Urban infrastructure between local networks and the wider world: the tramway in late-Ottoman Aleppo

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URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10900/130888
http://dx.doi.org/10.15496/publikation-72248
Dokumentart: Buch (einzelnes Kapitel)
Date: 2023-02
Source: Ben-Bassat, Yuval; Büssow, Johann: From the Household to the Wider World. Tübingen University Press 2022
Language: English
Other Keywords: Aleppo
infrastructure
tramway
Ottoman Tanzimat reforms
concessions
European investment in the Middle East
notables
factionalism
License: Creative Commons - Attribution, Non Commercial, No Derivs
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Inhaltszusammenfassung:

Conflicts over infrastructure are highly informative to historians because they produce abundant archival material and constitute moments of explicit display of intention by the actors and institutions involved, and expose political, economic, institutional, faction- al and geopolitical rivalries. This chapter focuses on conflicts related to the construction of the first tram lines in Aleppo during the late Ottoman period. After presenting several meth- odological issues related to infrastructure studies in urban history and other Ottoman cities, it is shown that in Aleppo, the study of tramway plans reveals the transformation of factional networks in an age of institutional and technical modernization. It centers on the ways in which local notables interacted with imperial governors and economic interests when nego- tiating the implementation of infrastructural works. It also investigates how urban planning, infrastructure, and networks of power and clientele were linked in a process that was cru- cial to the definition of new modalities of integration of Aleppo into the world economy. The discussion explores the notion of the “public good” and its evolution in this context.

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