TRANSIT

Modernity transformed the relationship of cities and states. States became, as Giddens as put it, "bordered power countainers". Within the territories of states, the writ of rulers was consolidated by extended "surveillance". Between states, borders became demarcations of violence: now the whole territory claimed by the state would be defended. The state was defined by nation, not city, and the whole population of the nation, even in border regions - even sometimes beyond the borders - became part of the national "defence" of the state.

So although cities grew enormously as wealth and population expanded, their special military significance changed. The extended cities of modernity surpassed the historic fortified boundaries, and the fortifications fell into irrelevance or decay rather than being re-built with each phase of expansion. Many new industrial cities grew from what had previously been insignificant villages. While the gap between city and country remained, and indeed was in some ways intensified in the early phases of industrialism, it was no longer a military border.

This is not to say that cities lost all military significance. Capitals still remained the political and administrative if not military centres of state power, and their capture remained the ultimate symbol of conquest and national survival. The successive falls of Paris, for example, in the Franco-Prussian and the two world wars, epitomised Frances repeated humiliations by German power. The fall of Madrid was a decisive defeat for Spains Republic in the civil war. The defence of Stalingrad, in contrast, was a powerful symbol of Soviet defiance and a portent of Hitlers ultimate failure.

Martin Shaw New Wars of the city