NEW PERSPECTIVES ON TURKEY Rewriting the history of port cities in the light of contemporary global capitalism Nurçin İleri Philip Mansel, Levant: Splendour and Catastrophe on the Mediterranean, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011, 637 pages. Carola Hein, ed., Port Cities: Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks, London: Routledge, 2011, xiii + 285 pages. Biray Kolluoğlu and Meltem Toksöz, eds., Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day, London: I.B Taurus, 2010, 248 pages. Ports have historically functioned as both spatial mediums shaping core- periphery relations and as spatial terrains for flows of people, goods, and ideas. Such flows have been fundamentally shaped by commercial rela- tions, which has also created new life-styles and in turn changed the built form of urban space, demonstrating the intricate relationship that has always existed between social structure and the physical form of port cit- ies. Ports have also functioned as key sites for the integration of empires into the world economy with their commercial networks which have created new types of interaction. Through these interactions, different groups have integrated with each other and extended their communities by making them mobile. Language, ethnicity, religion, and family ties have determined the communal and commercial ties in port cities, 1 and Nurçin İleri, Binghamton University, Department of History, 13902, Vestal, New York, US, nileri1@bing- hamton.edu. 1 The concept of “port city” here not only refers to a “geographic expression applicable to all times and places.” Rather, it refers to a political and social space developed by the world economy. Yaşar Eyüp Özveren uses the concept of “port-city” instead of port city. For further discussion, please see Yaşar Eyüp Özveren, “The Making and Unmaking of an Ottoman Port-City: Nineteenth Century Beirut, Its Hinterland, and the World Economy” (Unpublished PhD Dissertation, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1990), 3-4. However, the author of this review article will use the concept of “port city” in order not to cause any confusion related with the usage of this concept in the article collections. 185 New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 47 (2012): 185-209.