The SpaceTime of Urban Violence: The Riots in Belfast and Jerusalem During the Era of the British Empire

Both Belfast and Jerusalem have the image of being cities of violence, contested by two groups that compete for political and spatial hegemony. Both cities are also characterized as divided, both on a material and a symbolic level. The roots of this division can be traced back to the era of the British Empire, especially to the riots in Belfast from the mid-19th to the early 20th century and the uprisings in Jerusalem during the British Mandate of Palestine. Both cities can be seen as a microcosm of a wider conflict about national identity and political supremacy, drawing elements of ethnic and nationalist strife into a confined urban space. While the interconnectedness of space and violence has been the focus of many studies of divided cities, this paper aims to introduce a spatio-temporal perspective on urban violence. Based on detailed royal commission reports that investigated the riots in both cities, the paper argues that the specific spatial configurations as well as the particular urban rhythms produced and shaped the practices of violence in both cities while the violence reproduced and reshaped the urban space and time. One focus is set on the impact of the rhythms of the urban (daily work cycles, weekly rhythms of prayer, annual commemorations and religious celebrations) on the pacing of communal violence, both in some cases becoming synchronized. The other focal point of the paper is the effect of the riots on urban space and time, constituting Belfast and Jerusalem as divided and anchored in time to these formative periods of violence. The spatio-temporal practices of violence permanently changed the urban space and time by imbuing particular places, dates, and time periods with symbolic meaning and by overlapping space and time with collective memories of violence.