Mesoamerica is one of only three world regions to have developed pristine cities, that is, without outside influence. Mesoamerica scholarship, especially the influential work of Richard E. Blanton, has vigorously applied world systems theory to the region in a way reminiscent of Mesopotamia studies. Teotihuacan, for which this analysis is apt, bears similarities to today’s migrant magnets, replete with expat neighborhoods and multilingual apartment blocks. Moreover, it reaped the benefit of trade relations outside its sphere, growing to massive size. The chapter culminates with Tenochtitlan, the apogee of Mesoamerican urbanism, at its height when Europeans arrived in 1519. It did not directly hold territory, making the Spanish-derived term “Aztec Empire” somewhat misleading. This chapter stresses the multiplicity of exchanges between cities. Environmental scarcity was central to the ebb and flow of urbanization. Tenochtitlan, like modern world cities, inspired European imaginations much the way Venice did. Its imagery fascinated renaissance figures in Europe such as Albrecht Dürer, in this sense making it the first “global” city.

Ascertaining whether or not nations existed in the ancient Near East is not merely for the sake of determining historically when these territorial relations of social kinship appear.1 If the evidence, however complicated, suggests the existence of nations in the ancient Near East, a more accurate understanding of not only antiquity but also “modern times” should emerge, as the classification of the self and others on the basis of birth and residence in a territory would not have originated with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, and certainly would not be novel to the so-called “Age of Nationalism” of the nineteenth century.

This chapter outlines a "feudal transformation" in medieval Europe, in which originality and creativity became activities to be protected and encouraged through grants of legal privileges. A Venetian statute that many have seen as Europe's first patent law is here placed in the context of legal and religious reforms overseen by Carolingian bishops and rulers. The trajectory of these reforms is traced through the development of medieval universities and legal education, which are linked, in turn, to an idealizing social vision of law as a morally binding force, drawing people together into communities through legal promises and oaths. With the birth of the European legal profession, Roman and Biblical legal traditions are synthesized into the legal foundation for medieval city-states, guilds, and universities, together with the prebend system that provides material support for clerics of various kinds. In the medieval city-state of Venice, these legal traditions become the basis for a transformation in legal privileges, emphasizing the value of novelty and creativity for legal communities and providing early precursors for later patent and copyright law.