In his photo essay “The Great Nineteenth-Century Transformation and Its Aftermath,” historian James L. Gelvin illustrates the upheaval experienced by urban centers in the Middle East during a period in history when Europe and the Industrial Revolution had reshaped the world economy.  Specifically, several photos highlight the modernity, technological revolution, and internationalism that transformed Cairo, Egypt at the turn of the 20th century.  By this time, Cairo, like many of the Middle-Eastern cities pictured in Gelvin’s photo essay, had been completely integrated into the world economic system – on the periphery, as a supplier of raw materials to the industrialized nations of the West.  This process had a profound impact on “subsequent economic, social, and political development of the Middle East,” and is captured in wonderful detail in the accompanying photos of Cairo.

The opening photo of the essay is subtitled “A modernist reverie: Photo montage, Heliopolis (Cairo), 1910.” Pictured flying above the upper-class suburb of Heliopolis are biplanes, and into the distance a railroad track disappears alongside an opulent structure sporting both minarets and a modernist façade.  As Gelvin notes, at that time, in order to thrust themselves into a modern world, cities across the Middle East “encouraged the emergence of a public sphere,” and in turn rebuilt large parts of the city to encourage citizens to meet and interact.

Another photo in a section titled “Remapping Urban Spaces” depicts an epicenter of public discourse in downtown Cairo.  Titled simply “Outdoor café, Cairo, date unknown” the photo depicts patrons sitting outside at full tables stretching a city block into the background.  Gelvin notes in his narrative that while coffee shops were not a new addition to Middle Eastern cities they were “one of the main sites in which an expanding public sphere could be found. . . [where citizens conversed while] sipping coffee, playing backgammon, smoking water pipes, and trading gossip.”

In a third photo taken in upper-class Cairo titled “Ezbekiya Gardens, Cairo, ca. 1900” under the section titled “Diversions” a beautiful park is pictured, complete with a swan lake in the foreground.  Wealthy citizens enjoy leisurely strolls along the lake and across the manicured park grounds.  The lake is populated with large white swans and beautiful native trees grow on the green park lawn.  The expanding public sphere that Gelvin notes was one key to success for Middle-Eastern cities during the Great 19th-Century Transformation is illustrated by the immaculate Ezbekiva Gardens, where Egyptians adopted a Western style parkland for public meeting in an urban area as a “new conception of space.”

And finally, in a grand fusion of Western culture and Middle-Eastern participation, the new world economy is illustrated in the photo of the “Place de l’Opera, Cairo, 1911,” depicting a great, Victorian-style opera house right in the heart of Cairo.  With a wide round-about roadway in the foreground foreshadowing its popularity, the massive multi-story opera house represents the height of expression on the part of the Egyptian people to incorporate Western culture, launching them into the 19th century and onto the world stage prepared to adapt to new developments as equal partners.

Bibliography

Gelvin, James L. Modern Middle East, The: A History, 4th ed. Oxford University Press. New York. 2016.