Einleitung: Die osmanische Stadt im Wandel (1850-1920)

Abstract

The introduction to the thematic issue on the Ottoman city in transition sketches the main lines of Ottoman urban development in the modern age. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman government created modern municipalities as a new administrative framework first for Istanbul and than for other cities in the Balkans, Anatolia, the Middle East and North Africa. However, as recent research has shown municipal administration was closely connected to older forms of urban governance that relied on elements of local self-administration. These municipalities also organised the modernisation of urban infrastructures and utilities, which in particular transformed Ottoman port cities. Today, this phase of Ottoman urban modernisation is largely forgotten, also because it was consciously erased by the Ottoman successor states. With this thematic issue, it is our aim to re-insert the Ottoman example into the ongoing discussion on the origins and scope of modernity.