658 ANNUAL EEPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



fortress and a market place, a castriim and a portus." This method 

 prevailed in the most varied civilizations, in ancient cities as well as 

 in the medieval cities of France, Germany, England, and Italy .^ 

 The city of Ratisbonne, for example, was formed of three parts. 

 The first contained the palace of the King and some convents 

 (regius pagus, or royal district) ; the second included the court of the 

 clergy, two convents, and some merchants (pagus cleri, or priestly 

 district); these two parts together comprised the old city (antiqua 

 urbs). The third part, or new city, was inhabited by the merchants 

 and artisans (pagus mercatorum, or mercantile district). Military 

 needs demanded places easy for defense, some strategic points whence 

 they could command the surrounding region; while for economic 

 purposes there was needed easy communication, suitable for com- 

 mercial activities. Now, as M. Rene Maunier remarks, the same 

 regions very often have all these diverse qualities, for example, the 

 centers and the boundaries for geographic units. An intersection of 

 roads answers best for both needs. It was for this reason that Erfurt, 

 a military center at the crossroads of Thuringia, very quickly became 

 a center of commerce. Ratzel had before observed that in every 

 geographical unit life is especially developed within these limits. 

 Commercial business is attracted by the frontiers, and to-day indus- 

 tries are spread out on the city boundary; maritime ports are more 

 and more growing to be industrial centers. 



In the city of the Middle Ages industrial activity was limited to 

 local needs; it was the system of city economy to which would later 

 succeed national economy. Some special markets were given up 

 each to a particular product; trades permanently occupied certain 

 streets to which they gave their name. You still find this same 

 custom in cities of the Orient and in Morocco. This grouping of 

 trades is easily explained either by technical or hygienic causes still 

 existing in some cities, such as the necessity that tanners and dyers 

 be near some water, that ropemakers be near some walls, or by legal 

 requirements, such as city tax and regulations imposed on the cor- 

 poration, and the localization of trades, whereby the authorities 

 maintain competition and render easier the control of merchandise.^ 

 In another case the trades have not all come at the same time, but 

 have been successively engaged in promoting the extension of the 

 city. Finally, the professional group is not only an economic factor, 

 but it is often still, according to M. Rene Maunier, a society, a brother- 

 hood, which constitutes in its membership a real community of life 

 and which requires that they be near together. 



In proportion as the city is developed, the trades would be multiplied 

 and decentralized, they would follow the consumers and be dispersed 

 with them; then, when the city ceases to be their chief market, new 



1 Ren6 Maunier, op. cit., pp. 103-151. 2 Rend Maunier, op. cit., p. 217. 



