The politics of hygiene: Public health and urban transformation in Late Ottoman Istanbul

This dissertation examines the interplay between public hygiene, urban transformation, and governance in late Ottoman Istanbul, shedding light on the intersection of health, environment, and infrastructure. Through the lens of public health, it investigates how concepts of dirt, disease, and cleanliness shaped—and were shaped by—the city's evolving urban fabric, infrastructure, and practices. Focusing on four key components—food, water, sewer systems, and burial practices—this study examines how the public health crises experienced by the Ottoman state were instrumentalized to reconfigure urban spaces through a hygienic lens and how this process acted upon social relations. Drawing on Ottoman archival documents, medical treatises, death and health statistics, the study explores the interaction between global hygiene discourses and local realities, framed by Istanbul's unique geography and socio-political dynamics. By integrating urban environmental history with the social history of disease, the dissertation moves beyond conventional state-centered approaches in urban history to highlight the agency of diverse actors, from ordinary inhabitants to experts, in negotiating public health policies. It argues that Istanbul's transformation into a "hygienic city" was neither linear nor uniform but a fragmented process marked by resistance, adaptation, and contestation. The study contributes to Ottoman historiography by bridging environmental and urban studies, offering new insights into how public health policies mediated the relationship between urban life, governance, and the built environment during the Empire's final century.