首先来回答下题主的第一个问题,城邦和城市国家是没有区别的,他们只是翻译的不同。那么城邦(英语:City-state),是指独自拥有主权或行使自治的城市。历史上的城邦通常是大文化圈的一部份,如古希腊城邦(如雅典、斯巴达)、迦南的腓尼基城邦(如推罗、西顿)、中部美洲的玛雅城邦、丝绸之路上的小国(如撒马尔罕、布哈拉)、东非城邦(如基尔瓦、马林迪)和意大利城邦(如佛罗伦萨、威尼斯)。
也就是说,这些地区全都可以称之为城邦。
由于学习过希腊历史的原因,题主的第二个问题我也非常感兴趣,古希腊的城邦有一个特有的名词,polis(πόλις)它在希腊语中的意思就是city,而城邦的兴起是在希腊黑暗时代之后。
这里有一段简单的概括,大致解释了希腊城邦的由来和发展历程,如果有感兴趣的想要中文翻译的,在答主空闲时间会将它翻译出来的。
After the Greek Dark Age, villages started to band together, in part for protection and in part for more organized trade. They wanted strong trading centers. Groups of villages that banded together were called city-states. There were hundreds of city-states in ancient Greece, some really small ones and some really big ones with large populations.
Although each city-state had its own form of government and its own army, and even sometimes its own navy, and each city-state certainly its own way of doing things, the city-states of ancient Greece had many things in common. They all spoke the same language; they all belie