Rebuilding narratives: A comparative analysis of civic voices and urban discourse following earthquakes in Montesa (1748) and İzmir (1740)

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, History Department, Hollanda

Tezin Dili: İngilizce

Öğrenci: Burak Fıçı

Asıl Danışman (Eş Danışmanlı Tezler İçin): Paul Van De Laar

Eş Danışman: Maarten Van Dijck, Gürer Karagedikli

Özet:

This research examines how public discourse, civic interaction and institutional response 

functioned in early modern urban settings beyond the well-studied Northwest European 

contexts. It builds on Habermas’s model of the eighteenth-century public sphere as well as its 

subsequent revisions and critiques through a comparative analysis of the Spanish and 

Ottoman Empires. The study focuses on two major natural disasters as case studies: the 

earthquakes in Montesa, Valencia (1748) and İzmir (1740), both of which 

caused significant damage to urban infrastructure and disrupted the prevailing sociopolitical 

orders. The project investigates how such disasters acted as catalysts for public opinion 

formation and collective negotiation, offering insights into early modern forms of urban 

publicness. In this context, earthquakes are treated as moments of rupture that render social 

dynamics visible and provoke intensified civic interaction. The study explores the long-term 

effects of these crises, particularly how they enabled the emergence of multiple publics 

operating beyond elite control. Despite the dominant role of monarchical and religious 

authority in both empires, and in contrast to Northern European paradigms that associate 

 public opinion with bourgeois interaction in designated spaces, this research centres on a 

multifaceted understanding of publicness in Valencia and Istanbul as imperial port cities 

marked by diverse populations, religiously informed governance, and limited institutional 

decentralization.