scholarly journals From Şikayet to Political Discourse and ‘Public Opinion’: Petitioning Practices to the King-Crane Commission

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuval Ben-Bassat ◽  
Fruma Zachs

The King-Crane Commission, named after its two chairs, Henry Churchill King (1858-1934) and Charles R. Crane (1858-1939), was an American investigative commission set up to explore possible political arrangements for the former Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I and the collapse of the Empire. While most research has dealt with the issue of whether the petitions submitted to the King-Crane Commission were a genuine manifestation of ‘public opinion’ or merely manipulations by interested elite parties, this article shifts the focus beyond this debate. We argue that a textual analysis of these petitions can shed light on the transformation of the traditional Ottoman form of appeal into a modern political tool used to recruit and generate ‘public opinion’ and foster modern political discourse. We first present a historical overview of petitioning in the Ottoman Empire and the key changes in petitioning practices in the last half of the nineteenth century. We then discuss the King-Crane petitions and highlight their differences from traditional petitions, as well as their contribution to the emerging national discourse in Greater Syria. We show that petitions shifted toward stances that were more ideological and political in nature, a development that coincided with the collapse of the Empire.

Author(s):  
Hannah Holtschneider

The book concludes by articulating the significance of the attention to local history for our study of national and international themes of migration. Complementing works which address the lives of individuals and congregations across the Anglophone world, the conclusion demonstrates that there is scope for further investigation of migrant rabbis, in particular. Jewish religious functionaries have, as yet, rarely been understood as a group of people whose migration westwards might shed light on transnational networks of authority. Adam Mendelsohn’s work on the middle of the nineteenth century and rabbis who migrated to various parts of the Anglophone world is pioneering in this regard. It is hoped that Jewish Orthodoxy in Scotland may give rise to other studies investigating the careers of others who graduated from the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary before World War I and made their lives in the West.


2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-593
Author(s):  
Edhem Eldem

War has always been a catalyst for innovation in the Ottoman Empire, even in the un- likely field of iconography. World War I was such an episode, further exacerbated by the alliance with Germany, a major producer of wartime propaganda. This contribution retraces the development of state symbolism in the Ottoman Empire throughout the nineteenth century, especially with respect to medals and decorations, before focusing on the production of images and symbols during World War I. Particular attention is given to one specific case – that of the Ottoman War Medal, dubbed the “Iron Crescent” by the Germans, the creative design of which still remains unexplained and undocu- mented despite its truly iconic nature.


Author(s):  
Mark Franko

This book is an examination of neoclassical ballet initially in the French context before and after World War I (circa 1905–1944) with close attention to dancer and choreographer Serge Lifar. Since the critical discourses analyzed indulged in flights of poetic fancy a distinction is made between the Lifar-image (the dancer on stage and object of discussion by critics), the Lifar-discourse (the writings on Lifar as well as his own discourse), and the Lifar-person (the historical actor). This topic is further developed in the final chapter into a discussion of the so-called baroque dance both as a historical object and as a motif of contemporary experimentation as it emerged in the aftermath of World War II (circa 1947–1991) in France. Using Lifar as a through-line, the book explores the development of critical ideas of neoclassicism in relation to his work and his drift toward a fascist position that can be traced to the influence of Nietzsche on his critical reception. Lifar’s collaborationism during the Occupation confirms this analysis. The discussion of neoclassicism begins in the final years of the nineteenth-century and carries us through the Occupation; then track the baroque in its gradual development from the early 1950s through the end of the 1980s and early 1990s.


Author(s):  
Karen Ahlquist

This chapter charts how canonic repertories evolved in very different forms in New York City during the nineteenth century. The unstable succession of entrepreneurial touring troupes that visited the city adapted both repertory and individual pieces to the audience’s taste, from which there emerged a major theater, the Metropolitan Opera, offering a mix of German, Italian, and French works. The stable repertory in place there by 1910 resembles to a considerable extent that performed in the same theater today. Indeed, all of the twenty-five operas most often performed between 1883 and 2015 at the Metropolitan Opera were written before World War I. The repertory may seem haphazard in its diversity, but that very condition proved to be its strength in the long term. This chapter is paired with Benjamin Walton’s “Canons of real and imagined opera: Buenos Aires and Montevideo, 1810–1860.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Dorothea McEwan

Abstract This article attempts to throw a light on Warburg’s little-known engagement in political caricature during World War I. Though deemed unfit for military service, Warburg was eager to contribute to the German war effort. Perceiving Allied war propaganda as anti-German lies, he recorded what he considered its half-truths and falsehoods in his Kriegskartothek, or war archive. But Warburg, as indicated by his involvement with the short-lived La Guerra del 1914: Rivista illustrata in the early stages of the war, kept looking for a more active role in influencing public opinion: From privately commenting on the output of the Allied press, he went on to offering his own ideas for political caricatures to leading artists like Olaf Gulbransson and Max Slevogt, and to well-established satirical journals such as Simplicissimus and Kladderadatsch.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 24-29
Author(s):  
Manjinder Kaur

This study tends to shed light on early childhood care and education (ECCE) institutions with special reference to kindergartens in Fukuoka, Japan. The choice of the topic for study was derived by the importance of ECCE in children’s life and huge economic growth of Japan after worst effects of world war-II, which are thought to be linked with the education that children receives in Japan. The study is limited to four kindergartens in Fukuoka City and observations made for the study refers to 2018. Herein, different types of institutions providing ECCE, their infrastructural set-up, activities, along with curriculum are discussed. At the end, issues and challenges of ECCE system in Japan are discussed. It has been observed that the infrastructural facility and nature of activities are of high quality. Each and every care is being taken to inculcate habits, as well as to maintain physical and intellectual growth of children. The children seem to be highly happy and enjoy learning via various activities in these schools. It is clear that the devised policies on education and care of children are implemented in full spirit.


Author(s):  
S. S. Shchevelev

The article examines the initial period of the mandate administration of Iraq by Great Britain, the anti-British uprising of 1920. The chronological framework covers the period from May 1916 to October 1921 and includes an analysis of events in the Middle East from May 1916, when the secret agreement on the division of the territories of the Ottoman Empire after the end of World War I (the Sykes-Picot agreement) was concluded before the proclamation of Faisal as king of Iraq and from the formation of the country՚s government. This period is a key one in the Iraqi-British relations at the turn of the 10-20s of the ХХ century. The author focuses on the Anglo-French negotiations during the First World War, on the eve and during the Paris Peace Conference on the division of the territory of the Ottoman Empire and the ownership of the territories in the Arab zone. During these negotiations, it was decided to transfer the mandates for Syria (with Lebanon) to the France, and Palestine and Mesopotamia (Iraq) to Great Britain. The British in Iraq immediately faced strong opposition from both Sunnis and Shiites, resulting in an anti-English uprising in 1920. The author describes the causes, course and consequences of this uprising.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saeed Khudeda Alo

ملخص البحث:يعتبر الأرمن من احد الجماعات العرقية المميزة التي عاشت في الدولة العثمانية، قاموا بتاسيس جمعيات سياسية في القرن التاسع عشر تلك الجمعيات التي سعت الى تأسيس دولة قومية للارمن بمساعدة الغرب كان ذلك من الاساب الرئيسة الى تعرضهم الى الإبادة الجماعية من قبل الدولة العثمانية. وخلال سنوات الحرب العالمية الأولى توجه الاتراك الى اتباع سياسة قومية وذلك نتيجة لتطورات الحرب فكانت النتيجة تهجير الأرمن من مناطقهم وقيام الاتراك بمذابح منظمة ضدهم، لكن هناك مجموعات تمكنت من النجاة من تلك المذابح والتوجه الى العراق وخاصة الى سنجارحيث قام أهلها من الايزيدييين باستقبال الأرمن ومساعدتهم في محنتهم وبناء البيوت ،من الطين، لهم وإيجاد العمل لهم آنذاك لكي يستطيعوا من استمرار حياتهم. لكن موقف الايزيديين هذا مع الأرمن دفع بالاتراك الى القيام بتوجيه حملة عسكرية الى سنجار أدت الى قتل الكثير من الأهالي ونهبت ودمرت قراهم وتركت اثار سلبية على المنطقة. The Yezidis from Sinjar and the Armenians. 1914-1918A study in the Yezidi position with regards to the Armenian Genocide.The Armenians are reputed to be one of the most distinguished ethnic groups which lived during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.During the nineteenth century they established political societies whose raison d' etre was to pursue the founding of a nation-state for Armenia, backed by Western aid and support.Their political endeavours were one of the main reasons for their genocide under the Ottoman Empire. During World War one, the Turks pursued their own national policy, resulting in the displacement of the Armenians from their territories and targeted massacres against them. There were those who succeeded in escaping theTurkish massacres and fled to Iraq, most particularly the area of Sinjar. The Yezidis from Sinjar welcomed the Armenians and aided them in their process of resettlement, building of mud houses and finding employment. The aid extended by the Yezidi community of Sinjar to the Armenian displaced, caused the Turks to launch a military campaign against Sinjar, looting and destroying villages and murdering many that wreaked havoc upon the region.


2001 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 179-182
Author(s):  
Donald Reid

Thirty years in the making, this ambitious book covers the first forty-threeyears of the life of Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, the political activist andwriter who became the first secretary-general of the Arab League (1945-1952). Few biographies of public figures in the Arab world have treatedtheir subjects in comparable depth and detail. The Making of an EgyptianArab Nationalist is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in thecomplexities of evolving national and religious identities in 20th-century Egypt.Coury sets out to refute interpretations elaborated by such scholars asElie Kedourie, P. J. Vatikiotis, Nadav Safran, and Richard Mitchell thirtyor forty years ago. He argues that their works, reflecting the influence ofOrientalism, perpetuated false assumptions that Islam and Arab cultureharbored essentialist and atomistic tendencies toward extremism,irrationality, and violence. He maintains that in treating 20th-centuryEgypt, they set up a false dichotomy between a rational, western-inspiredterritorial patriotism and irrational, artificial pan- Arab and Islamicmovements. Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid's circle before World War I and theWafd Party in the interwar period represented the first school who opposedBritish imperialism but were eager to borrow western rationalism, science,secular liberalism, and democracy. In the 1930s this moderate patriotismbegan to give way before pan-Arab and Islamic movements tainted with theextremism, terrorism, and irrationality which the West has long attributedto Islam.Coury cites hopefully revisionist works by Rashid Khalidi, PhilipKhoury, Ernest Dawn, and Hassan Kayali but is dismayed that other recentstudies have perpetuated the old, hostile stereotypes. "Martin Kramer'sArab Awakening and Islamic Revival (1996)," he says, "reveals that eventhe old-fashioned Kedourie-style hysteria, compounded, as it sometimes is,by Zionist rage (Kramer refers to Edward Said as Columbia's 'part-timeprofessor of Palestine') is still alive and well . . . "Coury insists that Azzam's "Egyptian Arab nationalism" sprang from theperspectives, needs, and interests of an upper and middle bourgeoisiefacing specific challenges. The rank and file following came from a lower ...


2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Itzchak Weismann

This article argues that there are structural affinities and continuities between the late nineteenth-century modernist reformers and today’s quietist, political, and jihādī Salafī factions. Salafism refers to the basic theological-ideological formation that postulates a return to pristine Islam to overcome tradition and bring regeneration. The Salafī balance between authenticity and modernization promoted by enlightened religious intellectuals in the late Ottoman period was shattered by the events of World War I and its aftermath. This resulted in its bifurcation between conservatives, who adopted literalist and xenophobic Wahhābī positions, and modernists, primarily the Muslim Brothers, who employed innovative means in their religio-political struggle to re-Islamize society and oust colonialism. The Salafī balance was reconstructed after independence on new, unenlightened lines in the Saudi Islamic Awakening (al-Ṣaḥwa al-Islāmiyya), which combined the erstwhile rigorous Wahhābī teachings with radicalized Islamism. Global jihādī-Salafism completed the perversion of the modernist Salafī balance by reducing the authentic way of the salaf to excommunication and violence and by using the most modern means in its war against both Westerners and indigenous Muslim governments.



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