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“Population Politics” at the End of Empire: Migration and Sovereignty in Ottoman Eastern Rumelia, 1877–1886
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2013
Abstract
This article explores the migrations of Turkish Muslims after the 1878 Peace Treaty of Berlin, which severed much of the Balkans from the Ottoman Empire as fully independent nation-states or as nominally dependent polities in the borderlands of the empire. I focus on one such polity—the administratively autonomous Ottoman province of Eastern Rumelia—which, in wrestling to reconcile liberal principles of equality and political representation understood in ethno-religious terms, prompted emigration of Turkish Muslims while enabling Bulgarian Christian hegemony. Scholars have studied Muslim emigration from the Balkans as the Ottoman Empire gradually lost hold of the region, emphasizing deleterious effects of nationalism and aggressive state-building in the region. Here I look at migration at empire's end, and more specifically at the management of migration as constitutive of sovereignty. The Ottoman government asserted its suzerainty by claiming to protect the rights of Eastern Rumelia's Muslims. The Bulgarian dominated administration of Eastern Rumelia claimed not only administrative but also political autonomy by trying to contain the grievances of Turkish Muslims as a domestic issue abused by ill-meaning outsiders, all the while insisting that the province protected the rights of all subjects. Ultimately, a “corporatist” model of subjecthood obtained in Eastern Rumelia, which fused the traditional religious categorization of Ottoman subjects with an ethnic one under the umbrella of representative government. The tension between group belonging and individual politicization that began unfolding in Eastern Rumelia became a major dilemma of the post-Ottoman world and other post-imperial societies after World War I.
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References
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54 Todorov, Vremennoto Rusko, 144–45.
55 Ovsianyi, Sbornik, vol. 5: 161–64.
56 Todorov, Vremennoto Rusko, 135–37, presents evidence about rather violent clashes among Bulgarians over abandoned land. It is unclear if the PRA articulated a policy for addressing such conflicts, but in any case there is always a discrepancy between official policy and action by individual officers. Only further archival research can illuminate this question.
57 Ovsianyi, Sbornik, vol. 5: 101–04.
58 Ibid.
59 Todorov, Vremennoto Rusko, 169–71.
60 İpek, Rumeli'den, 130–36.
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62 In Against Massacre, Rodogno shows well how humanitarian intervention in effect diminished Ottoman sovereignty.
63 Villages from a district would usually group and write one petition. See, for instance, BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 2/11, s. 4, s. 25–3, s. 41.
64 See, for instance, David Cameron Cuthell Jr., The Muhacirin Komisyonu: An Agent in the Transformation of Ottoman Anatolia, 1860–1866, PhD diss., Columbia University, 2005; also McCarthy, Death and Exile.
65 Cuthell, Muhacirin Komisyonu, 107.
66 Ibid., 250.
67 See the records of the commission: BOA, BEO AYN. d. 1553.
68 İpek, Rumeli'den, passim.
69 See Oktay Özel, “Migration and Power Politics: The Settlement of Georgian Immigrants In Turkey (1878–1908),” Middle Eastern Studies 46 (2010): 477–96.
70 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 4/3, s. 69.
71 The words belong to the statesmen and intellectual Ahmet Cevdet Paşa, quoted in Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris 2011)Google Scholar, 136.
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73 Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains, 135–41.
74 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 4/3, s. 97. “Vizieral” means sent from the Office of the Ottoman grand vizier.
75 BOA, Y. A. HUS 163/26 s. 2; Todorov, Vremennoto Rusko, 129, 163, 176.
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81 Or at least the archival trail shows us that much; BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 9/1, s. 37, 68, 70 and A. MTZ. RŞ 131/5, s. 125. A similar situation of conflicting evidentiary interpretation can be seen in the case of Fatima Hanım, in BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 3/2 s. 144.
82 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 3/2 s. 64. Ahmed Ağa's case can be traced in BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 3/2, s. 64, 70–79, 116–21, 131, 132, 140–42, 156, 157; BOA, BEO NGG d. 969, No. 466, 477, 504, 508, and 539.
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84 BOA, BEO NGG d. 967 No. 180.
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87 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 131/5, s. 42, 76. The Vergi Emaneti in Ahmed Beğ's case feared that refugee requests for title deeds and the legalization of land sales might spur the spread of false documents.
88 BOA, BEO NGG d. 968 No. 102.
89 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 1/37 s. 1.
90 Todorov, Vremennoto Rusko, 169–71.
91 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 4/3, s. 78.
92 Ibid.
93 Ibid.
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid.
96 Ibid.
97 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 4/3 s. 97.
98 Ibid.
99 Dnevnitsi ot Petata Redovna Sessiia na Oblastnoto Sŭbranie (10-ii Oktomvri—10-ii Dekemvri 1883 g.): Stenografski Protokoli (Sofia: Ianko S. Kovachev, 1892)Google Scholar, 144.
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103 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 2/11 s. 25-3.
104 BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 2/11, s. 4.
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110 Ibid., 146, 150.
111 Dnevnitsi ot Shestata Redovna Sessiia na Oblastnoto Sŭbranie, 22-ii Oktomvri—22-ii Dekemvri 1884 g.): Stenograficheski Protokoli (Sofia: Ianko S. Kovachev, 1892)Google Scholar, 319, 438. On taxation as way of articulating the modern subject, see Kotsonis, Yanni, “‘No Place to Go’: Taxation and State Transformation in Late Imperial and Early Soviet Russia,” Journal of Modern History 76 (2004): 531–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “‘Face to Face’: The State, the Individual, and the Citizen in Russian Taxation, 1863–1917,” Slavic Review 63 (2004): 221–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I thank Peter Holquist for drawing my attention to these articles.
112 Plovdivski Oblasten Dŭrzhaven Arkhiv (PODA), F-40k, O-1.
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115 Dnevnitsi ot Shestata Redovna Sessiia, 439–41.
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117 Ibid., 442.
118 Ibid., 535.
119 Katsarkova, “Opiti za reformirane,” 194, and 194n.
120 Dnevnitsi ot Petata Redovna Sessiia, 140.
121 Ibid., 146.
122 Ibid., 144.
123 Ibid., 148.
124 Ibid. The term “fatherland” was used by Assembly Member Milkovski.
125 For the appeal, see BOA, A. MTZ. RŞ 2/11, s. 27.
126 Ibid., s. 172.
127 Ibid., s. 40.
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141 Ibid., 197–98.
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144 Ivan Ev. Geshov, “Iztochna Rumeliia i izborŭt na pŭrviia postoianen komitet,” in Spomeni i Studii, 125–39.
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146 BOA, Ş.D. RŞ 1999/5, s. 13.
147 BOA, Ş.D. RŞ 1999/26, s. 7; Bogoridi's claim is on s. 5.
148 Statelova, Iztochna Rumeliia, 14.
149 BOA, ŞD 1999/26, s. 2.
150 Madzharov, Iztochna Rumeliia, 236–37; Maritsa no. 279, 24 Apr. 1881.
151 BOA, Ş.D. RŞ 1995/5, s. 12-4.
152 Ibid., s. 2, 11, 12-4.
153 Iono Mitev, Sŭedinenieto 1885 (Plovdiv: Hristo G. Danov, 1985), 140–43.
154 Ibid.
155 Crampton, Bulgaria, 90–91.
156 Mitev, Sŭedinenieto, 140–43. See also, Narodnii Glas no. 386, 16 Apr. 1883.
157 Mitev, Sŭedinenieto, 114–22.
158 Ibid.
159 Ibid., 151–53.
160 Ibid.; Crampton, Bulgaria, 91.
161 Mitev, Sŭedinenieto, 122–23.
162 Iliev, Spomeni, 258–61. The prefect of Stara Zagora Atanas Iliev related an incident in the district of Chirpan, where in the summer of 1885 guns were stolen from the municipality. He was also horrified that the newspaper Borba (“struggle,” “fight”) advocated disobedience.
163 Dnevnitsi ot Petata Redovna Sessiia, 150.
164 See Madzharov, Spomeni, 336–39; Iliev, Spomeni, 299–303.
165 Iliev, Spomeni, 299–300.
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