Infrastructured Landscapes: Spatial Histories of Early Ottoman Railways

In Infrastructured Landscapes, Elvan Cobb reveals how the arrival of railways originating from the eastern Mediterranean port city of Izmir reshaped the very fabric of space and experience in western Anatolia during the transformative decades of the late 19th century in the Ottoman Empire. The author argues that trains were significant not only in modernizing the region but also in altering how people perceived and practiced Ottoman spaces. Foregrounding the inherently spatial nature of railways, she examines issues such as how they shifted the sensory geographies of the region, facilitated emergent practices such as tourism and archaeology, and acted as performative spaces where the Ottoman Empire's modernizing ambitions were put on display.