Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T13:04:48.379Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Three Waves of Late Ottoman Historiography, 1950-2007

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Cem Emrence
Cem Emrence*
Affiliation:
SUNY-Binghamton
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Since the middle of the twentieth century there have been three waves of historiography on the late Ottoman world. Each rose to prominence in a different global setting, functioned as a broad intellectual orientation, and was replaced by another somewhat less hegemonic theoretical current after about two decades. The key differences between the three episodes are evident in terms of their thematic priorities, analytical frameworks, and the research designs and methodological choices of scholars. These three waves of Ottoman history writing can be classified as modernization approaches, macro models, and post-structural agendas.

Type
Essays
Information
Review of Middle East Studies , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , Winter 2007 , pp. 137 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

End Notes

1 For a three-wave periodization of African historiography emphasizing political structure, economy, and culture respectively, see Cooper, Frederick, “Decolonizing Situations: the Rise, Fall and Rise of Colonial Studies, 1951-2001,” French Politics, Culture and Society vol. 20(2) (2002), pp. 47–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Quataert, Donald, The Ottoman Empire, 1700-1922 Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zürcher, Erik Jan, Turkey: a Modern History, Third Edition (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004)Google Scholar; Ahmad, Feroz, Turkey: the Quest for Identity (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).Google Scholar

3 Lewis, Bernard, What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Davison, Roderic H., Essays in Ottoman and Turkish History, 1774-1923: the Impact of the West (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990).Google Scholar

4 Davison, Roderic H., Reform in the Ottoman Empire, 1856-1876 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).Google Scholar

5 Shaw, Stanford J., Between Old and New: the Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III, 1789-1807 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Shaw, Stanford J. and Shaw, Ezel K., History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ortayli, İlber, İmparatorluğun En Uzun Yüzyili (Istanbul: Hil, 1983)Google Scholar; Findley, Carter V., Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980).Google Scholar

7 Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

8 Charles, Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).Google Scholar

9 Lewis, Geoffrey L., Turkey (New York: Praeger, 1955)Google Scholar; Robinson, Richard D., The First Turkish Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Berkes, Niyazi, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montréal: McGill University Press, 1964).Google Scholar

11 The resistance of provincial households to Tanzimat is argued by Ma’oz, Moshe, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine, 1840-1861: the Impact of the Tanzimat on Politics and Society (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).Google Scholar

12 For the classical statement on the subject, see Mardin, Şerif, “Center-Periphery: a Key to Turkish Politics,” Deadalus 102 (1973), 169–190.Google Scholar

13 There are intellectual companions from imperial Russian and Chinese histories. Riasanovsky, Nicholas V., A History of Russia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Spence, Jonathan D., The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990).Google Scholar

14 For the best formulation, see Keyder, Çağlar, State and Class in Turkey: a Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso, 1987).Google Scholar

15 İslamoğlu-İnan, Huri (ed.), The Ottoman Empire and the World-Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

16 The two positions are respectively in Kurmuş, Orhan, Emperyalizmin Türkiye’ye Girişi (Istanbul: Bilim Yayinlari, 1974)Google Scholar and New Perspectives on Turkey, “The 1838 Convention and Its Impact,” Special Issue No. 7 (Spring 1992).

17 Nonetheless, the Ottoman route to world economic integration was distinct because of scarcity of agricultural labor, the strength of middle peasantry and the political independence of the Ottoman Empire. Pamuk, Şevket, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913: Trade, investment and Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).Google Scholar

18 Owen, Roger, The Middle East in the World Economy 1800-1914 (London: Methuen, 1981).Google Scholar

19 The rise of non-Muslim merchants in Western Anatolia is well-documented in the field. Kasaba, Reşat, The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy – The Nineteenth Century (Albany: SUNY Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Frangakis-Syrett, Elena, “The Economic Activities of the Greek Community of Izmir in the Second Half of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Gondicas, Dimitri and Issawi, Charles (eds.) Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), 17–44.Google Scholar

20 For the ethnic division of labor idea and its positive impact on the non-Muslim communities of the Middle East, see Issawi, Charles, “Introduction,” Gondicas, Dimitri & Issawi, Charles (eds.) Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism (Princeton, NJ: The Darwin Press, 1999), 1–16Google Scholar; Sussnitzki, A. J., “Zur Gliederung Wirtschaftslicher Arbeit nach Nationalitaten in der Türkei,” Issawi, Charles (ed.) The Economic History of the Middle East 1800-1914 (Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), 114–125.Google Scholar This reading of economic entrepreneurship was based on a supply-side approach which credited cultural traits and yet omitted a demand-side perspective which can explain the rise of a non-Muslim merchant class based on institutional and ecological factors. For a theoretical introduction to the debate, see Thornton, Patricia H., “The Sociology of Entrepreneurship,” Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 25 (1999), pp. 19–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Landholding patterns shaped power relations at the local level, created long-term political consequences and yet played a limited role on the early wave of incorporation of the Ottoman Empire to the world economy. Gerber, Haim, Social Origins of the Modern Middle East (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1987)Google Scholar; Keyder, Çağlar and Tabak, Faruk (eds.) Landholding and Commercial Agriculture in the Middle East (New York: SUNY Press, 1991)Google Scholar; Owen, Roger (ed.) New Perspectives on Property and Land on the Middle East (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Khalidi, Tarif (ed.) Land Tenure and Social Transformation in the Middle East (Beirut: AUB, 1984).Google Scholar

22 This thesis has been fully developed and documented for Anatolia by Quataert during the 1990s, see Quataert, Donald, “The Age of Reforms, 1812-1914,” Inalcik, Halil and Quataert, Donald (eds.) An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire Vol. 2 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 761–943.Google Scholar

23 The resistance of peasants in the countryside, worker struggles in the cities and the political alliances between Young Turks and urban guilds are discussed in Quataert, Donald, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York: NYU Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Quataert, Donald and Zürcher, Erik Jan (eds.) Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, 1839-1950 (London: Tauris, 1995).Google Scholar

24 For a theoretical statement about the earlier origins of Ottoman incorporation, see Kasaba, Reşat and Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Incorporation into the World-Economy: Change in the Structure of the Ottoman Empire, 1750-1839,” (Binghamton: Fernand Braudel Center, 1980)Google Scholar.

25 On the economic vision and policies of Young Turks, see Toprak, Zafer, Türkiye’de Milli iktisat, 1908-1918 (Ankara: Yurt Yayinlari, 1982).Google Scholar Also, see the wonderful collection of essays by Ökçün that explores the making of the national economy during the war decade at the local level, A. Ökçün, Gündüz, İktisat Tarihi Yazilari (Ankara: Sermaye Piyasasi Kurulu, 1997).Google Scholar

26 Ahmad, Feroz, “Vanguard of a Nascent Bourgeoisie: the Social and Economic Policy of the Young Turks,” Okyar, Osman and İnalcik, Halil (eds.) Social and Economic History of Turkey (Ankara: Meteksan, 1980), 329–350.Google Scholar

27 Keyder, Çağlar, “Bureaucracy and Bourgeoisie: Reform and Revolution in the Age of Imperialism,” Review 11 (2) (1988), 151–165Google Scholar; Keyder, Çağlar, “The Ottoman Empire,” Barkey, Karen and Hagen, Mark von (eds.) After Empire – Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 30–44.Google Scholar

28 Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Wong, Roy B., China Transformed and the Limits of European Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Goldstone, Jack A., “Whose Measure of Reality,” American Historical Review, Vol. 105 (2) (2000), 501–508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Strong social ties between the imperial center and the provinces are confirmed in this literature. Kayali, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks- Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Hanssen, Jens, Fin de Siécle Beirut: the Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Anscombe, Frederick F., The Ottoman Gulf: the Creation of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Çetinsaya, Gökhan, “The Caliph and the Shaykhs: Abdülhamid II’s Policy towards the Qaditiyya of Mosul,” Weismann, Itzchak and Zachs, Fruma (eds.) Ottoman Reform and Muslim Regeneration (London, New York: LB. Tauris, 2005), 97–107Google Scholar; Khoury, Dina Rizk, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul, 1540-1834 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Watenpaugh, Keith David, Being Modern in the Middle East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30 For the centrality of tax-farming, see Salzmann, Ariel, Tocqueville in the Ottoman Empire: Rival Paths to the Modern State (Leiden: Brill, 2004).Google Scholar Center-periphery symbiosis is well-articulated in Abou-El-Haj, Rifaat Ali, Formation of the Modern State – The Ottoman Empire, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, Second Edition (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2005).Google Scholar

31 Makdisi directs attention to the domestic aspect of the Ottoman modernization project where the sociological imagination of the Ottoman bureaucratic class produced a backward east which increasingly coincided with distinct religious (non-orthodox Islam), ethnic (Arab) and spatial (Western Asia) identities. Makdisi, Ussama, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American Historical Review 107 (3) (2002), 768–796Google Scholar; for the widening mental gap between the bureaucratic class and imperial subjects, see also Deringil, Selim, ‘“They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: the Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45 (2) (2003), 311–342.Google Scholar

32 The resilience and pragmatic nature of local economic actors are described in various contexts. Rogan, Eugene L., Frontiers of the State in Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan 1850-1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Shields, Sarah, Mosul before Iraq: Like Bees Making Five-Sided Cells (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Fattah, Hala, The Politics of Regional Trade in Iraq, Arabia and the Gulf, 1745-1900 (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997)Google Scholar; Blumi, Isa, “Thwarting the Ottoman Empire: Smuggling through the Empire’s New Frontiers in Yemen and Albania, 1878-1910,” International Journal of Turkish Studies 9 (1) (2003), 255–274.Google Scholar

33 The idea here is to see imperial ideology as a new layer of inclusive social identity which in most cases did not contradict with local, ethnic and religious affiliations of the social actors involved. This dimension of late Ottoman rule and its demise during the early Turkish Republic has been captured in two recent articles, Kasaba, Reşat, “Dreams of Empire, Dreams of Nations,” Eshcrick, Joseph W., Kayali, Hasan, Young, Eric Van (eds.) Empire to Nation – Historical Perspectives om the Making of the Modern World (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), 198–225Google Scholar; Birtek, Faruk, “Greek Bull in the China Shop of Ottoman ‘Grand Illusion’: Greece in the Making of Modern Turkey,” Birtek, Faruk and Dragonas, Thanos (eds.) Citizenship and the Nation-State in Greece and Turkey (London: Routledge, 2005), 37–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 On Hamidian vision and its success on the cultural realm, see Deringil, Selim, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909 (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998)Google Scholar; Weber, Stefan, “Images of Imagined World,” Hanssen, Jens, Philipp, Thomas and Weber, Stefan (eds.) The Empire in the City-Arab Provincial Capitals in the Late Ottoman Empire (Beirut: Orient Institute, 2002), 145–171.Google Scholar

35 Rogan, Eugene L., “The Political Significance of an Ottoman Education: Maktab ‘Anbar Revisited”, Philipp, Thomas and Schumann, Christoph (eds.) From the Syrian Land to the States of Syria and Lebanon (Beirut: Orient Institute, 2004), 77–94Google Scholar; Fortna, Benjamin C., Imperial Classroom: Islam, Education and the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)Google Scholar; Roded, Ruth, “Social Patterns among the Urban Elite of Syria during the Late Ottoman Period, 1876-1918”, Kushner, David (ed.) Palestine in the Late Ottoman Period (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986), 146–171.Google Scholar

36 The last point will be critical to assess the rise of Muslim nationalisms in the Middle East and the Balkans in the early twentieth century. For the history and actors of Kurdish, Arab and Albanian nationalisms, see Özoğlu, Hakan, Kurdish Notables and the Ottoman State: Evolving Identities, Competing Loyalties and Shifting Boundaries (Albany: SUNY Press, 2004)Google Scholar; Khalidi, Rashid (ed.), The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia, 1991)Google Scholar; Gawrych, George Walter, The Crescent and the Eagle: Ottoman Rule, Islam and the Albanians (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006)Google Scholar.

37 The power of local agents is well-documented for the Arab provinces. See Doumani, Beshara, Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Reilly, James A., A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (Oxford, New York: P. Lang, 2002)Google Scholar; Yazbak, Mahmoud, Haifa in the Late Ottoman Period, 1864-1914: A Muslim Town in Transition (Leiden: Brill, 1998)Google Scholar. Also see the classic work of Khoury on Damascus. Khoury, Philip S., Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: the Politics of Damascus, 1860-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Salzmann, Ariel, ‘An Ancien Régime Revisited: “Privatization” and Political Economy in Eighteenth Century Ottoman Empire,” Politics & Society 21 (1993), 393–423Google Scholar; Barkey, Karen, ‘A Perspective on Ottoman Decline,” Friedman, Jonathan and Chase-Dunn, Christopher (eds.) Hegemonic Decline: Present and Past (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2005), 135–151.Google Scholar

39 For the early nationalist, elite-centered and colonial visions of Young Turks, see respectively Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, “Turkism and the Young Turks,” Kieser, Hans-Lukas (ed.) Turkey beyond Nationalism: towards Post-Nationalist Identities (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 3–19Google Scholar; Worringer, Renee, ‘“Sick Man of Europe or Japan of the Near East”?: Constructing Ottoman Modernity in the Hamidan and Young Turk Eras,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 36 (2) (2004), 207–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kühn, Thomas, ‘An Imperial Borderland as Colony Knowledge Production and the Elaboration of Difference in Ottoman Yemen, 1872-1918,” The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies Vol 3 (Spring 2003), 5–17Google Scholar; for a contrasting view that approaches Young Turks as a middle class movement that cut across ethnic and religious lines, see Kansu, Aykut, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997)Google Scholar; Kansu, Aykut, Politics in Post-Revolutionary Turkey, 1908-1913 (Leiden: Brill, 2000).Google Scholar

40 This is a path-dependent institutional argument. On the idea of path-dependency, see Pierson, Paul, “Increasing Returns, Path-Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” The American Political Science Review Vol. 94(2) (2000), pp. 251–267.Google Scholar For the application of the path-dependency idea to politics and history, see Mahoney, JamesLegacies of Liberalism: Path Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Ertman, Thomas, The Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Emrence, Cem, The Great Divergence in the Ottoman Middle East, 1820-1908 (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Sociology, SUNY-Binghamton, 2008).Google Scholar