Survival and Autonomy

2021 ◽  
pp. 81-106
Author(s):  
Emily Greble
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Equality ◽  
Social Fabric ◽  
European Project ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Islamic Institutions

The Balkan Wars of 1912–1913 and World War I shattered the social fabric of Ottoman Europe and led to a radical revision of the region’s political boundaries. How did experiences of successive traumas—expulsions, famine, disease, massacres, and new occupation regimes—shape Muslims’ understandings of the European project and their experiences within it? This chapter analyzes this catastrophic era from diverse Muslim perspectives. It reveals how many Muslims found legal promises of political equality and rights ambiguous and intangible, and instead sought to define their own terms of political belonging. They wanted autonomy, confessional sovereignty, and the protection of Islamic institutions and property.

Making History to/as the Main Pillar of Identity: The Assyrian Paradigm

Belleten ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 76 (276) ◽  
pp. 631-646
Author(s):  
Bülent Özdemi̇r
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
National Consciousness ◽  
World War ◽  
Large Segment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Conditions

In the 20th century Assyrians living in Diaspora have increased their search of identity because of the social and political conditions of their present countries. In doing so, they utilize the history by picking up certain events which are still kept fresh in the collective memory of the Assyrian society. World War I, which caused a large segment of the Assyrians to emigrate from the Middle East, has been considered as the milestone event of their history. They preferred to use and evaluate the circumstances during WW I in terms of a genocidal attack of the Ottomans against their nation. This political definition dwarfs the promises which were not kept given by their Western allies during the war for an independent Assyrian state. The aspects of Assyrian civilization existed thousands of years ago as one of the real pillars of their identity suffer from the artificially developed political unification around the aspects of their doom in WWI presented as a genocidal case. Additionally, this plays an efficient role in removal of existing religious and sectarian differences for centuries among Assyrians. This paper aims at showing in the framework of primary sources how Assyrian genocidal claims are being used pragmatically in the formation of national consciousness in a very effective way. Not the Assyrian civilization but their constructed history in WWI is used for the formation of their nation definition.

The Shaping of a Nation: Palestinians in the Last Century of Ottoman Rule

1994 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 75-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel S. Migdal ◽  
Baruch Kimmerling
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
British Mandate ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
British Rule ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
History Of

No period was more decisive in the modern history of Palestine than the British Mandate, which lasted from the end of World War I until 1948. Not only did British rule establish the political boundaries of Palestine, the new realities forced both Jews and Arabs in the country to redefine their social boundaries and self-identity. But the cataclysmic events that continued through 1948, with the creation of Israel and what Arabs called al-Nakba (the catastrophe of dispersal and exile), took shape in the wake of key changes stretching over the last century of Ottoman rule. What was to be Palestine after World War I became increasingly more integrated territorially during the nineteenth century. And Arab society in the last century of Ottoman rule underwent critical changes that paved the way for the emergence of a Palestinian people in the twentieth century.

Charles Wolfe, “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna”

Heart Beats ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Robson
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Napoleonic Wars ◽  
Social Expectations ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
John Moore

This chapter resurrects “The Burial of Sir John Moore after Corunna.” Charles Wolfe's poem, a reimagining of the hasty interment of a fallen general after one of the land battles in the Napoleonic wars, was repeatedly quoted by soldiers and other individuals during the American Civil War when they found themselves having to organize, or witness, the burials of dead comrades. In recent years, cultural historians of Great Britain have tried to account for the massive shift in burial and memorial practices for the common soldier that occurred between 1815 and 1915. The chapter argues that the presence of Wolfe's poem in the hearts and minds of ordinary people played its part in creating the social expectations that led to the establishment of the National Cemeteries in the United States, and thus, in due course, the mass memorialization of World War I.

The Dimensions of Social Conflict at the End of World War I

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Maier
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Interest Groups ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Social Conflict ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Social Democratic Party ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Polarization ◽  
Class Divisions

This chapter examines social conflict at the end of World War I in three dimensions: in terms of class, elite, and interest groups. Conservatives throughout Europe were preoccupied with class divisions and the vulnerability of their own favored stations in life, but their sense of vulnerability emerged in different language and day-to-day disputes. In France, social defensiveness was revealed directly by continuing justification and discussion of the bourgeoisie, while in Germany the fixation with the Social Democratic Party and in Italy the defense of “liberalism” disclosed underlying class malaise. The chapter explains how these differences emerged within a pervasive anxiety about social polarization. It also considers the ways in which the elites sought to utilize the opportunity to reassert their older social hegemony in the context of corporate capitalism.

Boundaries and borders

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mandy Sadan
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Local System ◽  
Boundary Region ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Transformation ◽  
World War ◽  
Group Relations ◽  
Local Elites ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
Late Nineteenth

This chapter examines the changing political framework of the region from the late nineteenth century through to World War I as fluid political boundaries that were transformed into bordered territories. It describes how local elites in the Yunnan boundary region managed the transition zone of the mountains between Burma and China, and the role that they played in the local political system after the Panthay revolt and just prior to the fall of the Konbaung Dynasty in Burma. The chapter then describes how old and new elites were created in this process of geo-political transformation. It focuses in particular on the eastern borderworld, where great ethnographic complexity became rationalised in line with new and emerging political needs. It describes in detail how a local system of cross-group relations expressed as a ritual system became a model for later Kachin ethno-nationalist ideological expansion influenced by these administrative changes.

Teaching the Armenian Genocide in Turkey: Curriculum, Methods, and Sources

PMLA ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 131 (5) ◽  
pp. 1515-1518
Author(s):  
Hülya Adak
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
World War ◽  
Modern Drama ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
Gender And Sexuality Studies ◽  
Turkish Literature ◽  
And Gender

Since 2001, I Have Been Teaching Courses in Cultural Studies, European and Turkish Literature, Modern Drama, and Gender and sexuality studies at Sabancı University in Istanbul. During my fifteen years of teaching undergraduate and graduate students, the Armenian genocide was a particularly challenging theme to bring into the classroom. Even at Sabancı University, one of the rare liberal universities in Turkey to offer courses that challenge Turkish national myths, most students, including those who graduated from “liberal” high schools, had received a nationalist education and came to college either not knowing anything about the Armenian genocide or denying it altogether. Denial of the Armenian genocide is still pervasive in Turkey; 1915 is identified in history textbooks as the year of the Battle of Gallipoli, the most important Ottoman victory against the British and French naval forces during World War I. For most of the twentieth century and up until 2005, when the seminal Ottoman Armenians Conference opened a public discussion of the topic, silence regarding the deportation and genocide of the Ottoman Armenians prevailed. If denialist myths in Turkey acknowledge the deaths of the Ottoman Armenians, they justify such deaths as “retaliation” for the deaths of Turkish Muslims during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 or equate the massacres of Armenians with Turkish casualties of war from the same period. For instance, Talat Paşa, the mastermind behind the deportations and massacres of roughly one million Armenians in 1915-16, argues in his memoirs that an equal number of Turks were killed by Armenians during World War I and in its aftermath (51-56).

Understanding Economic and Social Developments in the Periphery: Bulgarian National Income 1892–1924

2008 ◽  
Vol 34-35 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 219-244
Author(s):  
Martin Ivanov
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Population Change ◽  
National Income ◽  
Population Increase ◽  
World War ◽  
Balkan Wars ◽  
Negative Growth Rate ◽  
Long Run ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Negative Growth

This article aims at a reconstruction of reliable estimates of Bulgarian GNP growth. The main methodological point of reference is a work published in the 1940s by a contemporary Bulgarian economist, Asen Chakalov. Given the sophistication of Chakalov’s estimates and the desirability of chaining new data onto his estimate for 1924, the article’s methodology consists in the first instance in replicating his figure for 1924 on the basis of original sources and then using these same sources to create a series of properly documented estimates for the years between 1892 and 1924. To provide a meaningful comparison over the long run between 1892 and 1945, we must allow for price changes, population change, and the impact of territorial redistribution in the course of the Balkan Wars and World War I. The results are striking. For 1924 a reassuring match with Chakalov’s estimate is achieved. The new GNP series indicates that the Bulgarian economy did not achieve staggering results during the period in review—an average of 0.93% on a yearly basis. True, there were sub-periods in which the GNP was growing a bit faster (2.76% between 1899 and 1905, and 2.16% during 1905-1911); however, this is both a misleading (due to the low base of the crisis of 1899) and an unsustainable conclusion. Inserting the population factor into the picture makes the situation even more dismal. In per capita terms Bulgaria achieved a negative growth rate of –0.32% annually. The economy fell behind the population increase, which turned out to be a serious obstacle for switching over to a higher gear.

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