ABSTRACT

The rise of civilisation has been intimately bound up with the gathering of men to live in cities because the two phenomena have a common geographical basis. From the relations between human societies and the land upon which they are settled city and civilisation require the emergence of certain common conditions without which neither can exist. Urban communities can be supported only when the material foundations of life are such as to yield a surplus of food over and above the consuming needs of the food-producers, and when the means are also available to concentrate this surplus at particular spots. Multiplication of market towns reflected the fragmentation of the mediaeval political and economic structure, and the small scale of the urban mesh that was required to serve the rural countryside even in the most elementary way.