Robert Fisk: Canberra, Ankara and other 'fake' capitals

[Violet_Crumble]

Just up behind my Beirut home is a narrow, shady laneway called Makhoul Street. And in Makhoul Street, there is a small shop with a rusting door behind which an Armenian sells ancient postcards of Beirut.


There is a picture of the port, the rear of a steam loco protruding from a small station. There is a tree-lined street with horses pulling a covered cart, Lebanese men wearing the old Ottoman tarbush, the distant roof of the St George Maronite cathedral. But it's the postmark that catches my attention, dated 11 October 1906. "Beirut, Syria," it says.

For of course, in the dying days of the Ottomans, Beirut was in a land whose regional capital was Damascus. True, the French were there in force under the political ruins of what were called the "capitulations" – French authorities ran the "Levant" post office – but the "Lebanese" regarded Damascus as their principal city. So what makes a city? Does it, in the words of a friend, "have to have a river" (or so, by extension, a seaboard)? Or is it an invention? A city must have a cathedral – or, I suppose, a grand mosque – but how do you define a capital?

Well, there's Baghdad (the Tigris) and Cairo (the Nile) and the Arab seaboard capitals – Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis, of course – and, I suppose, the little Gulf princelets (as I call them), but how can you call Riyadh a capital of Saudi Arabia? Drab, hauntingly lifeless, surly in a religious sort of way, Riyadh is awful. Surely it should be Dhahran-Dammam, the great Saudi oil city by the sea. And how can we really regard the Germanised city of Ankara as the capital of Turkey when in our hearts – Turkish hearts, too – it must be the abandoned capital of Istanbul-Constantinople-Byzantium with its Roman-Crusader-Caliphate past? Damascus. Yes, but how many readers know its river? Well it's a stinky old sewer called the Barada. Hmm...

But we "outsiders" are capable of moving our capitals around. Some of them are ridiculous. Toronto, the business heart of Canada (originally called York) should be its capital – as indeed it was once the capital of "Upper Canada". But the Canadians had to settle on Ottawa, halfway between Toronto and Montreal, so that the Francophones didn't get pissed off (Ottawa being right next to the province of Quebec). Karachi was the capital of Pakistan – it is the business capital – but the "real" capital is the dead "new" city of Islamabad, a kind of middle-class extension of Rawalpindi.

Travel far further. The capital of Australia should be Sydney (or Melbourne) but, instead, I had to drive into the hotlands not long ago to the old hill station which is now called Canberra, all smart streets, university campuses and tiresome government ministries. This is ridiculous. Even worse is Brazil. The business centre of Sao Paulo is "my" capital of Brazil. But no, the Brazilians had to invent their distant capital of "Brasilia" so that – in the words of a Sao Paulo woman on my last visit – "the politicians could escape from the people". I should add that when Napoleon occupied Portugal, Brazil furnished the European royal family with a capital – in Brazil! And if the Turkish Ottomans hadn't genocided the Armenians, maybe the Armenian capital would be further to the west than Yerevan.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-canberra-ankara-and-other-fake-capitals-2132875.html

Mr Fisk is rarely wrong on anything, especially when it comes to the Middle East, but he's so totally wrong about Canberra. It was not, I repeat NOT, built on the site of the old Hill Station...

[davidinalameda]

1. and the US capital should have been NYC or Philly

:shrug:

[BlueJazz]

2. "I had to drive into the hotlands" ... Canberra is certainly not that far from the coast.

I drove from Bateman's Bay to Canberra 2 weeks ago. Not that big a deal....I LOVED the city. :)

[Violet_Crumble]

3. It can get pretty hot and dry in summer...

Two weeks ago it was pretty mild, and it'll probably stay that way until late december, early January. The difference in temperature after that is so much that back when I had to move back into my parents house that had no a/c for a few weeks, I dropped everything and drove to the coast to try to get a good night's sleep away from the oppressive heat.

I hope you stopped at Braidwood on yr way to Canberra. The bakery there does the Best. Coffee. Ever. Or maybe it just tastes that way coz it's nice to pull off the road and have a break :)

[bemildred]

4. FYI

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=116&topic_id=2755&mesg_id=2755

[Violet_Crumble]

5. I got all nostaligic just looking at that thread again...

Those were the days *sigh*

[provis99]

6. and the capital of New York State should be New York City,

and the capital of California should be Los Angeles, and the capital of Missouri should be St. Louis, and the capital of Illinois should be Chicago, and the capital of North Dakota should be Fargo, and the capital of Minnesota should be Minneapolis, and the capital of Washington should be Seattle, and well you get the picture. Americans aren't very good at picking the logical capital for a state.

[Chulanowa]

7. Wait, there are cities besides Fargo in ND?

Next you'll tell me there are people in Utah who don't live in Salt Lake City.

[starroute]

8. The intention was to free politics from corporate influence

Those port and river cities have always been the major centers of trade and commercial enterprises -- and the people who stuck their state capitals in places like Albany and Harrisburg were trying to avoid what they feared as the corrupting influence of business.

That was before the invention of the lobbyist, of course.