Towns and cities, with their industries, trade, commerce, their
permanent housing and capital equipment faced a radically different
situation. Since they could not carry their wealth on their backs they
must stay put and defend themselves or face irreparable losses. Defense
required careful, extensive, expensive preparations: walls, equipment,
stored food, personnel. Unless the city was sacked and burned during
survival struggles it remained as a vantage point to be held at all
costs. If surrendered and occupied by assailants, it was equally
valuable to invaders who were prepared to settle down, take advantage of
the site, the capital equipment and exploit the available manpower.
Whether occupied by friend or enemy, towns and cities were centers of
actual or potential wealth and power. They were also consumers of goods
and services many of which could not be home-produced. Food must come
from herdsmen or farmers. Building materials must come from forests or
mines. Such raw materials, the essentials of daily life, must be brought
into urban centers when and as wanted.
Food and raw materials could be secured occasionally by plunder. A
regular supply depended on trade and commerce, or on tribute levied and
collected periodically from associated or dependent peoples. In the long
run trade and commerce proved to be more reliable and more productive
than plunder.
As urban centers grew and developed, they established regular channels
of trade and communication, by land and water.
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