Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T13:32:21.688Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Coping in their own way: Asian cities and the problem of fires

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Lionel Frost
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The debate about the ability of Third World cities today and in the future to cope with rapid population growth has taken place with virtually no reference to urban history. This article seeks to remedy that, examining how three of Asia's largest cities during the pre-modern period coped with the problem of major fires. It examines the nature of the problem, its causes and its economic significance. The article concludes by considering the implications of this history for the current debate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , May 1997 , pp. 5 - 16
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the School of Economics, La Trobe University, for research funding, to Zhou Linong for research assistance, and to Dennis Flynn and Eric Jones for comments and advice.

References

1 A notable exception is Williamson's work on British cities during the Industrial Revolution, which fruitfully draws parallels and contrasts with Third World city growth:Williamson, J.G., Coping with City Growth during the British Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1990).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 See Frost, L., ‘Cities and economic development: some lessons from the economic history of the Pacific Rim’, in Snooks, G.D. (ed.), Historical Analysis in Economics (London, 1993), 113–15.Google Scholar

3 See especially Jones, E.L., ‘The reduction of fire damage in southern England, 1650–1850’, Post-Medieval Archaeology, 2 (1968), 140–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jones, E.L., Porter, S. and Turner, M., A Gazetteer of English Urban Fire Disasters (Norwich, 1984)Google Scholar; Jones, E.L. and Falkus, M.E., ‘Urban improvement in the English economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries’, in Borsay, P. (ed.), The Eighteenth Century Town: A Reader in English Urban History (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar; Frost, L.E. and Jones, E.L., ‘The fire gap and the greater durability of nineteenth century cities’, Planning Perspectives, 4 (1989), 333–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rosen, C.M., The Limits of Power: Great Fires and the Process of City Growth in America (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Weaver, J.C. and Lottinville, P. de, ‘The conflagration and the city: disaster and progress in British North America during the nineteenth century’, Histoire Sociale – Social History, 13 (1980), 417–49.Google Scholar

4 Chandra, S., ‘Standard of living: Mughal India’, in Raychaudhuri, T. and Habib, I. (eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. I (Cambridge, 1982), 465.Google Scholar

5 Erh-sun, Chao, Ch'ing-shih kao [Draft history of the Ch'ing Dynasty] (Mukden, 1937), 206–7.Google Scholar

6 Hanley, S.B., ‘Urban sanitation in preindustrial Japan’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 18 (1987), 3–4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Chandler, T., Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census (Lewiston/Queenstown, 1987), 567.Google Scholar

7 Rowe, W.T., Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889 (Stanford, 1984)Google Scholar; idem, Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895 (Stanford, 1989).Google Scholar

8 Rowe, , Hankow: Commerce and Society, 38–42.Google Scholar

9 Seidensticker, E., Low City, High City: Tokyo from Edo to the Earthquake (London, 1983), 14.Google Scholar

10 Rowe, , Hankow: Conflict and Community, 159.Google Scholar

11 Celik, Z., The Remaking of Modern Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Seattle, 1986), 55.Google Scholar

12 Quoted by Rowe, , Hankow: Commerce and Society, 24.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 24–5.

14 Ibid., 25.

15 Rowe, , Hankow: Conflict and Community, 158.Google Scholar

16 Mayer, R., Byzantion – Konstantinupolis – Istanbul: Eine Genetische Stadtgeographie (Vienna and Leipzig, 1943), 102.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 102.

18 Celik, , The Remaking of Modern Istanbul, 52–3.Google Scholar

19 Inouye, J., Home Life in Tokyo (London, 1910), 29.Google Scholar

20 Quoted by Nouet, N., The Shogun's City: A History of Tokyo (Sandgate, 1990), 161.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 47, 105–6.

22 Seidensticker, , Low City, High City, 22.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 62–4.

24 Ibid., 14.

25 Rowe, , Hankow: Conflict and Community, 158.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 92.

27 Ibid., 158.

28 Quoted by Rowe in Ibid., 159.

29 Ibid., 65.

30 Rowe, , Hankow: Commerce and Society, 24.Google Scholar

31 Inouye, , Home Life in Tokyo, 30.Google Scholar

32 Seidensticker, , Low City, High City, 64.Google Scholar

33 Seidensticker, E., Tokyo Rising: The City Since the Great Earthquake (New York, 1990), 8.Google Scholar

34 Dewong, Nai, Du Cheng Ji Sheng [Beauty of the Capital (Hangzhou)] (Beijing, 1982; 1st pub. 1235), 15.Google Scholar

35 Rowe, , Hankow: Conflict and Community, 159.Google Scholar

36 See Waldrop, M.W., Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York, 1992)Google Scholar, passim, but see especially 144–97.

37 Olson, M., The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (New Haven, 1982), 4.Google Scholar

38 Ibid.

39 See Waldrop, , Complexity, 262–3.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 262–5.

41 Rowe, , Hankow: Conflict and Community, 160.Google Scholar

42 Quoted in Ibid., 163.

43 Ibid., 163–8.

44 North, D.C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990), 54–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

45 Polo, M., The Travels of Marco Polo, trans. Latham, R. (Harmondsworth, 1958), 219–21.Google Scholar

46 Zimu, Wu, Meng Liang Lu [Records of the dreams of past splendors] (Beijing, 1982; 1st pub. 1275), 81–3Google Scholar; Balazs, E., Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy: Variations on a Theme (New Haven, 1964), 88.Google Scholar

47 Ibid., 73.

48 Polo, , Travels, 219.Google Scholar

49 Celik, , The Remaking of Modern Istanbul, 52.Google Scholar

50 Seidensticker, , Low City, High City, 58–61.Google Scholar

51 Anon., Gazetteer of Lin'an (Hangzhou) (Taipei, compiled between 1265 and 1274), 4189–90.Google Scholar

52 Hanley, , ‘Urban sanitation’, 8–14.Google Scholar