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Conclusion: Millets, States, and National Identities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Peter Mentzel*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Utah State University, U.S.A.

Extract

The previous essays have presented a (frequently tragic) history of the Muslims of Southeastern Europe. The development of national identities among the Muslim populations has been an important chapter in this story. A recurring theme in the different case studies presented in this special issue is that the ways in which the Balkan Muslim population perceived itself did not always match the perception of the Christian population, especially the nationalists. Likewise, while the non-Muslim population often considered all Muslims to be an undifferentiated mass (usually referred to as “Turks”), the Muslims themselves often had highly nuanced and complex self-perception. While this self-identification included Islam as an important component, Islam was by no means the only, or even most important, aspect of identity.

Type
The Muslim Minorities
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

1. Benjamin Braude, “Foundation Myths of the Millet System,” in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Emipire , Vol. 1 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982).Google Scholar

2. George Arnakis, “The Role of Religion in the Development of Balkan Nationalism,” in Charles and Barbara Jelavich, eds, The Balkans in Transition (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1963).Google Scholar

3. See, for example, Maria Todorova, “The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans,” in L. Carl Brown, ed., Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 67.Google Scholar

4. Richard Clogg, “The Greek Millet in the Ottoman Empire,” in Braude and Lewis, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Emipire , p. 193.Google Scholar

5. Barbara Jelavich, A History of the Balkans, Vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 134.Google Scholar

6. See especially E. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Google Scholar

7. Sylvia Haim, ed., Arab Nationalism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Rashid Khalidi, “Ottomanism and Arabism in Syria before 1914: A Reassessment,” in Rashid Khalidi et al., eds, The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).Google Scholar