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Three Waves of Late Ottoman Historiography, 1950-2007

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2016

Cem Emrence*
Affiliation:
SUNY-Binghamton

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
Copyright
Copyright © Middle East Studies Association of North America 2007

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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. 4776.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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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), 145171.Google Scholar

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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

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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), 319Google 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), 207230CrossRefGoogle 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), 517Google 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. 251267.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