Mental Maps: The Mediterranean Worlds of Two Palestinian Newspapers in the Late Ottoman Period

Rewriting the history of port cities in the light of contemporary global Capitalism

“…H e concludes that the mental maps represented by these two newspapers were limited "by the borders of a regional core constituted by the Levant," and that they demonstrated "an urban-centered vision of space shaped by the Ottoman political order, the structures of millet communities, and the personal networks of a new group of mobile middle-class actors." 42 Isa Blumi focuses on the relationship between the Albanian-speaking actors of illegal trade and Ottoman state elites during the creation of an international frontier in the first half of the nineteenth century. H e argues that Ottoman reforms to identify, catalog and distinguish people and to regulate regional and international trade led to the exploitation of the city population by a new group of local actors in the Balkans.…”