It was generally considered a good idea, when 25 miles was a good day’s journey, to have the capital somewhere near the middle of the state. In many cases, the state’s big city or cities are on the coast or a river at or near the edge of the state. Raleigh, for example, was located where it was simply because the law providing for a new state capital required that it be located within 10 miles of Lane’s Tavern, a standard meeting place roughly equidistant between the coastal cities and Charlotte. Columbia was likewise equidistant between Charleston and the Low Country on the one hand and the Upper Country around Greenville and Spartansburg on the other.
Often the capital was located not in the big city or one of the big cities simply as a compromise between the big city and the rural areas (which were for many years a much higher percentage of nearly all states’ populations) – cf. Albany – or as a compromise between two big cities, or between them and the politically powerful rural areas. Jefferson City has the advantages of being on the main road between St. Louis and Kansas City and roughly in the middle, minimizing travel times from both big cities and from the north and south of the state.
Other historical influences important at the time but no longer so sometimes played an influence. While I know this was the case with several sitings, the only one I’m certain of off the top of my head is Juneau – and the disputes between Panhandle and Mainland are not something I recall clearly enough to spell out. (After noting a previous post, add Tallahassee as another example – the southern part of the state being relatively unpopulated and the two large cities being in the north, with the capital equidistant between them.)
(1) Capital in centralized location (important during the days when everyone traveled by horseback and the Internet didn’t exist.)
(2) A compromise between rural & urban interests.
(3) Stimulating growth in some backwater city, thus giving the state an extra commerce center.
(4) Somebody ponied up the money to build a shiny white building with a domed roof.
I’ll add another from the last time this went around:
Desire to avoid conflict of interest by making the capital have no significant business other than government. Sometimes accomplished for national capitals by simply building a new city to be the capital. Such as Washington, DC. Which was also located in its own federal district so that it wouldn’t be in any of the states.
The 50 state capitals came about for 50 different, varied reasons. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “create an isolated government enclave” thinking played into a couple of them.
Juneau, AK was a logical choice as territorial capital in an era when most of Alaska’s commerce with the rest of the world was by ship. Particularly since cabotage laws tied the territory to Seattle, WA. By the time it was made a state, Juneau was established.
Sure Richmond’s central location of provided better routes for commerce as the population moved away from the Chesapeake Bay and tributaries - but I think the (a? this being GQ) big reason for the move THEN is that it isolated the State Government better from attacks by the English (1) and it says to the World that humptey dumpty is never being put back together again - because remember that it was established as a Capital by a revolutionary government in rebellion against the royal Governor in Williamsburg (appropos of little it was a Government established when the Governor flees in 1775 after the state explodes when he issues a proclamation that promises freedom to Slaves who leave Patriot masters and join Crown forces).
Cool as Annapolis is, it was pretty much chosen and built up like D.C." i.e. renamed pre-existing communities were joined, a city was totally planned out on top of what was there, Government in a central place built for political reasons comes to be - just it happens in 1695 abit more than 100 years before D.C. follows the same pattern (2)
During that era, the CA legislature was being called “the legislature on wheels”. Possibly more dignified than “the legislature of 1000 drinks”, which was a name attached to it while it was in San Jose:
The big difference between state capitols and national capitols is that, in many cases, the capitol city predated the nation by centuries, if not millennia. London, Paris, Baghdad, Athens, etc. were culturally and politically dominant in their regions long before the concept of the nation state became the norm. Particularly in Europe, the nation states were consolidated by civil authorities in these cities, and it was natural for these cities to remain the epicenter of power in the newly created states.
US states have a quite different history. Rather than being the product of centuries of cultural and political consolidation around a central city, they were created by fiat through royal grants, territorial ordinances, etc. Even where there was a dominant city, the civil authorities were not as historically wedded to it. This made it easier to move the state capitol, for the reasons that have already been cited.
Chicago already thinks it’s the center of the [del]universe[/del] state. If the state capital were officially moved there, I hate to think how short the end of the stick would be that the rest of the state would get.
In many cases, the seat of government was moved to the largest city just to make it more impressive, and of course, because it was not uncommon in Europe to have only one real city in the entire nation. In English history, for example, there simply were few comforts found outside London. If you wanted trade goods, London it was. Aside from which, in an era before the telegraph and later telephone, how else would you keep in touch with the world except at a large port?
Berlin was a historical accident (and one that irks Hamburg and Munich to no end). It was the seat of the (tiny) Prussian government, and for that sole reason became the seat of the new national government in the 1870’s. But the city at the time was quite small - smaller than many mid-level regional cities today. It exploded into growth only thereafter.
South Africa has three capitals: Pretoria (executive; a suburb, more or less, of the largest city, Johannesburg), Cape Town (legislative) and Bloomfontein (judicial).
A capitol is a building, usually American, in which a government meets.
As to the question, I always wondered this too until I examined maps of the states that chose Podunk as the state capital. They’re almost invariably more central than the big city (or in the case of Tallahassee, they were more central at the time.) In the 19th century, that was more important. If the USA had formed in the 20th century, it would never have occurred to anyone to move the capital from Philadelphia because there would not have been any logistical reason to do so.
