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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.

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.

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]

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.

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 ]}
• Berwick-Upon-Tweed, formerly contested by Scotland and England.

Notes