Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914.

• Author: Watenpaugh, Heghnar
• Position: Studies in Modernity and National Identity - Book review

Empire, Architecture, and the City: French-Ottoman Encounters, 1830-1914. By ZEYNEP CELIK. Studies in Modernity and National Identity. Seattle: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS, 2008. Pp. xiii + 368, color illus. $60.

Zeynep Celik's new book masterfully weaves together urban and architectural studies with cultural and intellectual history in what will stand as a key contribution to the study of imperialism and modernity. Taking a cross-cultural and comparative approach, the book analyzes how the French and Ottoman states staged their respective visions of empire through the construction of public space. From France's conquest of Algeria in 1830 and the Ottoman empire's promulgation of the Reform Edict (Tanzimat) in 1839 to the end of World War I, the two empires' interests were particularly entwined. Celik unpacks their complex interactions over a territory that includes France's colonies in North Africa--Algeria and Tunisia, both former Ottoman provinces--and the Ottoman empire's Arab provinces (excluding Egypt). The book centers on urban and architectural transformations, and is informed by the development of visual culture, especially photography, and discursive culture, in particular debates about urbanism, civilization, modernization, and the imperial project. As an architectural historian whose previous publications have made important contributions to the history of modern Istanbul and Algiers, the representation of Islam at world's fairs, and the gendered underpinnings of colonial architecture and Orientalist discourse, Zeynep Celik is uniquely positioned to undertake a study of this scope and conceptual ambition.

The book is not structured chronologically but on the basis of thematic chapters that focus on specific aspects of empire-building, revisiting some of the same places and projects from different points of view. The themes include the importance of infrastructure in the project of modernization and the making of empire, such as roads, railroads, and telegraph lines: major urban transformation projects; the creation of new types of public spaces and administrative buildings in cities: constructions that promoted modernization agendas, such as barracks, schools, and hospitals; the development of official architectural styles and memorials; and public ceremonies that animated the new constructions and sought to amplify and reiterate their messages.

One of the must important achievements of this book is that it de-centers the traditional primacy of European colonialism, and brings nuance to the received notion that the Ottomans emulated the imperial practices of France and other European states. Instead, the book views French and Ottoman imperial ambitions as being comparable, if not wholly symmetrical, and as being in dialogue with each other (p. 5). And unlike many studies of colonialism, the present work considers how empire was staged at the margins rather than at the imperial capital (p. 4). This lens shows more complicated notions of empire and colonialism; at the same time, it underscores how modular and pervasive certain technologies and forms of empire-building were in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the French and the Ottomans similarly deployed railroads, telegraphs, public education, urban renewal, historic...