I am looking for cases when a culturally flourishing city met a great tragedy, saw some population dispersion, and then recovered its creative energies. Vienna is an example where this is not true. Paris has wonderful museums and concerts but it is no longer a global cultural leader as it was before World War II. I am not aware that Atlanta was culturally important after the wreckage of the Civil War. Rome faded after (before?) the barbarian invasions. So are there any good examples? Comments are open…
The transformation of Constantinople to Konstaniniyye following the Ottoman conquest springs to mind. Or Samarkand after its sack by the Mongols in 1220: a century or so later it was florishing under Timur and Ulugh Beg and may even have been the world’s centre of science. Or Babylon after the period of Assyrian dominance?
I would say Berlin, but I don’t knowo if you could call it a cultural recovery, but teher are certainly a lot more artists there than during the cold war.
Would you mind giving us a hint as to the purpose of your inquiry, Tyler?
(I have no interest in taking part in any activity which is not totally on the up-and-up and I am wondering what you have in mind.)
In response to the query, I am hoping to write on the topic and believe my readers will know some examples I don’t.
Moscow with WWII, many middle eastern cities that were sacked in antiquity, Tokyo with WWII, uh, Tenochitlan/Mexico City if your view is long enough.
There’s a lot of bloody-minded historiography about the Black Death upside for Christendom – the story is a Malthusian one.
Which is why context is really gonna matter for the piece – was the deindustrialization of Boston tragic? What about 60 years of Nat rule in Jo’burg? And was Lahore a significant enough place to make partition enough of a tragedy? And so on….
Liverpool, UK – European Capital of Culture 2008
San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Or, if you’d rather, San Francisco after the dot com implosion in 2000.
Constantinople had been worn down to pathetic by the end, but became the centre of the world again when the turks finally took over.
Tyler’s been reading Tim Harford and thinking about jazz, Faulkner, and beignets: http://www.timharford.com/writing/2006/02/recovery-positions.html
Montreal right now could be interesting to look at.
It was Canada’s first city up until the 70s, when political uncertainty led to a long, slow downturn and a massive outmigration to Toronto. However, it has been coming back together economically and culturally over the last 10 years, and may again rival Toronto in a decade or so.
The fifth century AD invasions were not the only ones — Rome was sacked in 390 BC and obviously went on to flourish. Unfortunately, the sack having destroyed many records, the history of Rome pre-390 is largely legendary, so it’s hard to gauge how flourishing it was before then.
I am underwhelmed by the recovery of Athens post-Peloponnesian war and think that its post-Persian war recovery is much more impressive; it was one of the more important cities in Greece before and went on to become one of the premier cities in world history after, having been totally sacked by the Persians.
Rome, at the height of its artistic accomplishments, was sacked in 1527. Yet, it recovered enough to be the center of the Counter-Reformation era of Bernini.
Boston had a fire just as bad, if not worse then the Chicago fire a couple of years after the Chicago fire. Interestingly very few people are aware of it. I wasn’t until I had lived in Boston for years.
Re: fire, most of the world’s major cities older than 1900 have been destroyed by fire and rebuilt, often extensively and usually better than before.
Fire seems to be the easiest citywide tragedy from which to recover. Severe hurricanes (Galveston) and seige/capture/sacking by an army not trying to use your city as their new capital seem to be the worst.
Antigua Guatemala was one of the three great cities of the Spanish new world, with Lima and Mexico City. It was essentially abandoned after a massive earthquake in the late 1700s. Guatemala City, its replacement, never developed much compared to the other two, so a possibly great city may have been lost.
Shanghai
Does the London fire of 1666 count? The architecture of Christopher Wren flourished in the rebuilding.
istanbul?
Phnom Penh after the Khmer Rouge.
Nanking twice, after its capture in 1864 at the end of the Taiping war and then again after the Second World War.
San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake & Chicago after the fire. (But how many people really had to leave after the fire?)
Warsaw & St. Petersburg after World War II. Also Berlin. & Seoul after the Korean War.
Hong Kong would also be an interesting case – captured and occupied in World War II, then cut off from its economic hinterland in 1949.
The history of NYC is interesting enough. During the colonial period it was an average port behind Boston and Philadelphia. Almost completely wiped out by fire during the Confederation years but turn into the largest port in America after the completion of the Erie Canal. It was the center of American urban culture for most of the 20th Century. It was from NYC that Jazz , TV and Radio were introduced to the country. Before WWII everything was built in the factories of Brooklyn much like today everything is made in China. After WWII industry was spread across the nation especially the defense industry which was dole out by Congress as pet projects. Along with other cities in the nation NYC went into decline and experienced much strife especially after losing champions like LaGuardia and Moses. No one in the area alive at the time will forget the headline “Ford to NY: Drop Dead.” In my short lifetime NYC has changed from a place where you drive through Times Square with the doors locked and the windows rolled up to a place where it’s wall to wall tourists. Across the river Time Square sits at the base of tall buildings but all the lights spill out into the night sky like a fountain.
Today NYC is the center of American culture with LA with as a somewhat legitimate contender.
I second Dublin and Shanghai, although Shanghai isn’t very old, and Dublin at its heyday wasn’t much. Nobody’s mentioned Lisbon yet. Or Jerusalem.
I have to say I’m puzzled by Tyler’s question, as many European cities suffered tremendous damage in WWII and were rebuilt to become even greater than they were. London, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne….
Also, I’m puzzled at the comment that London wasn’t a cultural powerhouse in the mid seventeenth century. It’s been one since the Elizabethan Age.
Pompeii
Seconding Shanghai. One of the cultural gems of the world in the early 20th Century, then looted and forgotten by Maoism, and now the capital of the boomingest economy in the world and again the entry point of Western culture into China.
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