Power or Leisure? Remarks on the Architecture of the European Summer Embassies on the Bosphorus Shore

Abstract

AbstractThis study is part of a larger project on theLandscapes of the Eastern Question, contextualizing the architecture of diplomacy in İstanbul as a symbolic and material refraction of changing power balances and representational strategies. In Beyoğlu, where most of the main diplomatic residences were located, the embassies were originally Ottoman woodenkonakstructures, but, in time, the increasing influence of Russia, Great Britain and France fostered their monumentalization and the adoption of European academic classicism. By contrast, the summer embassies on the European shore of the Bosphorus remained largely local in terms of technology, image, materials, and spatial layout until the end of the Ottoman Empire. The paper argues that, for many diplomats, a stately winter residence representing national identity, along with a summer house in the spirit of the local traditions, would be used as a communicative and performative resource in the drama of European-Ottoman relations. It also evaluates foreign settlement on the northern shore of the Bosphorus as conforming to a strategy of surveillance and control in keeping with the strategic relevance and contested status of the straits.