Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-f46jp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T00:22:15.590Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Nations and Nationalisms in the Late Ottoman Empire

from Part I - Imperial and Postcolonial Settings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2023

By
Ebru Boyar
Edited by
Cathie Carmichael ,
Matthew D'Auria  and
Aviel Roshwald
Cathie Carmichael
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Matthew D'Auria
Affiliation:
University of East Anglia
Aviel Roshwald
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

In his popular novel, Kürk Mantolu Madonna (Madonna in a Fur Coat), which was first published in Istanbul in 1943, Sabahattin Ali wrote that “for some reason or other people prefer to investigate what they feel sure they will find. It is without doubt easier to find a brave man to descend to the bottom of a well where it is known that a dragon lives than to find a man who will show the courage to descend into a well about the bottom of which nothing is known.”1 This view applies nicely to research into nations and nationalisms, for the bottom of the well is already known: the Ottoman Empire collapsed and was replaced by new nation-states. This collapse has often been taken as the “inevitable” triumph of nation-state over empire, the victory of national identities over other identity constructions.

Keywords

Arabismthe Balkan Warscivilizationdecentralization
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Nationhood and Nationalism , pp. 24 - 42
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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

Further Reading

Aymes, Marc, A Provincial History of the Ottoman Empire: Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Adrian Morfee (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).Google Scholar
Boyar, Ebru, Ottomans, Turks and the Balkans: Empire Lost, Relations Altered (London: I. B. Tauris, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayalı, Hasan, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalidi, Rashid, Anderson, Lisa, Muslih, Muhammad, and Simon, Reeva S. (eds.), The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).Google Scholar
Methodieva, Milena B., Between Empire and Nation: Muslim Reform in the Balkans (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2021).Google Scholar
Provence, Michael, The Last Ottomans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×