Urban Studies and the Concept of Microcosm: Theoretical Positioning and Research Perspectives

My intent is to try and expose the reasons why I think that the concept of microcosm is pertinent for research, and specifically for the kind of research we are doing in this group. I'll expose first what I consider the theoretical basis of the concept, and then I'll try to illustrate its possible application and its pertinence, in presenting my own research perspectives on Ottoman towns

Mediterranean Connections: The Circulation of Municipal Knowledge and Practices at the Time of the Ottoman Reforms, c. 1830-1910

Please refer to the published version for quotationsThe question of the circulation of municipal knowledge has benefited in the last decade from a renewed historiographical attention.In a Mediterranean context, the stake is mainly to reconsider our perception of the circulation of ideas that enabled (or constrained) the modernisation of societies during the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The subliminal starting point (but sometimes enounced very explicitly) is that circulations occurred from North to South and West to East. The “Mediterranean Crossings” hypothesis I will explore in this chapter, and illustrate with the case of the urban reforms in the Ottoman Empire, is that circulations were more complex, while modernity, even when imported in its exact form, was interacting dynamically with societies in which processes of change were already in action. The study of circulations in a Mediterranean case is a minefield. It provides opportunities not only to understand the circulation of ideas between different cultures, but also to confront the impact of colonialism and imperialism. The very vision of modernity being prejudiced by these issues, the stake of the promotion of a renewed global history involves a reconsideration of two centuries of unequal circulations and, ultimately, a different reading of the fate of modernity in “subaltern” societies. The study of the Ottoman Empire shows that circulations were more complex than a translation of knowledge from ‘export' to ‘import' societies. It is only with a discussion of ideas on circulation that the complexity of these societies can undo this conventional “reception” mode. The Ottoman Empire is particularly adapted to such a historiographical programme. On the one hand, the concept of Empire has recently aroused new developments in global and imperial history. These have revisited the canonical empires, or developed comparative imperial questions between the Russian, the Habsburg and the Ottoman, bringing about new insights into the treatment of local characters, the dynamics of integration and assimilation, the importance of circulation as a social glue for imperial constructions, and the governance of diversity. As for the Ottoman case, a whole new generation of scholars is especially keen to discuss the complex interaction between local and global, and to reach beyond nation and religion as central paradigms. This is not to suggest that these notions are irrelevant. Yet, as they turn our eyes to specificities and peculiarities, they sometimes mask the dynamics of the circulation of ideas associated with modernity. This insistence on cultural specificities also contributed to the conceptual isolation of the Ottoman region, despite Franz Rosenthal's proposals for a firm inscription of Muslim societies into World History as early as 1952

Aspects du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane

Du texte de Michele Amari datant du XIXeesiècle et de diverses chroniques arabes, se dégagent les caractères principaux du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane. Ces écrits permettent de connaître l’organisation des activités marchandes et de la gestion de la ville, la répartition en quartiers, les communautés. Ils évoquent l’existence d’une assemblée (jema’a) urbaine de notables et d’Anciens, et le rôle des qadi. Au regard de ces textes, il semble bien que les villes de la Sicile musulmane ont bénéficié d’un système de gouvernement urbain complexe, entre les héritages antérieurs et les innovations de cette période.From the Michele Amari’s text dating from the XIXth century and different arabic chronicles are showed principal characters from urban government in moslem Sicily. These written documents allow us to know trading activities’s organization and city’s administration, quarters’s partition, communities. They evoke an urban assembly’s life (jema’a) made up by notables and Ancients and qadi’s part. In comparison with these texts, it seems well that moslem Sicily’s cities made a profit on complex urban government’s system, between anterior inheritances and this period’s innovations

Aspects du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane

Du texte de Michele Amari datant du XIXeesiècle et de diverses chroniques arabes, se dégagent les caractères principaux du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane. Ces écrits permettent de connaître l’organisation des activités marchandes et de la gestion de la ville, la répartition en quartiers, les communautés. Ils évoquent l’existence d’une assemblée (jema’a) urbaine de notables et d’Anciens, et le rôle des qadi. Au regard de ces textes, il semble bien que les villes de la Sicile musulmane ont bénéficié d’un système de gouvernement urbain complexe, entre les héritages antérieurs et les innovations de cette période.From the Michele Amari’s text dating from the XIXth century and different arabic chronicles are showed principal characters from urban government in moslem Sicily. These written documents allow us to know trading activities’s organization and city’s administration, quarters’s partition, communities. They evoke an urban assembly’s life (jema’a) made up by notables and Ancients and qadi’s part. In comparison with these texts, it seems well that moslem Sicily’s cities made a profit on complex urban government’s system, between anterior inheritances and this period’s innovations

Aspects du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane

Du texte de Michele Amari datant du XIXeesiècle et de diverses chroniques arabes, se dégagent les caractères principaux du gouvernement urbain dans la Sicile musulmane. Ces écrits permettent de connaître l’organisation des activités marchandes et de la gestion de la ville, la répartition en quartiers, les communautés. Ils évoquent l’existence d’une assemblée (jema’a) urbaine de notables et d’Anciens, et le rôle des qadi. Au regard de ces textes, il semble bien que les villes de la Sicile musulmane ont bénéficié d’un système de gouvernement urbain complexe, entre les héritages antérieurs et les innovations de cette période.From the Michele Amari’s text dating from the XIXth century and different arabic chronicles are showed principal characters from urban government in moslem Sicily. These written documents allow us to know trading activities’s organization and city’s administration, quarters’s partition, communities. They evoke an urban assembly’s life (jema’a) made up by notables and Ancients and qadi’s part. In comparison with these texts, it seems well that moslem Sicily’s cities made a profit on complex urban government’s system, between anterior inheritances and this period’s innovations

Ernesto Mario BOLASCO, Damasco-Medina, ferrovia avveniristica (1901-1908). Mille operai italiani nel Deserto dell'Hedjaz

Ernesto Mario Bolasco, journaliste, puis diplomate, membre de la Commission italienne pour la publication des documents diplomatiques, livre dans la collection d'histoire diplomatique de l'éditeur Franco Angeli une belle contribution sur l'histoire de la construction de la ligne ferroviaire Damas-Médine (1901-1908), qui dépasse le seul cadre de l'étude des relations internationales. L'histoire de la construction de cette ligne de chemin de fer est en effet l'occasion d'offrir un panora..

Ernesto Mario BOLASCO, Damasco-Medina, ferrovia avveniristica (1901-1908). Mille operai italiani nel Deserto dell'Hedjaz

Ernesto Mario Bolasco, journaliste, puis diplomate, membre de la Commission italienne pour la publication des documents diplomatiques, livre dans la collection d'histoire diplomatique de l'éditeur Franco Angeli une belle contribution sur l'histoire de la construction de la ligne ferroviaire Damas-Médine (1901-1908), qui dépasse le seul cadre de l'étude des relations internationales. L'histoire de la construction de cette ligne de chemin de fer est en effet l'occasion d'offrir un panora..