Juan Cole writes: 'I think Athens counts as a major European city… major by virtue of being Athens’
Well the point is… but not under the period of Ottoman rule! Athens was by no means a metropolitan centre of European Turkey and, before 1832, in size and significance was closer to a village than a provincial town. Its economic and political insignificance was seen as offering the distinct virtue
of a blank slate to the new capital of an independent Greek state. A far more relevant comparison with other major European cities could have made in the case of Salonica, present-day Thessolaniki. Tanzimat reform and ambitious public works schemes under the governorships of Sabri Pasha and Galib Pasha in late c19th Salonica offer a more positive example of dynamic leadership and urban modernisation. That Salonica, cosmopolitan and mercantile, was also the seat of the 1908 revolution points to the larger issue - such illustrious efforts were in the face of the economic mismanagement, administrative inefficiency and political corruption of the Ottoman system.
Juan Cole writes: 'I think Athens counts as a major European city… major by virtue of being Athens’
Well the point is… but not under the period of Ottoman rule! Athens was by no means a metropolitan centre of European Turkey and, before 1832, in size and significance was closer to a village than a provincial town. Its economic and political insignificance was seen as offering the distinct virtue
of a blank slate to the new capital of an independent Greek state. A far more relevant comparison with other major European cities could have made in the case of Salonica, present-day Thessolaniki. Tanzimat reform and ambitious public works schemes under the governorships of Sabri Pasha and Galib Pasha in late c19th Salonica offer a more positive example of dynamic leadership and urban modernisation. That Salonica, cosmopolitan and mercantile, was also the seat of the 1908 revolution points to the larger issue - such illustrious efforts were in the face of the economic mismanagement, administrative inefficiency and political corruption of the Ottoman system.