ABSTRACT
The Italo-Levantine population in Istanbul was less affluent and influential than in Egypt. Most residents were poor and illiterate. They were not part of the Ottoman administration, and they lived mainly in the neighborhoods of Galata and Pera. The Italian authorities acted in cooperation, and deference to, Ottoman authority. Gangs, prostitution, and vagrancy were urban problems in the consular court archives. At the center of the empire, at the turn of the century, identification as a legal form of property was the main factor in determining the results of these cases. Italo-Levantines lost their place in the Ottoman empire in the midst of the legal conflicts found throughout this chapter as seen in the expulsion of Italo-Levantine criminals and the bankruptcy of Teresa Chryssoni. These disputes contributed to the formation of the twentieth-century’s international law and order, and the incumbent reliance on nationality.
