City-state
[1] They have existed in many parts of the world throughout history, including cities such as Rome, Carthage, Athens and Sparta and the Italian city-states during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as Florence, Venice, Genoa and Milan.
With the rise of nation states worldwide, there remains some disagreement on the number of modern city-states that still exist; Singapore, Monaco and Vatican City are the candidates most commonly discussed.
Danish historian Poul Holm has classed the Viking colonial cities in medieval Ireland, most importantly the Kingdom of Dublin, as city-states.
[citation needed] However, such small political entities often survived only for short periods because they lacked the resources to defend themselves against incursions by larger states (such as Roman conquest of Greece).
[11][need quotation to verify] In the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) over 80 Free Imperial Cities came to enjoy considerable autonomy in the Middle Ages and in early modern times, buttressed legally by international law following the Peace of Westphalia of 1648.
Some, like three of the earlier Hanseatic cities – Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck – pooled their economic relations with foreign powers and were able to wield considerable diplomatic clout.
[citation needed] In Northern and Central Italy during the medieval and Renaissance periods, city-states — with various amounts of associated land — became the standard form of polity.
[20] Early chroniclers[21] record that the name evolved from the term balangay, which refers to a plank boat widely used by various cultures of the Philippine archipelago prior to the arrival of European colonizers.
Its territory of 28 km2 (11 sq mi) comprised the city of Fiume (now in Croatia and, since the end of World War II, known as Rijeka, both names meaning "river" in the respective languages) and rural areas to its north, with a corridor to its west connecting it to Italy.
The Memel Territory was to remain under the control of the League of Nations until a future day when the people of the region would be allowed to vote on whether the land would return to Germany or not.
They allowed – notwithstanding their overlordship as occupant powers – its internal organisation as one state simultaneously being a city, officially called Berlin (West).
When King Victor Emmanuel II seized the city in 1870, Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the newly formed Kingdom of Italy.
The impasse was resolved in 1929 by the Lateran Treaties negotiated by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini between King Victor Emmanuel III and Pope Pius XI.
6 million people live and work within 728.3 square kilometres (281.2 sq mi),[26] making Singapore the 2nd-most-densely populated country in the world after Monaco.
[3] In particular, it has its own currency, a large commercial airport, one of the busiest trans-shipment maritime ports in the world, and fully fledged armed forces to safeguard the nation's sovereignty against potential regional aggressors.
[citation needed] Occasionally, microstates with high population densities such as San Marino are cited as city-states, despite lacking a large urban centre.
The idea has been proposed by Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and leader of the Bektashi Order Baba Mondi in the hope that sovereignty would help promote moderate Muslim values instead of radical ideologies.
