Nationalising the imperial capital

The history of modern Istanbul, like the history of modern Turkey, begins with the end of the First World War and the demise of the Ottoman Empire. The city that became Istanbul was, famously, established as an imperial capital – the new Rome that would take over the functions of the seat of empire from the decrepit old Rome. The geography of the seas and continents surrounding the city made it a natural focus, which in the longue durée would assert itself as the centre of networks whose nature and relative weight changed in time, but whose topographies exhibited continuity. Over the thousand years of its Byzantine incarnation the city’s fortunes waxed and waned, until it was reduced to a dependency of Genoa after the ravages imposed by the Latins during the Fourth Crusade (1204–61). The Ottoman dynasty revived Istanbul’s centrality to the larger Eurasian region and helped resuscitate its economy, not only as a trading post, but also as a centre of what we would today call cultural industries – education, books, the higher arts and exclusive items of consumption for the wealthy. The city’s size soon came to dwarf any competitor in the entire Middle East and the Balkans; its imperial riches and the consumption capacity of its inhabitants made it into the largest marketplace in that region.