Ottomanist Infrastructures: A Path to Colonialist Resource Extraction or Imperial State Building and Territorial Integrity?

Abstract

The paper examines the interaction between the Ottoman imperial center and periphery during late Ottoman modernization with a focus on infrastructure and public works. It questions the idea that modernization has been exclusively driven by Western-influenced elites and criticizes the tendency to overly reify the state. In particular, the paper takes a critical stance against recent debates that align the Sublime Porte’s will to improve the peripheral populations, which were categorized as uncivilized and impoverished, with Western-style colonialism. Ottoman infrastructures were power technologies related not just to resource extraction but also to imperial state-building that evolved in tandem with local actors, demands, power dynamics, traditions, urban landscapes, and rural environments. The paper draws upon recent provincial, infrastructural, and environmental studies within Ottoman historiography and also looks into newspapers, professional journals, parliamentary minutes, and foreign consular reports to gauge public sentiment on infrastructure and public works. The study defines a biopolitical and governmental rationality intended for improving agriculture, commerce, and the general well-being of imperial subjects in Foucauldian terms, suggesting that local actors may have occasionally embraced, adjusted, or challenged this rationale. Lastly, it argues that unequal infrastructural development or neglect among Empire’s populations cannot be interpreted as evidence of colonial rule, which separates the colonizer and the colonized through the categories of civilized and uncivilized.

Keywords

• Colonialism
• Ottoman Orientalism
• Imperial center
• Frontier provinces
• Infrastructure
• Mesopotamia

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