Vol. 32, September 2021.
Have you published something new in Global Urban History?
We'd like our members to know. Contact Ayan Meer with details.
GUHP is now a member-supported organization. To join or renew your membership, visit our Homepage. | | As Night Falls. Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Cities after Dark.
by Avner Wishnitzer
(Cambridge University Press, 2021)
In a world that is constantly awake, illuminated and exposed, there is much to gain from looking into the darkness of times past. This fascinating and vivid picture of nocturnal life in Middle Eastern cities shows that the night in the eighteenth-century Ottoman Empire created unique conditions for economic, criminal, political, devotional and leisurely pursuits. Offering the possibility of livelihood and brotherhood, pleasure and refuge; the darkness allowed confiding, hiding and conspiring - activities which had far-reaching consequences on Ottoman state and society in the early modern period. The book demonstrates how fundamental these nocturnal hours have been in shaping the major social, cultural and political processes in the early modern Middle East. [more] | | | | A Velvet Empire. French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century
by David Todd
(Princeton University Press, 2021)
This book is a global history of French imperialism in the nineteenth century, providing new insights into the mechanisms of imperial collaboration that extended France’s power from the Middle East to Latin America and ushered in the modern age of globalization. The author shows how French elites pursued a cunning strategy of imperial expansion in which conspicuous commodities such as champagne and silk textiles, together with loans to client states, contributed to a global campaign of seduction. French imperialism was no less brutal than that of the British. But while Britain widened its imperial reach through settler colonialism and the acquisition of far-flung territories, France built a “velvet” empire backed by frequent military interventions and a broadening extraterritorial jurisdiction. [more] | | | | "Global Cities in Analog: Modernism and Inter-City Relations, 1900-1940"
by Joshua K. Leon
Journal of Urban History, Summer 2021
This article reflects on modernism from 1900 to 1940 on globalist terms. The turn of the 20th century was a period of rapid urbanization, intellectual foment, labor politics, and severe colonial relations. Its upheavals formed the context for modernist approaches to city building. It was also a period of interconnectedness where modernisms coalesced. Global cities studies, the research program most responsible for conceptualizing urban networks, have little to say about the modernist period that prefigured the global city. This article breaks this barrier in global cities studies, which equate global cities with the advent of digital linkages.
[Access the article here]
| | | | "Haphazard urbanisation: Urban informality, politics and power in Egypt"
by Deen Sharp
Urban Studies, Summer 2021
The Egyptian military regime of Abd al-Fattah el-Sisi has announced as part of its Vision 2030 its intention to eliminate informal urban areas. The regime has identified these areas – commonly known by the Arabic term ‘ashwa’iyyat (which means haphazard) – as a threat to the nation. The Egyptian state, however, has no clear conception of what urban informality constitutes or what exactly it is eradicating. To understand how and why the state has placed urban informality as central to its politics, the author contends that we have to examine the political processes through which this uncertain yet powerful concept is produced.
[Access the article here]
| | | | Real Estate and Global Urban History
Interview with Alexia Yates
"Real estate is everywhere in urban history, but at the same time, it’s nowhere. It’s rarely explored or explained – turned into a historical problem"
To mark the publication of new contributions to our Cambridge Elements in Global History series, we will feature interviews with authors and share short excerpts from their work. Here, series co-editor Joseph Ben Prestel interviews Alexia Yates, the author of our second Element, Real Estate and Global Urban History (2021). Alexia Yates is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Manchester and author of Selling Paris. Property and Commercial Culture in the Fin-de-Siècle Capital (Harvard UP, 2015). An excerpt of Real Estate and Global Urban History follows the interview. [Access the article here]
| | | Le Monde Diplomatique
Cartography
French periodical Le Monde Diplomatique provides access to its cartographic archive, featuring a vast selection of thematically and regionally sorted maps. [Access the maps here]
| Related Networks and Events
| | Webinar Series - September 2021
"Reflecting on German (Post)Colonial Connections"
Dr. Minu Haschemi Yekani (Freie Universität Berlin), Dr. Dörte Lerp (Freie Universität Berlin) and Dr. Janne Lahti (University of Helsinki) are organizing a webinar series called Reflecting on German (Post)Colonial Connections. The webinar series consists of four events that build up the discussion on German colonial legacies. The aim of this webinar series is to set out to bridge divides between the past and present, between different national histories, between academic specializations, and between academic and non-academic sectors. In short, the organizers intend to span temporal, national, epochal, and sectional divides. They take up recent debates on German colonial histories and legacies, and advance discussions on them in a transnational, multidisciplinary, and intersectional framing. [more]
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