The essays presented in this volume, first published in 2000, describe a phenomenon so widespread in human time and space that its importance is easily overlooked. City walls shaped the history of warfare; the mobilisation of manpower and resources needed to build them favoured some kinds of polities over others; and their massive strength, appropriately ornamented, created a visual language of authority. Previous collective volumes on the subject have dealt mainly with Europe, but the historians and art historians who collaborate here follow a comparative agenda. The millennial practice of wall building that branched out from the ancient Near East into India, Europe, and North Africa shows continuities and points of contact of which the makers of urban fortifications were scarcely aware; separate traditions in China, sub-Saharan Africa, and North America illustrate universal themes of defensive strategy and the symbolism of power, each time embedded in a distinctive local context.

Table of Contents:
1. Contained communities in tropical Africa Graham Connah; 2. Palisaded settlements in prehistoric Eastern North America George R. Milner; 3. To wall or not to wall: evidence from Medieval Germany James D. Tracy; 4. Medieval walled space: urban development vs. defence Kathryn L. Reyerson; 5. A world without walls: city and town in colonial Spanish America Richard L. Kagan; 6. The fortifications of Epaminondas and the rise of the monumental Greek city Frederick A. Cooper; 7. Imperial walled cities in the West and their early medieval Nachleben Bernard S. Bachrach; 8. Delhi walled: changing boundaries Catherine B. Asher; 9. Walled cities in Islamic North Africa and Egypt (with particular reference to the Fatamids, 909–1171) Jonathan Bloom; 10. Ottoman military architecture in the early gunpowder era: a reassessment Simon Pepper; 11. Walled towns during the French wars of religion, 1560–1630 Michael Wolfe; 12. Portuguese urban fortifications in Morocco: borrowing, adaptation, and innovation along a military frontier Martin M. Elbl; 13. The artillery fortress as an engine of European overseas expansion, 1480–1750 Geoffrey Parker; 14. Representations of Chinese walled cities in the pictorial and graphic arts Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt; 15. The hierarchy of Ming city walls Edward L. Farmer; 16. Decoration of city walls in Medieval Islam: the epigraphic message Sheila S. Blair; 17. Medieval French representations of city and other walls Wolfgang G. van Emden; 18. Siege law, siege ritual, and the symbolism of city walls in Renaissance Europe Simon Pepper; 19. Representations of the city in siege views of the seventeenth century: the war of military images and their production Martha Pollak.