Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453-1924 FROM THE PUBLISHER
At once scholarly and entertaining, Constantinople depicts the Ottoman capital as a place of shifting boundaries and categories. It was the capital of both Islam and the Orthodox church, part of the "system of Europe" and a magnet for people and ideas from Paris to Isfahan. It was also a city of critical strategic importance, coveted at different periods by Russia, Germany, Bulgaria, and Greece. After the Great War, in its last years as an imperial capital, Constantinople was occupied by British, French, and Italian forces. Within a broad chronological framework, here is the story of the city and of the impact the Ottoman Sultans and their dynasty had on it; here too are the families who settled in Constantinople and served the Sultans, among them the Turkish Koprulu, the Italian de Testa, the Greek Mavrocordatos and the Hashemites from Mecca. The story begins in 1453 with the triumphant entry into the city of Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror on a white horse. It ends with the hurried departure of the last Ottoman ruler, Abdulmecid on the Orient Express. In studying the five hundred years between those two events, the author goes beneath the surface of the bustling, cosmopolitan traveler's Constantinople to record the history of what was at once an imperial capital, a holy city, a trading entrepot, a pleasure resort and, in its cultural and intellectual life, a laboratory of modernization.
FROM THE CRITICS
The Independent
"An impeccably researched masterpiece of exquisite historical writing... There can be little doubt that this book will become a classic."
Sunday Telegraph
"No brief review can do justice to this book, into which Mansel has packed a glittering mass of information, anecdote, and analysis."
New York Times Book Review
"{Mansel} is an enthusiast... Much information is imparted with a light touch."
The Evening Standard
"Few cities have had a more exciting and colorful history. Few writers could have treated it with such a happy blend of scholarship and panache as Mansel."
Kirkus Reviews
The cultural history of a fascinating city.
Constantinople has long occupied a special place in the imagination of the West, viewed as a city of immense wealth, power, mystery, and decadence. Mansel (Sultans in Splendor: The Last Years of the Ottoman World, not reviewed) offers an intimate and exhaustive account intimately tied to the rise of the Ottoman dynasty, picking up the city's history after the fall of the Byzantine Empire. He convincingly argues that the ancient city cannot be understood without reference to the Ottomans and that the interaction of the two produced "the only capital to function at every level: Political, military, naval, religious (both Muslim and Christian), economic, cultural, and gastronomic." Now known as Istanbul, it has been called the New Rome as well as the New Jerusalem; the "City of Saints"; the "House of State"; the "Gate of Happiness"; the "Eye of the World"; and "Refuge of the Universe." Situated in a spot making it a natural bridge between East and West, it has attracted merchants, mercenaries, and missionaries, with all the attendant consequences. Mansel sees the city—because of its unique site and its long history as the capital of two great empires—as "a natural object of desire," a place capable of generating extreme, even fantastic, actions in its inhabitants. In his treatment, Constantinople emerges as a worthy challenger to Venice and Paris, the cities most often seen as offering unique mixtures of style and substance. And like those cities, Constantinople is a feast for the senses, especially the eyes. Lavish illustrations and Mansel's colorful descriptions attempt to bring some of the voluptuousness of life in the city to the reader.
Thoroughly documented, this is a splendid introduction to one of the first truly cosmopolitan cities.
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