Late Ottoman and Russian-Built Environments from the Perspective of Property

• In Event: Land, Property, Ownership at the Imperial Crossroads II

Abstract

This paper examines the reorganization of property regimes as one of the important tools that undergird modernization, urbanization, and industrialization. In the paper, I focus on the spatial transformation of the Ottoman border town of Batum (today Batumi, Georgia) after it was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1878 and its inherited property regime was reorganized. The Russian imperial reorganization of the property regime opened the way for imperial projects, including the implementation of a modern urban plan, the construction of new types of housing, and the development of oil-related industries in Batum. Importantly, the Russian administration’s change of property relations inadvertently also initiated the participation of the region’s inhabitants within the new legal framework structuring property. With the reorganization of the property relations in the region, the former Ottoman residents, the settlers, and the migrants partook in the property reorganization and impacted the city’s transformation through claims, demands, and speculations over property. Studying this multifaceted transformation of the border from the perspective of land and property, this paper reinserts the agency of Batum’s residents, both property-owning and propertyless classes in the imperial modernization that took place in the region. The paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the spatial workings of Russian imperialism and how the empire’s subjects counteracted it. It moreover reveals how land and property relations, rarely studied in relation to architectural developments, were essential for urbanization.

Author

• Ecem Saricayir, UC Santa Cruz