Infrastructure in the Making: The Ottoman Railway Company as Portrayed by the Smyrna Mail

Elvan Cobb*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Chapter in book/report/conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

    Abstract

    The Smyrna Mail, Izmir's weekly, English-language newspaper was published between 23 September 1862 and 21 May 1864. Despite its short run, the Smyrna Mail covered the frenzied years of railway construction in Izmir, a major modernisation endeavour that reshaped this important port city of the eastern Mediterranean. The Smyrna Mail provides an intimate, albeit biased and British-focused, look at the railway enterprise. Its articles often offer glimpses into the immediate effects of this massive infrastructural project on the ordinary lives of the people involved in its making, especially illuminating the social practices of the British who had moved their abodes to the Ottoman Empire due to their involvement in the railway. At the same time, the coverage of the Smyrna Mail reveals the crystallizing Ottoman agencies vis-à-vis the railway. These two parallel processes, as revealed through the pages of the Smyrna Mail, expand our knowledge of life that was transpiring around the building of the railway while exposing the dynamic power balances at play.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe Built Environment through the Prism of the Colonial Periodical Press
    EditorsAlice Santiago Faria, Anne Shelley, Sandra Ataíde Lobo
    Place of PublicationNew York; Oxon
    PublisherRoutledge
    Chapter3
    Pages56-76
    Number of pages21
    Edition1st
    ISBN (Electronic)9781003333180
    ISBN (Print)9781032356709, 9781032366722
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 29 Dec 2022

    Publication series

    NameRoutledge Studies in Cultural History

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Arts and Humanities(all)

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Infrastructure in the Making: The Ottoman Railway Company as Portrayed by the Smyrna Mail'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this