Germany and the Ottoman Railways: Art, Empire, and Infrastructure

205 Pages·2017·27.451 MB·English

by  Peter H. Christensen

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Peter H. Christensen is Assistant Professor of Germany and the
Art History at the University ofRochester.
Ottoman Railways
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Art, Empire, and Infrastructure
e
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m
Peter H. CHristensen
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y

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With lines extending from Bosnia to Baghdad to
n
Medina, the Ottoman Railway Network (1868–
d
1919) was the pride of the empire and its ultimate

t
h emblem of modernization—yet it was largely
e designed and bankrolled by German corpora-

O tions. This exemplifies a uniquely ambiguous
colonial condition in which the interests of
t
t
Germany and the Ottoman Empire were in
o
m constant flux. German capitalists and cultural
figures sought influence in the Near East,
a
“Peter Christensen takes the reader on a fascinating journey across geographical and disciplinary
n including access to archaeological sites like Tell
boundaries in this nuanced history of the Ottoman Empire’s German-built railway network. His
Halaf and Mshatta. At the same time, Ottoman
thoughtful exploration of cartography, engineering, and architecture confronts and challenges broader R
leaders and laborers urgently participated in a
issues of geopolitics, multiculturalism, andorientalism.” a
i project of imperial consolidation.
dietrich neumann, Brown University l Germany and the
w Germany and the Ottoman Railways explores
the impact of these political agendas as well as
“Peter Christensen’s story of the German construction of railroads in the final decades of the Ottoman a
Yale University Press, New Haven and London
Empire provides a perceptive exploration of the relationship between the empire, its hinterlands, and y Ottoman Railways the railways’ impact on the built environment.
s
77 color and 66 black-and-white illustrations Europe that has continued relevancetoday.” Relying on a trove of previously unpublished

archival materials, including maps, plans,
Kathleen James-chaKraBorty, University College Dublin

watercolors, and photographs, author Peter H.
Art, Empire, and Infrastructure
“Moving fluidly between different territories and disciplines like a train that travels on the Ottoman Christensen also reveals the significance of this
Jacket illustrations: (front) Guillaume Gustave Berggren,
railways whose history he writes, Peter Christensen connects visual, architectural, military, cartographic, major infrastructure project for the budding
View of the Anatolian Railways tunnel at Bekdemir, ca. 1893.
Detail. Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv, Wolfenbüttel. and archaeological histories to prove the sociopolitical importance of this crucial infrastructureproject.” disciplines of geography, topography, art history,
(back) Theodor Rocholl, Meerschaum Production in Eskişehir,
Peter H. CHristensen and archaeology.
ca. 1909. Cropped. Watercolor on board, 10.75 × 7.75 in. (27 × esra aKcan, author of Architecture in Translation
20 cm). Historisches Institut der Deutschen Bank, Frankfurt.
Jacket design by Jo Ellen Ackerman
isBn 978-0-300-22564-8
Printed in singaPore
Germany and the Ottoman Railways

Germany and the Ottoman Railways
Art, Empire, and Infrastructure
Peter H. Christensen
Yale University Press New Haven and London
Copyright © 2017 by Peter H. Christensen.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustra-
tions, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and
108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public
press), without written permission from the publishers.
yalebooks.com/art
Designed by Leslie Fitch and Jo Ellen Ackerman
Printed in Singapore by Pristone Pte. Ltd.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958952
isbn 978-0-300-22564-8
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z 39.48–1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Jacket illustrations: (front) Guillaume Gustave Berggren, View of the
Anatolian Railways tunnel at Bekdemir, ca. 1893 (detail, fig. 8.6);
(back) Theodor Rocholl, Meerschaum Production in Eskişehir, ca. 1909
(detail, fig. 2.16)
Page ii: Surveyors at work in the Taurus Mountains during the construc-
tion of the Baghdad Railway, 1915. The Granger Collection, New York.
Page viii: Railway networks of the German and Austro-Hungarian Em-
pires as well as the Ottoman railway segments constructed by Germans,
ca. 1910. James Barbero, Blair Tinker. University of Rochester, River
Campus Libraries.
Page 9: Guillaume Gustave Berggren, View of Sultan Han, Aksaray,
ca. 1893 (detail, fig. 4.7)
Page 81: View of Agoustos station. Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv,
Wolfenbüttel (detail, fig. 6.9)
Contents vi Acknowledgments
vii Notes on Dates, Transcription, and Format
1 Introduction
Part one
10 Chapter 1. Politics
25 Chapter 2. Geography
45 Chapter 3. Topography
68 Chapter 4. Archaeology
Part two
82 Chapter 5. Construction
96 Chapter 6. Hochbau
123 Chapter 7. Monuments
141 Chapter 8. Urbanism
152 Conclusion
157 Notes
167 Bibliography
188 Illustration Credits
189 Index
Acknowledgments
The layered process of making objects that I outline in this environment in which this book could both grow intellec-
book is one that I recognize as transposable too to the pro- tually and be completed logistically. Our indefatigable
cess of making a book. I owe a profound debt of gratitude chair, A. Joan Saab, and my incisive and generous col-
to the many people who helped me form this book in myr- leagues Rachel Haidu, Janet Berlo, and Douglas Crimp
iad ways over many years. It has been a pleasure to work deserve special mention for mulling over drafts and ideas
with Katherine Boller at Yale University Press, whose faith along the way. Teaching students in the Graduate Program
in this project set, and kept, the ball rolling. I wish also to of Visual and Cultural Studies has pushed me to see my
thank Tamara Schechter for her administrative guidance, work in broader terms, and I thank Eitan Freedenberg,
Heidi Downey for her editorial direction, Laura Hensley Stephanie Alana Wolf-Johnson, Berin Golonu, Alicia
for her superb copy editing, and Leslie Fitch and Jo Ellen Chester, Mimi Cheng, and Julia Tulke for their stimulating
Ackerman for their work on the design. It has been an engagement with all things architecture, industry, and
honor to work with a publisher so committed to art- infrastructure in the classroom. Nora Dimmock, Joshua
historical scholarship as well as such nely producedbooks. Romphf, Blair Tinker, and Stephanie Frontz of the
One cannot make things without time and resources, University of Rochester library system have gone above
and I have received both from a number of institutions. To and beyond the call of duty on so many fronts. In the
complete the manuscript, I beneted from fellowships wider eld I also owe thanks to Esra Akcan, Sibel
from the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin, the Bozdoğan, Vimalin Rujivacharakul, Ken Oshima, Hazel
University of Rochester Humanities Center, and the Hahn, Avinoam Shalem, Sibel Zandi-Sayek, Mary Roberts,
National Endowment for the Humanities. As junior fac- Shundana Yusaf, Mrinalini Rajagopalan, and Itohan
ulty at the Technische Universität Munich, I was able to Osayimwese for their various engagements with this
divide my time between writing and teaching in a most material in a number of scholarlyvenues.
productive way. At the research phase, I received support I am lucky to have friends who engage my work with
from the Fulbright Commission, the Historians of Islamic such interest, while also providing the social nourishment
Art Association, the Aga Khan Program for Islamic that has kept me attuned to the vitality and importance of
Architecture at Harvard University, and the Graduate exchange in the process of crafting scholarship. For
School of Arts and Sciences, also at Harvard. Support for this I thank Kenny Cupers, Miriam Peterson, Mary
this publication in the form of a subvention was provided Blakemore, Freya Estrellar, Natasha Case, Jenny Sedlis,
by the Society of Architectural Historians Mellon Author Noam Andrews, Igor Demchenko, David Roxburgh,
Award and the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Dan Sullivan, Nathan Rich, Jenny French, Maureen Jeram,
Sciences at the University ofRochester. Tanya Bakhmetyeva, Stewart Weaver, Laura Smoller,
For over a decade I have beneted from the mentor- Llerena Searle, Ben DeLee, Anne Schmidt, Casey Miller,
ship and intellectual compasses of Mary Woods, Barry Christian Larsen, and Oğuz OrkumDoma.
Bergdoll, and Nasser Rabbat. Earlier parts of the project My parents, Patricia Hewitt and Dale Christensen,
came to fruition under the superlative guidance of have furnished every intellectual horizon on which this
three mentors at Harvard University, Eve Blau, Gülru book rests. I owe them far more than a few words here,
Necipoğlu, and Antoine Picon, whose collective scholarly but I also take great pleasure in knowing how happy they
rigor I have emulated. My colleagues and students in the will be to hold this book in their hands. Finally, I thank
Department of Art and Art History at the University of Robert for his support, patience, and intelligence from the
Rochester, as well as the university’s remarkably support- beginning to the end of the process behind this book, a
ive administration, have furnished the ideal scholarly trueKomplizenschaft.
vi
Notes on Dates, Transcription, and Format
Throughout the book, dates are primarily given in A.D. sources, in the interest of reference-ability. In the listings
Islamic calendar dates were converted using the Gregorian for the secondary sources, however, contemporary
to Hijri dates converter at http://www.islamicity.org/Hijri- English place-names—which dier from the historical
Gregorian-Converter/. When dates cannot be identied names only on occasion—areused.
with a precise year in A.D., a range of years is listed. With regard to Turkish spellings, I have generally not
Also throughout the book, places are referred to by transliterated certain letters that are commonly altered
their contemporary names. In the case of signicant his- (e.g., “Celal” is not converted to “Djelal,” and “Çiftehan” is
torical places that are known by dierent names in not converted to “Chiftehan”). Unless otherwise noted, all
English, the latter are indicated parenthetically when the translations from German, modern Turkish, and French
places are rst mentioned—for example, “Ankara are my own. For translations from Arabic, Russian, Azeri,
(Angora).” Place-names are written in English, except Spanish, and the languages of the Balkans, I use the most
names of places within the borders of modern Turkey widely accepted relevant academic sources. Words that
where the silent “g” or the dotless “i” have been preserved are conventionally used in English (e.g., “vizier”) and that
(e.g., “Ereğli,” “Polatlı”), because these letters do not have appear in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.)
English transliterations. An exception to the latter rule is are written without diacritical marks. Given the unwieldy
that I do not use the dotted capital “İ” for place names that and inconsistent variations in the formatting of biblio-
are commonly recognized without the dot (e.g., “Istanbul,” graphic notations marking volume, issue, and page across
“Izmir,” and “Izmit” are universally recognized). Original the languages and eras consulted, I have used English
historical place-names, most notably “Constantinople,” are notation following the Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.) as
retained in the cities of publication listed for the primary thestandard.
vii
viii
Introduction
Infrastructures make empires. The economic, social, and and dependency. Empires that desired infrastructures
cultural systems of empires are guided by and given form they themselves could not build, owing to lack of technical
and purpose through canals, bridges, tunnels, ports, and, expertise or nancial resources, or that had these
perhaps most importantly, railways. It is no coincidence resources but did not have the explicit mandate to impose
that infrastructures are often likened to the veins, nodes, them elsewhere, led to the transfusion of infrastructure
and capillaries of organic bodies: they are the stu of life. across rather than within imperialborders.
The power that infrastructure had in the early globalizing This book looks at one such transfusion in depth and
world, during the Age of Empire, as Eric Hobsbawm explores it for the many broader lessons it holds for the
famously described it, also signaled profound imbalances history of infrastructure as well as the history of global-
on the world stage, where multiple organisms competed for ization: the Ottoman railway, a massive physical network
their share of physical presence.1 In the colonial world, of railway lines, stations, monuments, and institutions,
infrastructure was grafted onto territory and often served conceived by the Ottoman sultan and considered the pride
as a form of exploitation, exhausting the body that hosted of that empire’s modernizing impulses. It was, also, an
it. For every heroic accomplishment of modernity in, for infrastructure engineered predominantly by German
example, France or Britain, there was also, across a sea or rms, constructed with German materials such as Krupp
an ocean, a landscape of parasiticinfrastructure. steel, and nanced by German banks such as Deutsche
Yet infrastructure across empires also transcended the Bank over the course of a half century, beginning in 1869.
binary parasite-host relationship, and the vast gray zone While the project employed local builders and craftsmen
between binary formations is the subject of this book. and advanced Ottoman goals of imperial consolidation
Symbiotic rather than parasitic, dynamic rather than stati- and modernization, it also accelerated German inuence
cally hegemonic, many global infrastructures in the in the increasingly circumscribed yet still vast territory of
Imperial era were dened in the interstices between the the Ottoman empire, setting the stage for an ambiguous
cliché dialectics of metropole and colony, and sovereignty power dynamic that placed infrastructure at thecenter.
1