Title: The preindustrial city
First published: May 1, 1965
Description: This is an influential book about the emergence of urban areas before the advent of industrialization. Dr. Sjoberg 
describes the developments that contributed to the concentration of human populations in relatively small areas 
that were geographically removed from the fields in which food was produced, and which we would today recognize 
as towns and cities. The most important of these was the development of technologies, particularly the cultivation 
of high yield grains, that made possible the production of a food surplus and in turn permitted the specialization 
of some of the members of a population in nonagricultural activities.  A second key development was the discovery 
of methods for alloying metals to produce weapons that were durable and effective enough to both permit the 
subordination of large areas to economic exploitation and concomittantly to make efficient strategies of defense 
necessary.Prior to the publication of this book, the existence and significance of urban concentrations in the
 preindustrial era, which after all encompasses most of urban history to date, was largely overlooked in social theory.
Subjects: Grains, Metal alloys, Wealth, Social class, Cities and towns, History, Voorindustriële maatschappij, Cidade (Sociologia), Villes, Steden, Histoire, Cities and towns, history
Time periods: Preindustrial history