In most countries the capital is usually either the biggest or the most important city. But your states often have much smaller cities as capital than the big ones. Albany instead of NYC, Springfield instead of Chicago etc. Is there a specific reason for that? Being in the middle of the state for example?
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You have it right. It’s so they can be in/near the center of the state
I’d venture that just cause a city was the state capital, that didn’t make it the most important city over time. Looking at California, Sacramento is the state capital and it was selected (1854) largely due to being conveniently accessed by rivers and being a key location in the gold rush economy.
It would be like 40 more years until LA really started growing. So, it was an obvious choice in the 1850s. Just, over time, other things became more important (media, oil, trade, manufacturing in Los Angeles, tech and engineering in San Francisco) and those cities grew faster
In some cases the state capital was specifically chosen to be a smaller town, so that not all power and wealth would be concentrated in one place, and so that people governing could have “less distractions”.
A lot of it is because of what cities were large/important *when the capital was being chosen*, which was in the 18-19th century. They had no way of knowing what city would become the most populous over 200 years later.
Edited to add:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lram98/a_strange_thing_i_noticed_about_us_states_is_that/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/lram98/a_strange_thing_i_noticed_about_us_states_is_that/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qlsb2w/why_are_us_state_capitals_often_smaller_towns/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/qlsb2w/why_are_us_state_capitals_often_smaller_towns/)
In addition to everything else, some states had two or more rival cities that both wanted to be the capital, and so ended up agreeing to make a smaller city the capital as a compromise solution
Most of em where purpose built for location so as many citizens as possible have easy access to the center of power. European nations have centers of power that built nations around them
Decentralization of power. Americans are rather fond of the idea.
Yes, unlike many countries, we had to make decisions about capitals often before there was an overwhelmingly obvious choice because the state histories were very short. When a country is a thousand years old the chances are some choices are very obvious. It wasn’t always so with states.
And as others have said, sometimes it *was* the obvious choice at the time and then economic trends changed the importance of cities relative to each other.
Others were chosen for democratic reasons to be fair to all the state’s residents by not favoring one large city over everyone else. Some were chosen for a central location, which is a variation of the same thing.
The capital of Georgia is where it is because the city’s business leaders and city officials donated land and the free use of buildings for the state government, if they agreed to relocate there. They did.
I actually think it’s kind of detrimental that in many countries the capital dominates government and every single industry. It often creates a serious imbalance in the economy and the lives of different citizens. And the population distribution. We have all that spread out over many different cities. We have several financial/banking capitals, two music capitals, an oil capital (or two), an entertainment capital, a news capital, a technology capital (or two), a publishing capital, a government capital, etc., etc. etc. That seems healthier.
Historical. Bonn was capital of West Germany for a reason (partially the only city not bombed into oblivion). Sorta similar reasons.
Capitals are capitals when x or y makes sense during p or q period.
State capitals are often geographically central in their state so travel too and from was not too cumbersome for half of the state, were intentionally not the largest city so one city didn’t dominate financial and politically, and finally, you are looking at cities through the lense of today. Roll back to the year 1776 for New York and look at populations and it’s not so “obvious” NYC only had 25,000 people…
And as for the national capital, it was central to the country as it was at the time.
In many states the capital city was chosen around the time they became a state so what was important then might have been different to modern times. The city chosen probably had some strategic advantage of location at the time like being an important trading post or fort, more centrally located or politically important at the time.
There are usually very good reasons you would have to read a lot of history about to get.
Albany was selected over NYC because of endemic corruption. (We also have a pretty robust civil service system). On which books and books were written. While we still have too much corruption, it is hard to say if it is less than it would have been.
Probably so.
Just to emphasize another comment on geography…
Territories and states need places for legislatures to meet. Legislatures didn’t meet all year (as is still true in states like Texas). So representatives needed to travel, slowly and uncomfortably. Before cars and planes, you might as well not have a territory/state if it’s impractical for far-flung lawmakers to get to the capital. You had to choose something central. Glancing at the U.S. map, I think that’s the case for every post-colonial state. (Even the east coast colonies had something similar, but to the extent the British needed administrative access.)
And within the states are counties and the county has their seats of government. Tada
for pennsylvania specifically, neither of the two largest cities make much sense as the state capital since they’re not centrally located. pittsburgh is in the western part of the state. it’s on the other side of the appalachians from the eastern half of pa which, in the early 1800s, was probably A Big Deal for travel. and philadelphia is just about as far southeast as you can go without leaving pa.
Carson City was chosen as the capital of Nevada over 50 years before Las Vegas was founded.
In the case of Chicago, it became a prominent city after the establishment of the capital in Illinois. Chicago grew later due to being well positioned for industry and shipping (back when US steel was world renowned, a lot of it was produced and shipped out from the Chicagoland region for example). It’s a hub connecting the Great Lakes with rivers that go further inland.
Something similar happened more recently in Houston. It exploded in size and population somewhere in the 80s and 90s largely due to an influx of industry. It’s location was also picked initially for those industries because it’s a coastal town, but far enough inland to be somewhat protected from hurricanes (some industries had tried to settle in the more coastal town of Galveston but they moved to Houston after a major hurricane wiped out the town).
People move to these cities because they’re well positioned for certain jobs.
Meanwhile, often capitol cities are picked specifically to be centrally located, or at least readily reachable by most of the people living in the state. Or they’re put in position for historical reasons.
Basically capitol cities are picked for political reasons, big cities for the practicalities of commerce.
Some were a very important city when they were chosen but things have changed since, and some were chosen for geographic convenience rather than themselves being particularly important.
For example, in PA, the two biggest cities are on opposite ends of the state. Harrisburg, the capital, is between them (a bit closer to Philly, but can’t expect perfection here).
There’s often a lot of local history that goes into why. Indiana for instance has some interesting history. Indianapolis is now the capital and the most populous city. It was a completely planned city. It is dead center in the state and was laid out on a grid with diagonal avenues by the same guy who helped lay out Washington DC, Alexander Ralston who is actually buried in Crown Hill cemetery in Indianapolis.
The original capital was Corydon, IN which was down south on the Ohio River and near the canals. That was at a time when rivers and canals were far more important than they are today.
Once Indianapolis was made the capital that is where the National and Michigan roads went through and the rail lines went through which became far more important than the Ohio River and canals. So Indianapolis seems like the natural choice but it wasn’t back in 1821.
Because it wasn’t obvious 250 years ago. You’re missing important factors such as:
* America used to be much more rural and land = power. Albany was home to one of the most powerful families in NY at the time, the Clintons (no relation to Hillary)
* Capital cities were once comparatively large cities back then. Albany was a top 10 US city for the first 75 years of the US’s existence
* The Capital City is older than the current largest city – also see Albany
* Capital cities were chosen at a time before the automobile and were largely chosen as a centralized location since it could take days to get there.
* Capital cities were sometime a compromise in cases where states had multiple large population centers. See Ohio or Missouri.
Also, big cities don’t always make for good capitals. NYC doesn’t need more land dedicated to sprawling government offices. Nor does it need the jobs.
It’s not hard to get to Albany.
They might be the obvious choice today but not necessarily when the state/territory was incorporated 100+ years ago.
And in many cases a state’s political capital was specifically chosen *not* to be the main economic center because those cities already have outsized influence on state politics. In some cases (Michigan, for example) a relatively minor city was chosen as a compromise candidate between competing interests.
Also, a capital city being centrally located was a real concern before the innovation of mass transit.
Some state capitals have remained fixed, while others have moved based on needs at the time and anticipated trends in population. For example, Georgia:
* Savannah (colonial era – 1796)
* Louisville (1796-1804)
* Milledgeville (1804-1868)
* Atlanta (1868-present)
North Carolina moved it’s capital because having it on the coast was not as defensible in case of invasion, and there was a tavern close to Raleigh legislators liked to drink at.
In some cases, it was considered best to have the capital city near the center of the state, so it wasn’t too hard for people to reach it.
In other cases, that might have been the most important city, but it isn’t now. A major railroad hub might have been important in the 1800s, but after people started driving and flying, it became more important to be near a river or other resource.
A lot of states didn’t have big cities when they were incorporated and so they usually tried to chose an area that was centrally located (Columbus, OH) or easily accessible by river or rail (Sacramento, CA).
New Orleans used to be the capital of Louisiana until state representatives feared it might become a breakaway from Louisiana. Small reasons like that usually are the answer.
In Oregon, the main rivals for the capital were all in the Willamette Valley where the majority of the population lived (and still live): Oregon City, which was near Portland at the fall line of the Willamette River in the north and, at the time, the dominant population center; Salem, a small city in the central part of the Valley; and Corvallis (Marysville), which was even farther south.
The Whigs/Republicans, who held a slight majority, were dead set on Oregon City, but the lure of compromise was too great. Salem eventually got the nod, but not without a few moves back and forth. Corvallis got the land grant college instead.
Most state capitals were picked in an era where there were very few people living in the state and/or the state was extremely rural.
For Minnesota, it’s because St. Paul sits a few miles below the head of navigation for the Mississippi River, and was easy to get to by steamboat in the mid 1800s, along with the fact that it sits on a spit of land surrounded by massive rivers on 3 sides (St. Croix to the east, Mississippi to the west and south), and has a massive fort just across the river to its southwest. The only way to get to it by land is from the north, which historically was mostly uninhabited forest or fur trading outposts.
Minneapolis sat across the river and was exposed to the west, and only the south end of the city was accessible from the river. St. Anthony Falls marked the end of navigation on the Mississippi until the construction of the locks almost 100 years later. These locks allowed for Minneapolis to be a milling powerhouse, hence being home to General Mills and other food suppliers.
The Mississippi River’s floodplain and valley is much wider at St. Paul as well, spanning a couple miles, vs being in a gorge by the time you get to Minneapolis. This allows for the railroads to run right up along the river at the bottom of the valley vs having to run inland and immediately cross the river.
Harrisburg was chosen for Pennsylvania because it is more central to the state while also having access to the Susquehanna River.