sey075

Scholars interested in changes in city size over long periods of time often turn to one or both of two encyclopedia compilations of data: Tertius Chandler’s, Four Thousand Year of Urban Browth (Chandler 1987), and George Modelski’s World Cities: -3000 to 2000 (Modelski 2003). Chandler’s book is an update of an earlier version (Chandler and Fox 1978). The data in both Chandler and Modelski are a mess, routinely  dismissed by urban demographic historians as worthless for serious scholarship. Yet a growing number of scholars—particularly economic historians—mine those sources for city-size data in order to investigate various questions. This situation brings up a number of thorny professional and ethical questions. In this post I describe the situation and point out some of the troubling questions that come to mind. This is not a thorough exploration of either realm. I only have two more days at the lab in Teotihuacan, Mexico, and I have about four days worth of tasks to comple...