Threevery fine papers deal with the Ottoman menace as metaphor in what we now designate as the post-Habsburg period, that discreet time span between the closing decades of the nineteenth century and World War II, with some forays into the contemporary period. In all three papers, the Ottoman (or the Turk, as was the current usage) served as a foil for contemporary grievances. It is not really the “Ottoman menace” they are dealing with, but, accordingly, the communist, socialist, working-class, Jewish, Serbian, or other “menaces” that are additionally demonized by introducing the analogy to a well-known and popular symbol. In the apt observation of the Austrian playwright J. P. Ostland, quoted by Maureen Healy, this was the present packaged as the past. It needs to be stressed that even the phrase “Ottoman menace” is a neologism form the post-World War II period, when scholarly works insisted correctly on a distinction between “Ottoman” as an imperial designator and “Turk” as an ethnic and later a national one. Although this distinction is justified for analytical purposes, it introduces a tinge of anachronism that belies one of the primary goals of history writing.
Surplus country adjustment: revisiting the post-World War II Scarce Currency Clause
