Capitalistic Urbanization in Late Ottoman Istanbul: Armenian Agencies

In lieu of an abstract:Few periods in the imperial history of Istanbul saw as spectacular a building boom as thelong nineteenth century. A host of building typologies, some totally new others age-old,dotted Istanbul’s urban landscape at a pace and an intensity rarely, if ever, seen in the city’sOttoman and Byzantine history. Their scales transgressed the classical restrictions andcodes of decorum formulated in the sixteenth century. Their styles expressed diverse andconflicting identities and political aspirations. Palatial complexes and mosques; embassies,banks, and department stores; railway stations, high schools, and churches; apartmentbuildings and ferry stations; and various infrastructural projects marked the advent of themodern era in Istanbul with vibrancy, dynamism, and hope as well as crises, contradictions,and inequalities.Studies on the late Ottoman urban history of Istanbul have burgeoned in the past threedecades. These studies have significantly expanded our knowledge on the dynamics ofIstanbul’s urban modernization, demonstrating the ways in which the buildings andinfrastructures crisscrossing the Ottoman capital embodied larger imperial and globaltransformations of the nineteenth century. We have learnt a lot about the municipalinstitutions, legal regulations, European inspirations and local domestications, grand plans,post-fire regulations, monumental buildings, stylistic issues, and communal and imperialagendas.1 The more we learn about late Ottoman Istanbul, however, the more pressingbecomes the need to address some fundamental methodological issues and to explore somecrucial but still largely uncharted territories....