The Growth of Non-Western Cities Primary and Secondary Urban Networking, c. 900–1900

These interdisciplinary studies address pre-1900 non-Western urban growth in the African Sudan, Mexico, the Ottoman Middle East, and South, Southeast, and East Asia. Therein, primary and secondary cities served as functional societal agents that were viable and potentially powerful alternatives to the diversity of kinship-based local or regional networks, the societal delegated spaces in which local and external agencies met and interacted in a wide variety of political, economic, spiritual, and military forms.

Kenneth R. Hall is professor of history at Ball Stats University. His most recent books are A History of Early Southeast Asia: Maritime Trade and Societal Development; New Perspectives in the History and Historiography of Southeast Asia (coeditor with Michael Aung-Thwin); and Secondary Cities and Urban Networking in the Indian Ocean Realm, c. 1400-1800 (editor).