige will suffer less in this case and the key factories and port facilities will already have been built elsewhere in the 1930s.

Another candidate is Gaza following a resolution to the Palestine Question, but the problem is I don't know how you get a resolution to the Palestine Question.

There are PODs with Argentine history that could semi-plausibly result in Buenos Aires as a city state. Keeping the state of Buenos Aires separate, which nearly did happen, doesn't work because it still has alot of rural territory, it wouldn't be any more of a city state than neighboring Uruguay.
 
Keep in mind that the initial impetus for the emergence of the famous Italian city states is that the Byzantines in the early Middle Ages were able and willing to hold coastal cities against the Lombards and the Franks, but couldn't hold onto the interior. And not holding the port cities may have prevented a strong (for Western Europe at the time) government in the interior of Italy as well.

So yes you could sort of get a similar scenario, on a global scale, with the British Empire in the twentieth century.
 
- Ancient Indian city-states manages to thrive and without the IOTL development of Hinduism (and its political influence), you could see the maintain of urban mahajanapada, at least on a sub-political level.
...not sure what confuses me more here.
The fact that Hinduism didn't exist at this time and it was the Brahminical system which dominated most of India (and the Mahajanapada by doing so)...
Or the fact that Brahmanist traditions already existed at this time.
Or why aborting Hinduism (or Brahmanism if you meant that) would maintain the Mahajanapada in the long term?
 
Keep in mind that the initial impetus for the emergence of the famous Italian city states is that the Byzantines in the early Middle Ages were able and willing to hold coastal cities against the Lombards and the Franks

Not that much actually, even if it was a major political factor. Venetian independence, for instance, can't really be seen before the middle of the Xth century (in spite of traditional Venetian historiography it probably looked a lot to the Ragusan situation) at the same moment the communal movement becomes a thing in the whole of Italy. Venice, Amalfi, Pisa, Gaeta and Ancona roughly rised as independent maritime republics in the same time.

While the byzantine presence up to the Xth century certainly did a lot to help these city-states maintain clear border and independence to Imperial suzerainty, it wasn't the initial impetus for their emergence but why they emerged first as such.

...not sure what confuses me more here.
The fact that Hinduism didn't exist at this time and it was the Brahminical system which dominated most of India (and the Mahajanapada by doing so)...
Hinduism certainly existed in the latter part of mahajanapadas era, and probably wouldn't have existed as such without mahajanapadas existence in first place.

Ascetism and the stress on Nirvana that would distinguish Vedic beliefs from Hinduism (along other religions as Jainism) appeared during this period of urban power.

Or the fact that Brahmanist traditions already existed at this time.
The point being?

Or why aborting Hinduism (or Brahmanism if you meant that) would maintain the Mahajanapada in the long term?
When I say Hinduism, I mean Hinduism.
When I say "without the IOTL development of Hinduism", I mean "IOTL development of Hinduism", not aborting it necessarily, nor Brahmanist rites.

Why so? The IOTL development of Hinduism eventually get translated politically by the support of the "wise ruler" model (a bit like stoicism was a huge philosophical and ideological support for the figure of a monarchical "wise ruler" in Rome).

Dharmic texts would stress the importance and power that a king working in accordance with dharma could claim on a large scale (as it would be eventually argued of Guptas). While it was increasingly a thing for Brahmanic texts, IOTL Hinduism did put it on a more universal scale not only territorially, but socially (above all society, including political and religious elites).

If Hinduism develops differently, with the main ascetic tradition eventually adopts a less monarchical stance, the idea of a "wise ruler" above communities and able (if not entitled to) a more universal rule may be less stressed on, and mirroring that the role of urban communities may be greater (even if it could mean the stress on wise local rulers, admittedly, which fits the OP well enough)

I hope it helped dealing with any possible confusion.
 
Washington DC as a state is the best American bet.

If you can separate Acadiana (New Orleans) and Downstate (New York) from their Upstates it could work. Acadiana gets the bonus of being Francophone vs Anglo-Southron north Louisiana while Downstate NY wouldn't be stuck with Yankee-settled Upstate.


Perhaps if deals had been struck in the early republican years for Upstate to be separated a la Kentucky and Tennessee, while Acadiana was admitted as a smaller state in 1812.
 
Hamburg
Hamburg and Bremen are currently city states in the BRD. You could have a different Schlweswig war in which Denmark holds on to Schleswig. Hamburg would be a sovereign city on the border between Denmark and Hanover.
Or you could have more radical division of Germany after the wars.
 
Hamburg and Bremen are currently city states in the BRD.

Vienna and Budapest fit this too. Not independent entirely, but they have special administrative status in their own countries. Given the disproportionate population, size and economic power of these two capitals, they are effectively countries-within-countries.
 
New York City could have wound up as a city state, with a complete collapse of the USA in the 1860s, or more likely in a Hong Kong type situation if the Americans are less successful in the war of independence and the British hold on to New York.
No. First problem- NY at that time was just Manhattan and didn't include what are now the other boroughs. Manhattan is isolated and doesn't develop. The USA surrounding it isnt going to want to trade or allow NYC to be a nation that has the American trade come through it first. Let's say somehow you include the other boroughs some how (hard when Queens at this time included Nassau County and the Bronx didn't exist at all even as a county)

Because surrounded by an independent and possibly hostile nation, one that won't want to trade with you isn't going to help the city of New York become what it did in OTL. If the Hudson, since it is a tidal estuary to Troy, NY is considered an international waterway and ships can sail between Staten and Manhatten without paying dues to the city-state of NY then the Erie Canal would still be built but Albany will be the big beneficiary not NY. If NY taxes and tariffs and causes problems then the Erie is not built and railroads are the big thing taking imports to the Midwest and exports to Europe by way of Philadelphia and Baltimore and upper NJ stagnated under problems of NY controlling the surface of the water to the low tide mark on NJ side (per OTL). Albany, being the prime motivator of the Erie Canal in OTL, not NYC, may do railroads (and possibly still the canal, but less likely) with railroad connections Boston and New Haven. New England becomes a big beneficiary of the Mohawk Valley route east. In OTL the first steam powered railroad in the USA purpose-built to be a passenger RR was Albany to Schenectady to shorten the route of the Erie Canal in that area (the RR was the hypotenus of the triangle formed by the canal going east from Schenectady to Cohoes and then south to Albany). This ends up all funneling goods and raw material instead of South to NYC, it will go further east to New England. Baltimore and Philadelphia's less efficient, less profitable, and inferior canals become more profitable when competing with Boston and not worrying about NY, RR in that area similarly have more competitive ability. The city of NY will be a relative small backwater on Manhattan, same with Brooklyn a twin city on Long Island with villages like Flatbush, Astoria, Flushing, etc. And being separate cities it wouldn't feel like a city-state but instead a small nation with more than one city and a bunch of villages. It would be similar to the Netherlands.

And I don't think we can say Belgium and the Netherlands, the UAE, Kuwait, Austria are anything like city states or collections of city states. You can't even call Andora, Liechtenstein as city states. Singapore, Monaco, and the Vatican are the only true city states. That's all the others like Kuwait are microstates. Maybe San Marino but I know little on it.
 
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City-state should be limited to- a sovereign nation with the ability to control its own foreign affairs that has only one de jure city and no other clearly defined de facto separate settlements, and definitelty no other de jure villages, cities, or municipalities. The geographic scope of the government of the city must be co-terminous with the government of the nation-state as a whole.

Anything else, of a nation of small size is called a microstate.
 
"NY at that time was just Manhattan and didn't include what are now the other boroughs"

During the American War of Independence, the British controlled more than Manhattan. They had outposts in New Jersey, their fleet operated around Staten Island which would have been impossible if the Americans controlled, and they had no problem in provisioning their forces from farms on Long Island. If they had been able to hold on to New York at the Peace of Paris, it would have been what is now the five boroughs, except for maybe the Bronx, plus what is now Hudson County in New Jersey and possibly the rest of Long Island as well.

The other scenario posited is that the United States just falls apart after a particularly bad American Civil War. This is less likely, and if this happens, all bets are off. If New York City declares independence, it would have no problem raising a militia that would take over the surrounding areas. Or the state government might secede, then the upstate counties succeed from the state.
 
"NY at that time was just Manhattan and didn't include what are now the other boroughs"

During the American War of Independence, the British controlled more than Manhattan. They had outposts in New Jersey, their fleet operated around Staten Island which would have been impossible if the Americans controlled, and they had no problem in provisioning their forces from farms on Long Island. If they had been able to hold on to New York at the Peace of Paris, it would have been what is now the five boroughs, except for maybe the Bronx, plus what is now Hudson County in New Jersey and possibly the rest of Long Island as well.

The other scenario posited is that the United States just falls apart after a particularly bad American Civil War. This is less likely, and if this happens, all bets are off. If New York City declares independence, it would have no problem raising a militia that would take over the surrounding areas. Or the state government might secede, then the upstate counties succeed from the state.
In both scenarios you talk about, Revolutionary War and 1860s- NY was Manhattan only. Brooklyn was a separate city, Flatbush was a separate town, Long Island Village was an actual village, etc. The five boroughs of today didn't join together until 1898. You aren't talking about NY the city, you are talking about the greater area around Manhattan that IOTL eventually became the city of NY. But at the times you are talking about NY is Manhattan (and southern half of the Bronx in your 1860s era). Please understand proper NY history.
 
I didn't realize the the criteria for city state was "legal municipal boundaries at the time of independence".

I really don't think in the AWI scenario, the British Army and the Royal Navy would have cared. Neither would have the Lower East side gangs that the militia of an independent New York would have been recruited from, in the US falls apart after the ACW scenario.
 
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