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Comment by basetop | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article. But "London and New York, the world’s current leading cities, share Shanghai’s foundational geographic logic. Their safe harbours are easily accessible to the world’s trade, and their Thames and Hudson Rivers provided a ready route into a huge hinterland."

Does Thames really lead to a "huge hinterland". Does a small island like the UK even have a huge hinterland?

Also, the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland" either. The mississippi and missouri rivers does though.

I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare the yangtze river ( shanghai ) with the hudson or thames rivers.

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> Also, the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland"

What in the world? The Hudson leads to the Erie Canal which leads to the Great Lakes which lead to the largest system of navigable waters on Earth which happens to be right on top of the largest mass of arable land on the planet.

NYC was already the largest US city before the eerie canal was completed. It wasn't the eerie canal that made NYC, the eerie canal was created because NYC was the most important city in the US. Whereas the article's point was that the rivers ( like shanghai ) and its access to the hinterlands is what drove the development of shanghai. The complete opposite is the case for NYC.

Also, do you know which river the the great lakes feed into? The mississippi river which bisects the land with the most arable land on earth. The missouri river also cuts through much of the continental US. The hudson river doesn't. I've lived along the hudson river pretty much all my life, so you can take my word on this.

If you think the thames or the hudson river is anywhere comparable to the yangtze, mississippi or the missouri, I suggest you take another look at what these rivers are. The hudson barely spans a few hundred miles in length. The yangtze, missouri and mississipi span a few thousand miles deep into the hinterlands of china and the US respectively. Compared to the mississipi or the yantze or the missouri, the hudson river is a stream.

In 1825, Clinton also helped break ground for the Ohio & Erie Canal, which was viewed as an extension of the Erie Canal and joined the Hudson with the Mississippi and New York City with New Orleans.

By then, other Eastern Seaboard cities had great harbors, but none had a comparable water tributary to the expanding interior of the United States.

[...]

In 50 years, New York City had grown from 120,000 people to more than a million in 1870. What historians called “a river of gold” flowing into the city’s lap had also proved to be a triumph of a fledgling democracy and capitalism, said James S. Kaplan, president of the Lower Manhattan Historical Association. What was known as the Great Western Canal exported New York’s politics and principles to the rest of the nation.

[...]

The canal affirmed New York’s political ascendancy over Virginia and the rest of the South (four of the first five presidents were Virginians) and its commercial dominance over competing ports not just on the Eastern Seaboard, but all the way to New Orleans.

No wonder that in his “Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation” (2005), Peter L. Bernstein wrote: “A town with an imperial name was about to witness the birth of a project that would turn New York into an imperial state.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/nyregion/history-of-the-e...

I already knew all of that. Are you saying the NYC didn't exist before the eerie canal was built? Are you saying NYC wasn't the largest and most important city in the US before the eerie canal?

So the eerie canal joined the hudson with the mississippi. The mississippi is 2300 miles long, the hudson river is 300 miles long. So which is the more important river?

I wish you addressed my comment rather than posting a bunch of quotes. But I can see this won't go anywhere. You are entitled to your opinion. I'm sorry I could't change your mind.

The topic of this thread isn't "What's the most important river in the United States?" Obviously the answer to that is the Mississippi.

The topic is your claim that:

> the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland"

I think it's objectively clear that for any reasonable definitions of "lead" and "huge hinterland", it does.

The topic of this thread is "what caused major cities to exist". The argument of the article was access to major hinterlands via rivers is why cities like london, nyc and shanghai exist. As you proved to me, the hudson didn't grant access to major hinterlands. It took the creation of the erie canal for access to the great lakes and mississippi.

I'll repeat my point for your edification. NYC was already a major city before the erie canal. As I stated, the erie canal was built because NYC was the most important city in the US. The erie canal didn't cause NYC to become the most important city in the US.

Yes, the hudson river with one of the world's major projects ( the erie canal ) eventually granted access to the hinterlands. But before the erie canal was built, it did not. Yet, NYC existed before the erie canal. Meaning without "access to the hinterlands via the artificially created erie canal", NYC would still exist because it did exist without the erie canal.

Using your logic, NYC shouldn't have even existed before the erie canal because it didn't have access to the "huge hinterlands". But we know NYC existed prior to the erie canal and access to the "huge hinterlands".

You seem to deeply misunderstand my position.

New York City exists at its location because nature made it the greatest port facility in the western hemisphere. Great cities emerge where there are transportation breaks: Seaports, rivers, lakeside sites (Chicago), the edge of mountain ranges (Denver). Any place goods need to be loaded and unloaded from long-range vehicles and onto other ones. The Erie Canal gave NYC access to America's hinterland, which floored the accelerator on the city's growth.

But don't take my word for it; here's a foreword written by perhaps the most respected authority on the history of the city of New York:

https://books.google.com/books?id=lVWSpqwqX8AC&lpg=PR15&ots=...

When London and New York were growing to their peaks of global significance, their hinterlands had a significant share of global economic activity.

True, not to mention other ports like Liverpool, in England, that are more similar to NY

Though fluvial/maritime transport plays a part, it is not the whole story (also see Paris)

The way I understand "hinterland" is "the geographical area where goods from the harbour can easily be transported to". This can be over water (river or canals), but also by train or truck.

Not GP, but I suspect the "huge" part of "huge hinterland" is the main aspect being questioned.

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