Ottoman Turkey and Qing China

2021 ◽  
pp. 1058-1081
Author(s):  
Michael A. Reynolds ◽  
Rana Mitter
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Western World ◽  
Government Structure ◽  
Opium War ◽  
Relative Closeness ◽  
Tanzimat Reforms ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Unequal Treaties ◽  
Late Ottoman

The late Ottoman Empire and Qing China were both imperial states that were weakened by their relationship with the changing Western world. In 1839, the Ottoman Empire embarked on the Tanzimat reforms which sought to change ideas about education, technology, and government structure. In the same year, China experienced the first Opium War, and its defeat led to the signing of “unequal treaties” which would force China to deal on unfavorable terms with the West for the best part of a century. In the end, the empires met different fates. Qing China was replaced by a republic in 1912, but its territory remained mostly intact. The Ottoman Empire was split up after World War I. One reason for the split of the Ottoman Empire was the variegated nature of its population, compared even to the multiethnic Qing. Another was Turkey’s relative closeness to the other European powers, which made it easier for them to divide it up.

scholarly journals SHINY THINGS AND SOVEREIGN LEGALITIES: EXPROPRIATION OF DYNASTIC PROPERTY IN THE LATE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND EARLY TURKISH REPUBLIC

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-463
Author(s):  
Ceyda Karamursel
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Legislative Process ◽  
World War ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Entry Points ◽  
To Come ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractThis article probes the legal expropriation of dynastic property in the late Ottoman Empire and early Turkish Republic. Focused on the period from Abdülhamid II's deposal in 1909 to the decade immediately following the abolition of the caliphate in 1924, it takes parliamentary debates as entry points for exploring how this legislative process redefined the sovereign's relationship with property. Although this process was initially limited only to Yıldız Palace, the debates that surrounded it heuristically helped to shape a new understanding of public ownership of property that was put to use in other contexts in the years to come, most notably during and after World War I and the Armenian genocide, before establishing itself as the foundation of a new ownership regime with the republican appropriation and reuse of property two decades later.

ATROCITY PROPAGANDA AND THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MASSES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE DURING THE BALKAN WARS (1912–13)

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Y. Doğan Çetinkaya
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Turkish Language ◽  
Late Ottoman

AbstractDuring the Balkan Wars (1912–13), the mobilization of the home front became significant for the belligerent states, which initiated propaganda activities demonizing their enemies and galvanizing the emotions of their publics. This paper explores one type of such mobilization efforts from above, atrocity propaganda, through which states sought to invoke hatred and mobilize public support for war by focusing on the atrocities (mezalim) that their coreligionists had suffered at the hands of enemies. Although the term “atrocity propaganda” has been used exclusively in the context of World War I in the historiography, the practice it describes was effectively utilized during the earlier Balkan Wars. In the Ottoman Empire, both state and civil initiatives played crucial roles in the making of atrocity propaganda, which was disseminated through intense coverage in the Turkish-language press. The imagery it employed shifted with the onset of the wars, becoming increasingly shocking. Atrocity propaganda contributed to the well-known radicalization of nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire.

Institutionalized migrant solidarity in the late Ottoman Empire: Armenian homeland associations (1800s–1920s)

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 ◽  
pp. 55-79
Author(s):  
Yaşar Tolga Cora
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Information Networks ◽  
Demographic Changes ◽  
World War ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman ◽  
Community Administration

By focusing on the Armenian homeland associations (hayrenakts‘akank‘) established in Istanbul in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this article examines the migrants’ activism and their achievements—facilitated by affective bonds based on shared origins. It outlines the Istanbul-based homeland associations’ development chronologically and discusses their cultural and economic goals in their home regions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The article then focuses on their durability and ability to adapt to the needs of the communities in the series of great political and demographic changes in the late Ottoman Empire from mid-1890s to their reconstruction after the end of World War I. The homeland associations established in the post-genocide period reflect the persistence of local belonging as a basis of solidarity and they fulfilled important functions as information networks and intermediaries between the survivors and the community administration. The article argues that Armenian homeland associations constituted a space in which agency of the migrants and their interaction with broader social and political developments could be observed in the late Ottoman Empire. They were one of the most durable and institutionalized forms of migrant solidarity which render migrants’ agency visible in the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire.

scholarly journals Peasant Protest in the Late Ottoman Empire: Moral Economy, Revolt, and the Tanzimat Reforms

2012 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Attıla Aytekın
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Balance Of Power ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Reform Programme ◽  
Tanzimat Reforms ◽  
Realistic Assessment ◽  
Peasant Protest ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

SummaryThis article argues that despite the different contexts of the Ottoman peasant uprisings in Vidin, Canik, and Kisrawan during the mid-nineteenth century, the attitudes and actions of peasants in the three revolts were remarkably similar. The moral economy of the peasants played an important role in determining their attitudes to the upper classes and to the state. During agrarian conflicts, the peasants received no support from outside but were well organized, used violence selectively, refused to pay taxes they deemed unfair, tended to radicalize, and preferred to deal with central instead of local authorities. Their preference for dealing with central authorities stemmed not from any naive monarchism, but from their realistic assessment of the local balance of power and a pragmatic desire to bypass it; and from their wish to have recourse to the moral authority of the sultan. The article will conclude that the rebels did not rise up against the Tanzimat reforms, nor did they simply misunderstand them; rather, they endorsed the reform programme, reinterpreted it through rumour, and strove to radicalize it.

The Politics of Poor Relief in the Late Ottoman Empire 1876-1914

1999 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nadir Özbek
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Poor Relief ◽  
World War ◽  
Second Constitutional Period ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

This article examines the Ottoman state's increasing involvement in caring for the poor and the needy and the emergence of modern relief institutions and hospitals throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The particular focus will be on the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) and the second constitutional period (1908-14) up until World War I.Rather than presenting the emergence of poor-relief institutions in the Ottoman Empire as a function of increasing poverty and need, or as a function of the state's desire to control and regulate the urban population for various concerns, I concentrate on the dynamics of the political sphere. I will focus particularly on the political conflict between the sultan and the new political elite, whose identity was defined in relation to newly structured state functions and services.

“Twisted Desires,” Boy-Lovers, and Male–Male Cross-Generational Sex in the Late Ottoman Empire (1912–1918)

2020 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-46
Author(s):  
Tuğçe Kayaal
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Sexually Abused ◽  
Sexual Practices ◽  
World War ◽  
Sexual Interaction ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Heterosexual Sex ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
Late Ottoman

This article explores the condemnation of male–male cross-generational sexual practices in the Ottoman Empire during World War I (1914–1918) through a sexual harassment case that took place in an orphanage in Konya. Relying on the police registers and incorporating individual testimonies of orphan boys who were sexually abused by the headmaster, Münir Bey, I explore the wartime political and sexological discourses on cross-generational homoerotic sexual practices against the backdrop of the institutionalization of heterosexual sex. I argue that, rather than the act of sexual abuse itself, in the wartime ideological climate it was the sexual interaction between same-sex individuals that alarmed Ottoman state and society and forced them to take action against it. Male–male cross-generational sex and homoeroticism itself became bigger crimes than the act of sexually abusing underage individuals.

The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taner Akçam
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Ethnic Cleansing ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Young Turks ◽  
East And West ◽  
Late Ottoman Empire ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Late Ottoman

Introducing new evidence from more than 600 secret Ottoman documents, this book demonstrates in detail that the Armenian Genocide and the expulsion of Greeks from the late Ottoman Empire resulted from an official effort to rid the empire of its Christian subjects. This book goes deep inside the bureaucratic machinery of Ottoman Turkey to show how a dying empire embraced genocide and ethnic cleansing. Although the deportation and killing of Armenians was internationally condemned in 1915 as a “crime against humanity and civilization,” the Ottoman government initiated a policy of denial that is still maintained by the Turkish Republic. The case for Turkey's “official history” rests on documents from the Ottoman imperial archives, to which access has been heavily restricted until recently. It is this very source that the book now uses to overturn the official narrative. The documents presented here attest to a late-Ottoman policy of Turkification, the goal of which was no less than the radical demographic transformation of Anatolia. To that end, about one-third of Anatolia's 15 million people were displaced, deported, expelled, or massacred, destroying the ethno-religious diversity of an ancient cultural crossroads of East and West, and paving the way for the Turkish Republic. By uncovering the central roles played by demographic engineering and assimilation in the Armenian Genocide, this book will fundamentally change how this crime is understood and show that physical destruction is not the only aspect of the genocidal process.

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