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This book explores the social costs of urban change and the limits of modernity through a comparative study of two Balkan cities, Belgrade and Sofia. Between 1820 and 1920, both cities grew from small Ottoman towns into large national capitals, as their bourgeois elites envisioned new, urban societies on the European borderlands. This book traces the lofty ambitions and dire consequences of this project: situated on the periphery of global capital flows, elite-led attempts at remaking Balkan capitals into European cities relied on dispossession, brutal labor control, and real estate speculation, while failing to achieve their goals of exponential growth.

Drawing on a rich array of archival sources, Milos Jovanovic considers the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Belgrade, municipal corruption in Sofia, anxieties over sex work and the regulation of intimacy, and attempts at creating docile workers through policing and prisons. Bringing working people to the forefront, he shows how the modernity envisioned by elites failed to transform their lives for the better, and how urban residents developed a nostalgia for the Ottoman city as a critique of their contemporary moment. Going beyond the limits of national frameworks, this book transforms our understanding of Balkan history, national modernization, and the role of fantasy in capitalist societies, offering keen insights for today's era of growing inequality.