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61-472: At the time in which The Hobbit is set, Esgaroth appears to be a city-state , and a republic with no king (the only real republic shown in Middle-earth). The Master of Lake-town was said in-universe to be elected from among the "old and wise"; scholars have noted that all the same, he was trapped by his greed. Tolkien modelled the town closely on the real neolithic pile dwellings that were discovered near

122-685: A Jerusalem city-state under the control of United Nations Trusteeship Council . Although the plan had some international support and the UN accepted this proposal (and still officially holds the stance that Jerusalem should be held under this regime), implementation of the plan failed as the 1948 Palestine war broke out with the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine , ultimately resulting in Jerusalem being split into West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem . Israel would eventually gain control of East Jerusalem in

183-566: A city-state separate from the United Kingdom. Sedge 94, see text The Cyperaceae ( / ˌ s aɪ p ə ˈ r eɪ s i . iː , - ˌ aɪ / ) are a family of graminoid (grass-like), monocotyledonous flowering plants known as sedges . The family is large; botanists have described some 5,500 known species in about 90 genera  – the largest being the "true sedges " (genus Carex ), with over 2,000 species. Cyperaceae species are widely distributed, with

244-657: A city-state. 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. Some of them, despite being de facto independent states, were formally part of the Holy Roman Empire . The era of the Italian states, in particular from the 11th to the 15th centuries, featured remarkable economic development, trade, manufacture, and mercantile capitalism, together with increasing urbanization, with remarkable influence throughout much of

305-641: A federation, and as such can be accurately described as non-sovereign city-states with a high degree of autonomy, include: The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order is a proposed city-state in Albanian capital of Tirana which will be established if approved by the Albanian Parliament and a national referendum. The state, which would be led by the Bektashi Order , is planned to be similar in structure to

366-403: A haunted place containing bones, jewels, and the remains of the piles of the town. It has been observed that there is an internal division in the minds of the people of Esgaroth. What they remember of the town's glorious past is preserved in songs and tales, but this lore is not considered actual history by the people but rather fiction. A few songs looked into the future foretelling the return of

427-517: A large amount of gold and dying in the epilogue. Tolkien made a series of drawings of Bilbo's escape from the Elves, as he floated with the Dwarves in barrels down to Esgaroth. The finished drawing shows a town on wooden piles above the lake, accessed by a walkway. He modelled the town closely on the neolithic pile dwellings that have been found on Swiss lakes, probably based on an artist's conception of such

488-504: A noddy;    And as for our Corporation — shocking To think we buy gowns lined with ermine For dolts that can't or won't determine What's like to rid us of our vermin! Douglas A. Anderson notes in The Annotated Hobbit that Lake-town's Master and councillors possibly derive from Robert Browning 's "Mayor and Corporation" in his 1842 poem The Pied Piper of Hamelin . Anderson comments that Tolkien "loathed"

549-404: A part of it. Until September 1870, the city of Rome had been controlled by the pope as part of his Papal States . When King Victor Emmanuel II seized the city in 1870, Pope Pius IX refused to recognize the newly formed Kingdom of Italy . Because he could not travel without effectively acknowledging the authority of the king, Pius IX and his successors each claimed to be a " Prisoner in

610-450: A population of less than 1,000 (mostly clergymen), it is by far the smallest sovereign country in the world. The Principality of Monaco is a very small independent city-state bordering France. Monaco-Ville (the ancient fortified city) and Monaco's well-known area Monte Carlo are districts of a continuous urban zone, not distinct cities, though they were three separate municipalities ( communes ) until 1917. The Principality of Monaco and

671-553: A regional power at the time, needed to define their territories for negotiation with the European powers so the Siamese government established a nation-state system, incorporated their tributary cities ( Lan Xang , Cambodia and some Malay cities) into their territory and abolished the mueang and the tributary system. In early Philippine history, the barangay was a complex sociopolitical unit which scholars have historically considered

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732-534: A single city; in the cases of Luxembourg, Djibouti and Kuwait, this primate city is so dominant as to give its name to the country. These countries are distinct from true city-states such as Singapore in that they comprise both their primate city (such as Luxembourg City ) and a number of peripheral cities and towns (such as Esch-sur-Alzette and ten other towns in Luxembourg) with autonomous municipal authorities , and may also include substantial rural areas (such as

793-553: A town such as in Robert Munro 's 1908 Les stations lacustres d'Europe aux ages de la pierre et du bronze . The scholars Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull note that in an earlier drawing, two Dwarves can be seen crawling out of their barrels, with Bilbo still invisible as he was wearing the Ring , whereas the finished drawing shows the barrels without Dwarves, perhaps at the moment just before Bilbo started to let them out; an Elf, poling

854-414: A tributary relationship now described as mandala or as over-lapping sovereignty , in which smaller city-states paid tribute to larger ones that paid tribute to still larger ones—until reaching the apex in cities like Ayutthaya , Bagan , Bangkok and others that served as centers of Southeast Asian royalty. The system existed until the 19th century, when colonization by European powers occurred. Siam ,

915-594: Is Bard though whose voice in the battle against the dragon is the voice of legend when he is revealed as the direct heir of Girion, Lord of Dale. In Peter Jackson 's 2012–2014 The Hobbit film series , Stephen Fry plays the role of the Master of Lake-town in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies . In the 2006 strategy game The Battle for Middle-Earth II ,

976-452: Is generally considered to be the last real city-state left in the world, with full sovereignty, international borders, its own currency , a robust military , and substantial international influence in its own right. The Economist refers to the nation as the "world's only fully functioning city-state". Several non-sovereign cities enjoy a high degree of autonomy and are often confused for city-states. Hong Kong , Macau , and cities of

1037-428: Is the more "mannish" and vernacular settlement. Its masters do not have any elvish-sounding names as the former kings of Dale, nor is Esgaroth a monarchy. This stems from the fact that in the past, Esgaroth was less influenced by the refined Númenorean civilisation than Dale. The meaning of the name Esgaroth is unclear. While it is not Sindarin , one of Tolkien's elvish languages, it may be "'Sindarized' in shape" as

1098-480: The 2nd-most-densely populated country in the world after Monaco. Singapore was part of the Federation of Malaysia for two years before it was expelled from the federation in 1965, becoming an independent republic , a city and a sovereign country. The Economist refers to the nation as the "world's only fully functioning city-state". In particular, it has its own currency , a large commercial airport , one of

1159-623: The Décapole (1354–1679) in the Alsace, or the Old Swiss Confederacy ( c.  1300 – 1798). The Swiss cantons of Zürich , Bern , Lucerne , Fribourg , Solothurn , Basel , Schaffhausen , and Geneva originated as city-states. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, some cities – then members of different confederacies – officially became sovereign city-states, such as

1220-633: The Free Hanseatic City of Bremen (1806–11 and again 1813–71), the Free City of Frankfurt upon Main (1815–66), the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1806–11 and again 1814–71), the Free and Hanseatic City of Lübeck (1806–11 and again 1813–71), and the Free City of Kraków (1815–1846). Under Habsburg rule the city of Fiume had the status of a corpus separatum (1779–1919), which – while falling short of an independent sovereignty – had many attributes of

1281-501: 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. Out of these, Singapore is the largest and most populous, and

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1342-587: 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. Individual cities often made protective alliances with other cities or with neighbouring regions, including the Hanseatic League (1358 – 17th century), the Swabian League of Cities (1331–1389),

1403-626: The Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence , Siena , Ferrara , Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice , which became powerful thalassocracies ; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza , Tikal , Copán and Monte Albán );

1464-703: The Six-Day War in 1967. The Klaipėda Region or Memel Territory was defined by the Treaty of Versailles in 1920 when it was put under the administration of the Council of Ambassadors . 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. The then predominantly ethnic German Memel Territory ( Prussian Lithuanians and Memellanders constituted

1525-685: The United Arab Emirates —most notably Dubai and Abu Dhabi —are often cited as such. Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur ; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis ; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon ); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes ; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens , Sparta , Thebes , and Corinth );

1586-539: The Vatican City . 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. The Sovereign State of the Bektashi Order would be surrounded by the suburbs of eastern Tirana and would be the smallest nation in the world . The London independence movement seeks

1647-613: The central Asian cities along the Silk Road ; the city-states of the Swahili coast ; Ragusa ; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov ; and many others. Danish historian Poul Holm has classed the Viking colonial cities in medieval Ireland , most importantly the Kingdom of Dublin , as city-states. In Cyprus , the Phoenician settlement of Kition (in present-day Larnaca)

1708-418: The "greedy, destructive side of capitalism". The Master, however, is rather trapped in his monotonic life of bureaucracy and cronyism , since he is both the chief capitalist and chief politician of the town. On the other hand, Esgaroth does not abandon capitalism after the destruction of Smaug. While the town experiences a new prosperity, the "managerial class" of merchants is not replaced. Although he portrays

1769-581: The 20th century West Berlin , though lacking sovereignty, functioned from 1948 until 1990 as a state legally not belonging to any other state, but ruled by the Western Allies . They allowed – notwithstanding their overlordship as occupant powers – its internal organisation as one state simultaneously being a city, officially called Berlin (West). Though West Berlin maintained close ties to the West German Federal Republic, it never legally formed

1830-577: The Alps in the 19th century. Esgaroth was located in north-eastern Wilderland , a large inland region of Middle-earth . It was situated on the western shores of the Long Lake, close to the inflow of the Forest River . The Forest River provided an upstream route to Mirkwood . The Lonely Mountain , which could be seen from the town and could be reached by travelling up the Long Lake and then up its northern inflow,

1891-590: The British-led occupation of Istanbul recognised Turkey as de jure sovereign, while the Greek occupation of Smyrna was an attempted annexation . The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne re-established Turkish control of both areas. The Shanghai International Settlement (1845–1943) was an international zone with its own legal system, postal service, and currency. The international zone within the city of Tangier , in North Africa

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1952-607: The Mediterranean world and Europe as a whole. During this time, most of the Italian city-states were ruled by one person, such as the Signoria or by a dynasty, such as the House of Gonzaga and the House of Sforza . In the history of Mainland Southeast Asia , aristocratic groups, Buddhist leaders, and others organized settlements into autonomous or semi-autonomous city-states. These were referred to as mueang , and were usually related in

2013-564: The River Running (also called the Celduin). The River Running flowed out of the south of the lake, providing a travel route from Esgaroth all the way downstream to the land of Dorwinion on the Sea of Rhûn . It had been preceded by a larger town, also built over the lake on piles that could still be seen during droughts, but Tolkien never wrote any further account of this. The inhabitants of Esgaroth knew

2074-663: The Vatican ", unable to leave the 0.44 km (0.17 sq mi) papal enclave once they had ascended the papal throne . 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 . Under this treaty, Vatican City was recognized as an independent state, with the Pope as its head. The Vatican City State has its own citizenship , diplomatic corps , flag , and postage stamps . With

2135-595: The author himself explained. In early manuscripts, Tolkien provides a root esek meaning " sedge " or " reed " in the early Elvish language of Ilkorin, but reeds are not mentioned in the description of Lake-town that was published in The Hobbit . The name has been compared to the Sumerian word gi meaning reed. At last the people in a body    To the Town Hall came flocking: 'Tis clear, cried they, our Mayor 's

2196-516: The busiest trans-shipment maritime ports in the world , and fully fledged armed forces to safeguard the nation's sovereignty against potential regional aggressors. Singapore is also referred to as the only island city-state in the world by WorldAtlas. A number of other small states share many of these characteristics, and are sometimes cited as modern city-states. Luxembourg , Djibouti , Qatar , Brunei , Kuwait , Bahrain , and Malta are each politically and economically centered on

2257-428: The centers of diversity for the group occurring in tropical Asia and tropical South America . While sedges grow in almost all environments, many thrive in wetlands , or in poor soils. Ecological communities dominated by sedges are known as sedgelands or as sedge meadows . Some species superficially resemble the closely related rushes and the more distantly related grasses . Features distinguishing members of

2318-555: The city of Fiume (now in Croatia and, since the end of World War II, known as Rijeka ) and rural areas to its north, with a corridor to its west connecting it to Italy . Under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine of 1947, Mandatory Palestine was to be partitioned into three states: a Jewish state of Israel , an Arab state of Palestine , and a corpus separatum ( Latin for " separated body ") consisting of

2379-515: The city of Monaco (each having specific powers) govern the same territory. Though they maintain a small military , largely for ceremonial purposes, they would still have to rely on France for defence in the face of an aggressive power. Singapore is an island city-state in Southeast Asia bordering Malaysia to the north and Indonesia to the south. 6 million people live and work within 728.3 square kilometres (281.2 sq mi), making Singapore

2440-468: The context of the sovereign state to which they belong. Historian Mogens Herman Hansen describes this aspect of self-government as: "The city-state is a self-governing, but not necessarily independent political unit." A city with more limited self-government may be referred to as an independent city . Some non-sovereign cities which have a high degree of autonomy, and have been described as city-states, include: Some cities that are constituent states in

2501-468: The dominant organizational pattern among the various peoples of the Philippine archipelago . These sociopolitical units were sometimes also referred to as barangay states, but are more properly referred to using the technical term polity . Evidence suggests a considerable degree of independence as city states ruled by Datus , Rajahs and Sultans . Early chroniclers record that the name evolved from

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2562-501: The dwarven kings and a new age of prosperity. The unexpected arrival of Thorin therefore causes great excitement among the Esgarothians who immerse "themselves in a fantasy that is only tangentially connected to the old prophecies ... and is almost completely detached from the world around them." The practical Master is capable of adapting to this new situation by assisting in the composition of new songs from which he profits. Eventually it

2623-572: The formation of dauciform (carrot-like) roots; an alteration in root morphology that researchers regard as analogous to cluster roots in Proteaceae , which help uptake of nutrients such as phosphorus from poor soil. Like other members of the order Poales, sedges are mostly wind-pollinated , but there are exceptions. Cyperus niveus and Cyperus sphaerocephalus , both with accordingly more conspicuous flowers, are insect-pollinated. Researchers have identified sedges occurring at least as early as

2684-624: The highly capitalistical town in a bad light, Tolkien does not advocate a socialist system for the reconstructed Lake-town either. Instead the town's situation at the end of The Hobbit has been called an "orderly liberty". The archaeologist Deborah Sabo, in Mythlore , calls the description of Lake-town as Bilbo arrives there "perhaps Tolkien's most vivid attempt to model a place in Middle-earth on real-world archaeology ". She notes that pile dwellings were discovered at Lake Zurich in 1853–1854 when

2745-502: The language of the Men of Esgaroth (in person and place names, etc.) because it is an ancient relative of Old English. Master of Lake-town is the title given to the elected leader of Esgaroth. The Master of the town when Bilbo and Thorin's Company arrived in The Hobbit was portrayed as a capable businessman, but more than a little greedy and cowardly. He was stated as having run off with

2806-507: The language spoken by most of Tolkien's Middle-earth, Westron . Amongst themselves they spoke an ancient form of it, which was loosely related to but distinct from the also-ancient language of the Rohirrim . Tolkien "translated" Westron into English in his text, so to represent the ancient relative of it that the Rohirrim spoke, he substituted Old English . Thus, Tolkien substituted Old Norse for

2867-534: The other ethnic groups), situated between the river and the town of that name, was occupied by Lithuania in the Klaipėda Revolt of 1923. Some proposals for the partition of the Ottoman Empire envisaged international zones at Istanbul /Constantinople or the wider Turkish straits , and possibly also at İzmir /Smyrna. Although the allies of World War I occupied both after the 1918 Armistice of Mudros ,

2928-459: The past as far better than the present , and that after Smaug has fallen, dying, on the town, destroying it, people avoid the place: "few dared to cross the cursed spot, and none dared to dive into the shivering water or recover the precious stones that fell from his rotting carcase." She states that in this passage, Tolkien is projecting the tale into the future, when the new town too will be an archaeological site, complete with folklore beliefs about

2989-579: The poem, and that in 1931 he wrote a satirical poem called "Progress in Bimble Town" dedicated to the "Mayor and Corporation". Esgaroth has been interpreted as Tolkien's criticism of capitalism featuring a ruling elite class that exploits the lower-class citizens. The human Master of Lake-Town, like the Dwarf Thorin Oakenshield who has become obsessed with the dragon's hoard, and the dragon Smaug himself, may all three be seen as illustrations of

3050-455: The raft, has been added. The text of The Hobbit states that night had fallen and the Men of the town had gone indoors to eat, while in the drawing, it is still day and swan-headed boats (based, they note, on those in Tolkien's painting The Halls of Manwë for The Silmarillion ) are still being rowed about the lake. Compared to Dale, the other town in the valley of the River Running, Esgaroth

3111-426: The resources to defend themselves against incursions by larger states (such as Roman conquest of Greece). Thus they inevitably gave way to larger organisations of society, including the empire and the nation-state . 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

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3172-470: The sedge family from grasses or rushes are stems with triangular cross-sections (with occasional exceptions, a notable example being the tule which has a round cross-section) and leaves that are spirally arranged in three ranks . In comparison, grasses have alternate leaves, forming two ranks. This leads to the mnemonic "sedges have edges," in order to tell them apart from generally round rushes or hollow, nodded grasses . Some well-known sedges include

3233-435: The settlement of Esgaroth is featured in the campaign and available for skirmish. City-state List of forms of government A city-state is an independent sovereign city which serves as the center of political, economic, and cultural life over its contiguous territory. They have existed in many parts of the world since the dawn of history, including cities such as Rome , Carthage , Athens and Sparta and

3294-412: The sparsely-populated Éislek forest of northern Luxembourg). Occasionally, microstates with high population densities such as San Marino are cited as city-states, despite lacking a large urban centre. Some cities or urban areas, while not sovereign states, may nevertheless be constituent states of a federation , or enjoy a high degree of autonomy. As such, they function as "city-states" within

3355-522: 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. The Free City of Danzig was a semi- autonomous city-state that existed between 1920 and 1939, consisting of the Baltic Sea port of Danzig (now Gdańsk , Poland ) and nearly 200 towns in the surrounding areas. It was created on 15 November 1920 under

3416-425: The terms of Article 100 (Section XI of Part III) of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the end of World War I . After a prolonged period where the city of Fiume enjoyed considerable autonomy under Habsburg rule (see Corpus separatum (Fiume) ), The Free State of Fiume was proclaimed as a fully independent free state which existed between 1920 and 1924. Its territory of 28 km (11 sq mi) comprised

3477-542: The water chestnut ( Eleocharis dulcis ) and the papyrus sedge ( Cyperus papyrus ), from which the writing material papyrus was made. This family also includes cotton-grass ( Eriophorum ), spike-rush ( Eleocharis ), sawgrass ( Cladium ), nutsedge or nutgrass (also called chufa, Cyperus esculentus / Cyperus rotundus , a cultivated crop and common weed), white star sedge ( Rhynchospora colorata ), and umbrella sedge ( Cyperus alternifolius ), also known as umbrella papyrus Members of this family are characterised by

3538-449: The water level was unusually low; Ferdinand Keller proposed that the village had been constructed on a platform on piles over the lake, creating "a sensation". By 1900, some hundreds of lake villages had been identified from Britain and Europe, and in a "lake-dwelling craze", children's books and newspaper and magazine articles provided pictures and descriptions of lake villages. In addition, Sabo writes that Tolkien characteristically viewed

3599-647: Was a city-state that existed from around 800 BC until the end of the 4th century BC. Some of the most well-known examples of city-state culture in human history are the ancient Greek city-states and the merchant city-states of Renaissance Italy , which organised themselves as independent centers. The success of regional units coexisting as autonomous actors in loose geographical and cultural unity, as in Italy and Greece , often prevented their amalgamation into larger national units. However, such small political entities often survived only for short periods because they lacked

3660-691: Was an independent territory situated in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, facing the north part of the Adriatic Sea, under direct responsibility of the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II, from 1947 to 1954. The UN attempted to make the Free Territory of Trieste into a city state, but it never gained real independence and in 1954 its territory was divided between Italy and Yugoslavia . In

3721-558: Was approximately 373 km (144 sq mi). It was at first under the joint administration of France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, plus later Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. The international zone was initially attached to Morocco. It then became a French-Spanish protectorate from 1923 until 29 October 1956, when it was reintegrated into the state of Morocco. The Free Territory of Trieste

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