RAILWAY CROSSINGS: ENCOUNTERS IN OTTOMAN LANDS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Elvan Cobb August 2018 © 2018 Elvan Cobb RAILWAY CROSSINGS: ENCOUNTERS IN OTTOMAN LANDS Elvan Cobb, Ph. D. Cornell University 2018 Railway Crossings: Encounters in Ottoman Lands focuses on the production of railway spaces in western Anatolia during the second half of the 19th century, with an emphasis on how spatial practices were altered with the advent of railways in the region. Understanding the railroads as a cultural as well as a material phenomenon, this work approaches the western Anatolian railways through a series of interdisciplinary vignettes that juxtapose the histories of the built environment with histories of technology, archaeology, travel, and the senses. In an effort to modernize its transportation infrastructure, the Ottoman government granted the first railway concessions in Anatolia to two British companies. The Izmir-Aydın and Izmir-Kasaba lines connected the port city of Izmir to the fertile river valleys of the Gediz, Küçük and Büyük Menderes rivers. The construction of railways was an intensely material act, requiring not only the laying of tracks and the construction of station buildings, but the alteration of a whole landscape. Beyond this physicality, the railroads were harbingers of new modes of interaction with space. They altered the commercial transportation networks of the region that had depended for centuries on camel caravans traveling along well-established but flexible pathways. People also found a new mobility in the train. In addition to the thousands of local inhabitants of the region, masses of tourists arrived to partake in the ready access to some of the best known ancient and Biblical places of archaeological significance. The railways incited new archaeological explorations that expanded knowledge, and facilitated the acquisition of antiquities for museums, private collections and even as construction materials. Additionally, railroads brought with them novel sensory perceptions. From the moment when the first locomotive whistle was heard in Izmir to the illumination of the night with a thousand flickering lights in the celebration of Sultan Abdulaziz's visit to the city and its railway, a new and industrial sensorium was woven onto the existing sensory geography of the region. Thus, through such explorations, this dissertation foregrounds how the experiences of space were altered with the advent of railways in western Anatolia. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Prior to completing her doctoral degree at Cornell University in the history of architecture and urban development, Elvan Cobb obtained a master’s degree in historic preservation from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor’s degree in city and regional planning from the Middle East Technical University. In addition to serving as a teaching assistant at Cornell, she has taught classes at Syracuse University and at Koç University in İstanbul. She is an active participant in archaeological projects in Turkey, Armenia and Laos. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Penning a note of gratitude is one of the last acts of bringing a dissertation to completion and it provides an opportunity to reflect upon one’s intellectual and personal networks. Since I returned to graduate school a decade ago, I have been supported by an incredible community and, while writing a dissertation is a task done somewhat in isolation, in reality its completion can only be achieved with enormous help. First, I must acknowledge my doctoral committee at Cornell University for their ongoing support. Medina Lasansky has been an incredible advisor and mentor over the years, encouraging me to pursue a path that was in many ways unorthodox. It has been a great comfort to have her unwavering backing throughout my doctoral studies. I will always appreciate her scholarly acumen as well as her wit and kindness. Mostafa Minawi and Ziad Fahmy both played a crucial role in my time as a graduate student and in the completion of this work. I appreciate both of their close attention to my work and constructive feedback. I similarly thank them for always being available with a sympathetic ear, an open door as well as with some good humor. Christian Otto had great expectations from his students and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to have worked with him even if only for a few short years. I have also been lucky to have the ongoing support of an academic community at the University of Pennsylvania. While I only spent two short years at UPenn as a student, I have always felt welcome in Philadelphia. I am particularly grateful to Renata Holod and Robert Ousterhout for sparking my interest in travel in the Ottoman Empire. The seeds of this dissertation were sown in many ways through a curatorial seminar I took with them. I am also vi grateful to my advisor at UPenn, Randall Mason, for all the ways he has supported me since my graduation from Penn. As much as one needs great mentors, the making of a dissertation also requires resources. This dissertation has been supported by a number of institutions and fellowships. I am grateful to the Cornell University Graduate School, Cornell’s Society for the Humanities, Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations (ANAMED) as well as SALT Research for providing funds that enabled my dissertation research. Cornell University’s Graduate School additionally supported my participation at a variety of conferences. Cornell’s Department of Architecture and the History of Architecture and Urban Development program have provided resources that facilitated my scholarly agenda by providing generous and dependable support for conference and research travel. The A. Henry Detweiler Fund, the Helen O. and Stephen Jacobs Fund as well as the Robert D. MacDougall Memorial Fellowship have all been instrumental in ensuring that I could be an active participant in a variety of scholarly venues around the world, including an idyllic summer spent on the island of Cunda learning Ottoman Turkish. I must also thank Cynthia Bowman, our graduate field coordinator, for generously and consistently helping me with many things at Cornell while I was away from Ithaca. I am indebted to a number of archives, archivists and librarians for their support of my research. They have assisted me on-site and from afar in locating and acquiring a variety of crucial materials. I especially want to thank the archivists at the Ottoman Archives in Istanbul, the Republican Archives in Ankara, the Ahmet Priştina City Archive in Izmir, the National Archives of the United Kingdom in Kew, the Archives of the British Museum and the British Library in vii London and the Library of Congress in Washington DC. I am also grateful to the employees of the Archives of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Research Institute and the Lincolnshire (UK) Archives for remotely providing me with key archival documents when I could not visit in person. I have also greatly benefited from the online collections of SALT Research, the Atatürk Kitaplığı and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Additionally, I thank the archivists and librarians at Cornell University and Syracuse University for assisting me in acquiring materials when all else failed. Along this journey, I found many great friends and colleagues. It has been a great privilege to be part of the HAUD community with all its formal and informal means of supporting its members. Margot Lystra has been a wonderful friend and colleague and I am so thankful that we were able to go through the trials and tribulations of graduate school together. Thanks also to Margot, Joe, and more recently, to Zephyr, for welcoming me in their home whenever I found myself back in Ithaca. I have also had the good fortune to have the friendship, collegiality and support of Sophie Hochhäusl, Chad Randl and Lawrence Chua and since my time at UPenn, Emily Neumeier. I was at the Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul during the AY2014-15. It was a great pleasure to be part of such a great cohort of scholars. While so many of them are very dear to me, I must mention Ayşe Hilal Uğurlu, who is at my side daily, albeit virtually, not only reading and commenting on my work but also always being there to listen to whatever life throws at me. Mehmet Kentel, who has read chapters of this dissertation overnight when I was at my most desperate, has always been a great colleague and I am looking forward to many viii more collaborations on infrastructures in the Ottoman Empire. Federica Gigante, with whom I spent a summer teaching at Koç University, has been the best afternoon tea companion whenever I find myself in London. I have known Caitlin Curtis for many years, but our time together at ANAMED reiterated our friendship and I especially appreciate her support as I was finalizing this dissertation in the mountains of Armenia. My extended families, both in Turkey and in the United States, have always been a source of love and support. They have provided me with homes, bed, food and childcare whenever it was most needed and I am very fortunate to call them family. My parents and my siblings have always supported me without ever questioning my path that took me so far away from my home. My partner, Peter Cobb, has always been at my side whatever the circumstances since I first met him in Diyarbakır a lifetime ago. Without his unwavering love and support, none of this would have been possible. Our daughter, Nehir, also known to all who love her as Çilek, has brought so much love and joy to our lives. She has been my ultimate motivation to see this work to completion, despite the fact that she might have unintentionally caused some delays along the way.