Traditionalism and Colonialism: Changing Urban Roles in Asia

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Abstract
Most traditional Asian cities were located inland and performed primarily administrative and cultural functions. The port cities founded and/or dominated by Westerners after the sixteenth century on the oceanic fringes of Asia reversed this pattern. Their functions were primarily economic, and they were peripheral rather than central. Many of them were newly founded by Europeans on previously neglected sites. By the end of the colonial period, the urban size hierarchy in every Asian country was dominated by these former colonial or semi-colonial ports; they were also the chief centers of ferment and change, ideological, institutional, and economic. Their growth resulted from the spatial concentration of trade flows, production centers, and transport lines, despite the physical problems inherent in the sites of most of them. The impact these cities made on their hinterlands differed from country to country, as a reflection of differing national contexts. There is an especially sharp contrast between the experience in China and that in the rest of Asia. But all these cities were beachheads of an exogenous system which transformed traditional Asia.

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