Réflexions sur le cosmopolitisme des villes de la Méditerranée orientale, 1850-1950

Résumé En

Cosmopolitism in the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean 1850-1950 The end of the 20th century has been marked by a liberalization of trade, greater population mobility, ethnocommunity demands and retreats. This paper will consider the cosmopolitan Mediterranean of the previous era (1850-1950) with the hope of better understanding the often contradictory tensions which afflict the cities of the eastern Mediterranean. To analyze the cosmopolitanism of east Mediterranean port cities we must analyze its "public spaces", that is, places of cohabitation and "business with the Other". The Mediterranean city of Ottoman empire is still "trader" and "community". Its cosmopolitanism is not of the "melting pot" variety of large western industrial metropolises. Levantine metropolitanism is marked by spatial separation of communities, without special segregation or "ghettoisation". It is characterized by a balanced articulation of private residential space, and public space where meetings and exchanges with the Other occur, and strict codes of civility and rituals of hospitality are followed. Places of business (port, market, bazaar) are places with wide access : places of encounter and exchange where business negotiations occur in the same fashion as negotiations of identity, that is, there is a process of "bargaining". This paper emphasizes the fragility of the cosmopolitanism of east Mediterranean maritime cities, which have been unable to hold out against the upsurge of nationalism.