Largest Cities Through History

More of this Feature • Top Cities of 100 • Top Cities of 1000 • Top Cities of 1500 • Top Cities of 1800 • Top Cities of 1900 • Top Cities of 1950    Join the Discussion "What makes your hometown special? It could be an attraction there, a famous event in history, or anything else." -- Chris     Related Resources • Cities, Urban Geography, & Transportation Resources • Largest Metropolitan Areas in the World Today • Largest Cities Resources • Urban, Retail, & Transportation Geography Articles    From Other Guides • Ancient/Classical History • Medieval History • 18th Century History • 19th Century History • 20th Century History

by Matt T. Rosenberg

Tertius Chandler's compilation of the population of cities throughout history, Four Thousand Years of Urban Growth: An Historical Census is an amazing work providing the population of cities throughout time. Chandler utilized a plethora of historical sources to locate approximate populations for the world's largest cities since 3100 BCE.

As there were few censuses prior to the end of the eighteenth century, Chandler used a variety of methods to determine the size of the world's largest cities: he used traveler's estimates, data on the number of households within cities, the number of wagons of food that arrived at the cities, the size of the military (commonly 1/6 of the size of a city during peace and 1/5 of the size of the city during times of crises), the area of the city walls along with typical densities, church records, the amount of food distributed to citizens, city comparisons (i.e. London is larger than Paris but smaller than Moscow), and even the loss of life in a disaster!

Therefore, in many cases, Chandler's numbers can only be considered rough approximations of the urban population. His figures include the city and surrounding suburban or urbanized area.

What follows is a list of the largest city at each point in history since 3100 BCE (before common era = before Christ or B.C.). It lacks population data for many cities but does provide a list of the largest cities throughout time. By looking at the first and second lines of the table, we see that Memphis remained the largest city in the world from at least 3100 BCE to 2240 BCE when Akkad claimed the title.

This feature also includes lists of the ten largest cites in the world at interesting points throughout history - the years 100, 1000, 1500, 1800, 1900, and 1950.

If you're interested in the history of urban growth, Chandler's text is an essential one. I highly recommend taking a look at a local library, it's filled with hundreds of lists - by year, by country, by continent, and much more.