Transforming a Late-Ottoman Port-City: Salonica, 1876–1912

Abstract

This chapter locates the transformation of late Ottoman Salonica within the interplay between European influences. It charts the transformation of late Ottoman Salonica on the level where it was most evident, that of urban space, a concept that includes changes in the actual cityscape; the way in which the transformed spaces were experienced and lived; those social relations which made urban change possible; and, finally, the ideology which underlay this process. The process of urban transformation, with its symbolic importance as well as the significant economic gains it produced, allowed for an understanding between the Ottoman administration and the elites of the city, and this consensus between state and civil society dominated the local political and economic life until its demise after the Young Turk Revolution (1908) and the incorporation of Salonica into the Greek state after the Balkan Wars (1912-1913). Keywords: Balkan Wars; civil society; Greek; Ottoman Salonica; Young Turk Revolution