Change-Transformation And Critique of Urban Spaces Urban Spaces: Typology, Media, Art and New Perspectives

Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Istanbul would lose its position as capital yet remain a crucial urban centre in the new Turkish republic. Since the 1950s it has undergone a metamorphosis from a mid-sized city to a megapolis. Beyoglu, historically represented as its most 'cosmopolitan' district and home to European embassies and cultural institutions, is a microcosm of these changes. This book explores the urban history of Beyoglu via a series of case studies which use previously unexamined archival material to tell the story of its local and international institutions. From the German Teutonia club and a centre point of Turkey's cinema culture to influential francophone, British and German schools which educated many of Turkey's future elite, the book charts the shifting identities of the residents of the district. These case studies reveal the effects of changing political circumstances, from the rise of nationalism to Turkey's place in the Cold War, as well as critically examining Beyoglu's legacy as a multicultural centre. In the process, the book reveals a picture of resilience, cross-cultural contact and provides an important contribution to our understanding of present-day and historical Istanbul and Beyoglu.

Bringing together cultural, economic and social historians from across Europe and beyond, this volume offers a consideration from a number of perspectives of the principal forces that further integrated the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe during the first century of industrialisation. The essays not only review and analyse the commercial, financial and monetary factors, negative as well as positive, that bore upon the region's initial stages of modern transformation, but also provide a ready introduction to major aspects the economy and society of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. The outcome is a broad ranging consideration of how all these issues played a fundamental role in the final decades of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of Turkey as a modern state with links to both east and west.