For the commercial node point city of the recent era, see global city.

An international city is an autonomous or semi-autonomous city-state that is separate from the direct supervision of a single nation-state.

Contents 1 Rationale for establishment 2 Instruments of state, governance 3 Status of Jerusalem 4 Examples 5 Notes 6 References

[edit] Rationale for establishment

International cities had either had one or both of the following characteristics:

(1) They were ethnically mixed.

(2) Authority over the city had previously been contested by different nation-states.

International cities were established mainly in the 1920s and in the 1940s, following World War I and World War II.

[edit] Instruments of state, governance

Some international cities, such as the Free City of Danzig and the Free Territory of Trieste, had their own currency and practiced tariff-free trade.^[1]

These international cities had limited self-governance (as in Danzig, with supervision from the League of Nations), or they were administered by a body of representatives from external nation-states (as in the city of Shanghai from 1845-1944 and the International Zone of Tangiers from 1923 to 1957). ^[2]

[edit] Status of Jerusalem

The United Nations envisioned making Jerusalem into an international city with UN General Assembly Resolution 194 in 1948.^[3]

Pope Pius XII supported this idea in the 1949 encyclical Redemptoris Nostri Cruciatus. It was later re-proposed during the papacies of John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II.

[edit] Examples

• Danzig, contested by Germany and Poland^[4]
• Tangiers, contested by Spain, France, the United Kingdom and others^[4]
• Trieste, contested by Italy and Yugoslavia^[4]

[edit] Notes

[edit] References