Department of History

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  • ItemOpen Access
    How the powerful maintained their power: land, violence and identity in fin de siècle Palu
    (Routledge, 2023-05-16) Kalkan, İbrahim Halil; Miller, Owen Robert
    This article is set in the environs of the Eastern Anatolian town of Palu at the turn of the twentieth century. At the heart of this investigation is a puzzle: how did the local elite manage to maintain their power in the face of first Tanzimat (1839–1876) and then Hamidian centralization (1876–1908)? Based on the study of a range of primary sources, it appears that the local elites were able to ‘use’ the Armenian Question, and the fears of the central authorities, to their advantage. The elites increasingly presented themselves as ‘loyal Muslims’ in the face of supposedly ‘seditious Armenians’ to maintain control of the land. In addition to British Foreign Office documents, our article relies primarily on a voluminous legal file compiled from the catalogues of the Ottoman Archives, Istanbul composed by different segments of the region’s population.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Bureaucrats into merchants: tea, capitalism and the making of the Republican bourgeois
    (Routledge, 2023-05-03) Ansel, Esra
    This article uses the story of the Albayrak Tea Company and its founder Mustafa Nezih Albayrak as a prism to examine the formation of a class of Muslim merchants in early Republican Turkey. Mustafa Nezih Bey, an Ottoman bureaucrat who ventured into business in the late 1910s, became one of the most prominent tea merchants in the early Republic, paving the way for its mass consumption. Looking at the overlap between the late Ottoman bureaucracy and the Turkish bourgeoisie, this study aims to show a continuation in the economic field rather than a break between the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Republican Turkey. The making of the Republican merchant elite was a complex process that involved not only state policies and long legacies of merchant activity from the Ottoman era but transformations in education and mass media in the aftermath of the 1908 Revolution.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The last man takes LSD: Foucault and the end of revolution
    (John Wiley and Sons, Ltd, 2022-08-01) Bryson, Dennis
  • ItemOpen Access
    A Muslim intellectual in Korea: Abdürreşid İbrahim (1857–1944) and Situating Korea in the Pan-Asian world order
    (UNESCO * Korean National Commission, 2022) Kubat, Muhammed Cihad
    Abdürreşid İbrahim, a leading Muslim scholar originally from Russia, embarked on his journey to Japan in 1908 to meet with his contacts from Kokuryūkai (Black Dragon Society). On his way back, he spent around ten days in the Korean Empire. İbrahim, who was convinced of the “barbarism” of the West, found quite a few examples in Korea to build upon his theory of “Eastern civility,” just as he had found during his time in Japan. He met with a range of people, from porters to the Korean Empire’s Interior Minister, and wrote about them in his travelogue titled Âlem-i İslam [The World of Islam]. This paper argues that İbrahim was particularly sympathetic to Koreans because he saw their position in a world of imperial hierarchies as analogous to that of Muslims in the Russian Empire. In Korea, İbrahim’s anti-Westernism is coupled with his vision of a Pan-Asian world order led by Imperial Japan. Âlem-i İslam is significant because it is the only account of the Korean Empire’s final years written by a Muslim intellectual.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Freemasonry’s political and diplomatic entanglements in the last phase of Ottoman history: the peculiar case of the Committee of Union and Progress
    (Routledge, 2022-09-14) Tiryaki, Rüştü Murat
    Freemasonic activity in the Ottoman lands saw an unprecedented growth and dynamism in the final phase of Ottoman history particularly benefitting from its close association with the Young Turk movement and its political apparatus, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP). Ottoman freemasonry was led to a new level of popularity with a great deal of public visibility, a consequence of which was the formation of the Ottoman Grand Orient as a national organization for the first time in the Ottoman lands. Despite the ensuing controversial accusations and conspiracy theories against the freemasonic institution which became commonplace during the period in question, it occupied a place within the Ottoman state and society which it had never attained before. This made it possible for the Ottoman freemasons to integrate themselves to the universal fraternal discourse of the freemasonic philosophy during a last attempt of the Ottoman administration to keep its remaining lands intact. The intention of this article is to create a window within the broader picture of the socio-political environment of the time with a view to the position and involvement of freemasonry in which its association with the CUP often stands out as a major factor.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Laura Nasrallah, Annemarie Luijendijk and Charalambos Bakırtzıs (eds), from roman to early Christian Cyprus
    (Published by Cambridge University Press, 2022-01-28) Gülsevinç, F.; Zavagno, Luca
  • ItemOpen Access
    Special double issue on globality
    (Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2021-08-03) Weisbrode, Kenneth
  • ItemOpen Access
    Locus, sanctus, et virtus: monastic surnaming in late medieval and early Tudor England reviewed
    (Brepols Publishers, 2021) Thornton, David Ewan
    This article examines the apparent practice among monks and regular canons in England before the Dissolution of dropping their family surnames on admission/profession, and adopting instead a new ‘monastic byname’, derived from a place name (toponym) or, by the late fifteenth century onwards, from a saint’s name (hagionym) or a virtue. The article begins by reviewing evidence that this onomastic practice existed and determining how widespread it was. The nature and distribution of the toponymic, hagionymic, and virtue bynames are then examined in turn. The article concludes by considering the underlying reason for the adoption of monastic bynames and argues that this practice served as a means of reflecting symbolically the new monk’s or canon’s separation from lay society, and from his family in particular, and his incorporation into the monastic community.
  • ItemOpen Access
    A mynach by any other name . . . : the anthroponymy of the welsh cistercians, c.1300–1540
    (University of Wales Press, 2021-12-01) Thornton, David E.
    This paper analyses the forenames and 'surnames' of over 600 monks associated with Cistercian abbeys in Wales between c .1300 and c.1540 in an attempt to determine what these names can reveal about the ethnic identities or identifications of their individual bearers and of their respective houses. The names are compared with those of white monks and other religious in England during the same period, as well as with naming patterns among the laity of contemporary Wales and England. The names of the brethren at different monasteries could vary significantly, and it is argued that this was a result partly of the stronger Welsh identity of the monks at certain Cistercian houses, but was also because the practice of adopting 'monastic bynames' – common at monasteries in late medieval England – was followed at some Welsh abbeys but not all.
  • ItemOpen Access
    From stay-at-home women to career-minded women: the Istanbul YWCA, 1919–1930
    (Routledge, 2021-07-26) Karabağ, Müzeyyen
    Examining the labor policies of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) in Istanbul from 1919–1930, this article claims that the organization’s mainly American staff were critical of women who stayed at home because the idea of being ‘an individual’ for them meant working, or having a professional goal. They encouraged young women develop their individuality and self-expression as independent career-oriented women. By establishing an Employment Bureau, offering business training, presenting career-oriented role models and talks, YWCA staff encouraged young women to gain financial independence and pushed them towards making active decisions about their careers, detaching them from paternal and societal authority. Working for oneself and focusing on one’s own career became the key to taking control of one’s life and choices, pursuing personal happiness and potential, all of which was part of attaining a sense of individuality. Their prioritizing of having a career over marriage and motherhood contributed to feminist activism. This case-study argues that the YWCA’s mainly American staff at the Istanbul centers promoted the value of a professional identity for women beyond the bounds of nationalistic duty or motherhood, which contrasted with the late Ottoman state’s and Early Republican Turkey’s ideologies while simultaneously challenging gender roles and patriarchal codes.
  • ItemOpen Access
    The Fleet in Being: An Alternative US Strategy
    (Routledge, 2021-05-25) Weisbrode, Kenneth
    Contemporary American statecraft should be based empirically on the existence of a polycentric world and the role of multilateral institutions within it.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Modelling the maritime cultural landscape of the Costiera Amalfitana: the first three seasons of research (2016–2018)
    (Taylor & Francis, 2021-08-10) Harpster, M.; Trakadas, A.; Denel, E.; Capriglione, V.; Lucarini, C.; Meranda, M.; Morselli, M.; Pelling, R.; Bennett, I.; Zazzaro, C.; Demirci, Ö.; Donadio, C.; Ferranti, L.; Stanislao, C.; Zavagno, Luca; Pecci, P.
    Human activity along the Amalfi coastline in Italy has been tied to the sea for millennia – for sustenance, migration, trade, warfare, and leisure. As a result, this region has an equally rich and extensive maritime cultural landscape composed of tangible and intangible elements. In 2016, a multi-disciplinary project began efforts to model and to understand changes within this landscape, and this essay presents the preliminary results of our first three seasons of work. Some efforts, such as the documentation of maritime cultural heritage in local museums, archival work, and geomorphological research proceeded smoothly. Unexpectedly, however, little material from the pre-modern era was found under water, adding questions to this study that future work in the Marine Protected Area west of Positano may answer.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Editorial (Weisbrode, Kenneth)
    (Brill, 2019) Scott-Smith, G.; Weisbrode, Kenneth
  • ItemOpen Access
    Stability or mobility? Movement between cistercian houses in late medieval England and wales
    (Peeters, 2019) Thornton, David E.
    The movement or “transfer” by members of monastic orders between religious houses has generally been discouraged by ecclesiastical authorities.1 In the case of monks, transfer to another monastery technically contravenes the vow of stability made at profession and thereby requires not only the formal permission of the current superior but also a second profession at the new house (“change of stability”). However, there survives abundant evidence that monks and regular canons in medieval England and Wales did indeed move between houses. This paper will examine the question of movement between Cistercian monasteries in late medieval England and Wales, based upon an ongoing prosopographical study of English and Welsh Cistercians between c. 1300 to c. 1540, and in particular the suggestion, made by a number of historians, that Cistercian monks who bore a surname (or, what will hereafter be termed monastic byname)2 that was also the name of another Cistercian abbey had some previous association with that other abbey. In addition, the paper will also consider the related topic of the promotion of monks as abbots of other monasteries.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Did the Ottomans see UFOs? An 1838 Ottoman document about unusual celestial phenomenon
    (Institut d’Études balkaniques & Centre de Thracologie, 2019) Radushev, Evgeni; Sabev, O.
    The paper deals with an Ottoman document preserved in the Oriental Department of Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library in Sofia. The document reveals that in October 1838 a heavy storm broke over in the night, followed by appearance of a round-shaped bright light. It illuminated the whole horizon and afterwards broke into pieces that fell down on the earth. The unusual celestial phenomenon was observed by the Ottoman soldiers camping nearby Mardin as well as the locals. They reported the case to the sultan, who was informed also of the opinion of the local men of religion, whose interpretation associated the phenomenon with a divine sign of forthcoming military victories.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Brief notes on the Byzantine Insular Urbanism between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages
    (Center for Cyprus Studies-Eastern Mediterranean University, 2020) Zavagno, Luca
    This paper aims at reassessing the concept of peripherality of the Byzantine insular world. It is suggested that Sicily, Crete and Cyprus (and to a lesser extent Malta, Sardinia and the Balearics) acted as a third political and economic pole between the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean Sea in the Byzantine Mediterranean. This will shed “archeological” light on some parallel economic and political trajectories of the urban centers located on two of the abovementioned islands: Salamis-Constantia on Cyprus and Gortyn in Crete during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages.
  • ItemOpen Access
    Bir Asya içecegi (Bevanda Asiatica), Kont Luigi Ferdinando Marsili ve Osmanlı kahve kültürü
    (Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University, 2019) Kalpaklı, Mehmet; Mercan, F. Özden
    Bu makalede Osmanlı kahve kültürünü tanıtmak ve öğretmek amacıyla 17. yüzyıl İtalyan entelektüellerinden Kont Luigi Ferdinando Marsili tarafından 1685 yılında yayımlanan Bevanda Asiatica [Bir Asya İçeceği] başlıklı kitap incelenmiştir. Henüz Batının pek bilmediği bir içecek olan ve Türklerin çokça tükettiği kahvenin sağlık açısından önemini vurgulayan Marsili, Hezârfen Hüseyin Efendi’ye ait olduğunu belirttiği kahve bitkisinin özellikleri ve yararları üzerine Osmanlı Türkçesinde yazılmış kısa bir metni de bu kitabına eklemiştir. Bu anlamda Marsili’nin bu eseri Doğu-Batı arasındaki bilgi aktarımının ve kültürel değiş-tokuşun somut bir örneği olması açısından önemlidir. Mevcut literatürde Luigi F. Marsili’nin hayatı, eserleri ve askerî kimliğiyle ilgili yapılmış çalışmalar olmasına rağmen, kahve kitabından hemen hemen hiçbir yerde bahsedilmemekte ya da sadece ismi anılarak geçilmektedir. Bu makalede, Marsili’nin kahveyle tanışma süreci incelenmiş ve kaleme aldığı Bevanda Asiatica’nın içeriği değerlendirilmiştir.