Scholarly Publications - History

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/11693/115488

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Open Access
Varieties of regional mass violence
(Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2025-12-17) Kurt, Ümit; Miller, Robert Owen; Kieser, Hans-Lukas; Mouradian, Khatchig
Open Access
Love, gender, and self-presentation in the world of early modern ottoman court poetry
(De Gruyter, 2025-06-30) Kalpaklı, Mehmet; Andrews, Walter G.; Czygan, Christiane; Aynur, Hatice
Open Access
New approaches to the Hamidian massacres, 1894–7
(Bloomsbury Publishing Plc., 2025-12-17) Verheij, Jelle; Miller, Owen; Kieser, Hans-Lukas; Mouradian, Khatchig
Open Access
Vanished institutions: the life and death of europe's international organisations – introduction
(Sage, 2025-05-05) Patel, Kiran Klaus; Weisbrode, Kenneth
Why do international organisations die? Their causes of death deserve attention and analysis. Europe in the 20th century with its plenitude of international organisations provides a rich ground for studying why some of them died, why some lived, why some were resurrected from near-death and why some survive as institutional shells, or zombies. The introduction to this special issue summarises the cases that follow in order to discern a pattern or logic of institutional death in modern European history. A pattern is elusive because causal and conditional factors are almost impossible to separate in cases of institutional death. Yet they show that, in contrast to state collapse, international organisations more often die from without – that is, for external, contextual reasons – than from within. However powerful some external factors, such as war, can be, institutional death is rarely predetermined. In one form or another international organisations possess a strong will to live.
Open Access
The more, the merrier: Irish (and Scottish) bishops in fourteenth-century collective indulgences from Avignon
(Royal Irish Academy, 2025-11-14) Thornton, David E.
This paper examines the occurrence of bishops of Irish dioceses among the grantors of so-called 'collective indulgences' at Avignon between 1322 and 1363 and attempts to demonstrate how these indulgences can facilitate our knowledge of the episcopate in Ireland during the fourteenth century. Over 140 references to Irish bishops have been collected and are discussed, along with twenty occurrences of bishops from Scotland for the same period, plus a handful of Scottish and Welsh bishops named in indulgences from the late thirteenth century. The paper discusses the nature of the Avignon collective indulgences and uses these documents to help reconstruct the movements and careers of the Irish prelates in question. The second part of the paper offers a more detailed consideration of the controversial bishopric of Annaghdown during the first half of the fourteenth century, in the light of the testimony of the indulgences. This case study also highlights problems relating to the collective indulgences as primary sources themselves, including their reliability. An appendixlisting the occurrences of Irish and Scottish bishops in collective indulgences is provided, arranged by diocese, and additional data about individual bishops is provided there.
Open Access
Introduction, Çiftlik debate revisited: New findings and new questions
(Brill Academic Publishers, 2025-11-18) Çelik, Mehmet Ali; Laçin, Bedirhan
Open Access
Sesi duyulmayan kaynaklar: “Münşe’ât” mecmuaları
(Düşünce ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Derneği, 2025-10) Tekgül, Nil
Osmanlı dönemi münşe’ât mecmuaları değişime odaklanan tarihçiler için uzun süre muteber bir tarihsel kaynak olarak görülmemiştir. Bu makale on dokuzuncu yüzyılda istinsah edilmiş Zübdetü’l Münşe’ât adlı eser üzerinden Osmanlı mektup yazma pratiklerini belgeleyen münşe’ât mecmualarının tarihçiler tarafından kaynak olarak kullanılabileceğini göstermeyi amaçlamaktadır. Bu eserlerin her biri şekil ve görünüşte içerik bakımından birbirlerine çok benzemekle birlikte üsluplarında yer alan sözcükler ve ibareler üretildikleri dönemin tecrübelerine, bu dönemde yaşayan bireylerin ve toplumun duygu normlarına da ışık tutacak ipuçları sunabilmektedir. Zira, yakın zamanda “duyguların tarihi” alanında yapılan araştırmalar hem duyguların zaman ve mekân içinde değiştiğini hem de duygu deneyimlerinin temel belirleyicisinin duygu normları olduğunu ileri sürmekte, bu araştırmaların bulguları bilişsel sinirbilim ve kültürel psikoloji gibi farklı bilim dalları araştırmalarıyla da desteklenmektedir. Eserde yer alan mektupların muhataplarının lakapları ile içerikleri bazında incelemesi yapılarak Osmanlı toplumsal/bireysel ilişkilerinin niteliklerine, bu niteliklerin değişimi ve dönemin toplumsal dönüşümünün mektuplara nasıl yansıdığına dair çıkarımlar yapılmaktadır. Yapılan inceleme toplumun erken modern dönemdeki “içtenlik” anlayışının on dokuzuncu yüzyıl sonlarında değişimine işaret etmektedir. Ayrıca o dönemde vuku bulan birtakım toplumsal gelişmelere, maaş ödemelerindeki gecikmelerin toplum üzerindeki sarsıcı etkilerine ve devletin bu probleme ilişkin aldığı tedbirlere, aile üyelerinin birbirlerini nasıl konumlandırdıklarına dair önemli bilgiler sunmakta, kültür tarihi için de kaynak niteliğinde kimi pratiklere ışık tutmaktadır.
Unknown
A Short History of the Roman Mass. By Uwe Michael Lang. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2024. 146 pp. ISBN: 978-1-62164-697-6, $17.95 paper.
(Cambridge University Press, 2025-11-25) Malesevic, Filip
Open Access
Softa and Yafta: Revisiting power, protests, and massacres in the Late Ottoman Empire
(Brill, 2025-07-08) Kurt, Ümit; Miller, Owen Robert
This article highlights the importance of softa (medrese or madrasa students) to our understanding of the late Ottoman Empire. The softa, usually depicted as a wholly conservative force, were in fact split between liberal and conservative factions. To ally himself with the Muslim conservatives and undermine the liberal Muslims, Abdülhamid ii condoned violence against the Armenian population. The softa were motivated by diverse ideologies, ranging from the liberal-egalitarian to the conservative-hierarchical. For nearly a century, between the destruction of the Janissaries in 1826 and the closure of the medreses in 1924, the softa were key actors in Ottoman political life, often employing placards to broadcast their ideas. In 1876 they contributed greatly to the struggle to implement an Ottoman constitution and to bring Midhat Pasha back to power. Abdülhamid ii was well aware of the threat they posed to authoritarian governance and sought to control them through patronage and exile. Alongside the broader story of Muslim opposition, new insight might be gained on why the Ottoman government sanctioned the massacres against the Armenian population between 1894 and 1897.
Open Access
A close reading of çiftliks: the detailed avarız registers for Yenice-i Vardar (1666) and Karaferye (1691)
(Brill, 2025-11-13) Çelik, Mehmet Ali
The detailed avarız registers (mufassal avarız defterleri) of Yenice-i Vardar and Karaferye open a unique window on the çiftlik phenomenon in Ottoman history. With conjunctural and close reading of the details, clues, and traces found in two extraordinary tax surveys, this paper evaluates the dynamics of çiftlik formation processes in these two neighbouring subdistricts (kazas) in Thessaloniki province and establishes a typology for çiftliks. Such analytical problematization of çiftliks lays bare the social and economic relations embedded in them without reducing people to numbers. In this regard, the article aims to contribute to the early modern çiftlik debate, and to show the extent of çiftlikization in late seventeenth-century Yenice-i Vardar and Karaferye by underlining the emergence of new social groups in conjunction with çiftlik formation processes. Accordingly, the article analyses the emergence of çiftlik owners as a distinctive interest group that was antagonistic toward the local poor and laborers working on the estates.
Open Access
The cult of Saint Catherine of Alexandria in late medieval Scotland
(Edinburgh University Press, 2025-05) Çetinbaş, Eylül
The veneration of Saint Catherine of Alexandria occupied a prominent place in the religious and cultural life of late-medieval Scotland. A comprehensive analysis of Saint Catherine’s cult in Scotland from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth shows its multifaceted manifestations across hagiography, liturgical observance, ecclesiastical dedications, onomastic traditions, and material culture. Positioning the Scottish cult in the context of broader medieval European devotional trends while elucidating its local particularities, one can view the interplay between the local and universal, and the ways in which Saint Catherine was integrated into Scottish identity and piety. Supported by a diverse corpus of textual and material evidence, her cult transcended social strata and geographic boundaries to become one of the most popular non-native saints of medieval Scotland.
Embargo
Mauri et Saraceni: the ethnonyms used for the Muslims of al-Andalus by Carolingian authors
(John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2025-05-01) Ofli, Erdinç
The terms Saraceni, Ismaelitae and Agareni were used over a wide period of time by Latin sources to describe first the Arabs, and then all Muslim groups. Early Carolingian Frankish texts followed this tradition when writing about al-Andalus, denoting all Islamic forces through these generic terms, without any overt reference to the Berber population, who had played an important role in the Muslim conquest. However, this changed over time, as North African contingents began to find specific mention, and as Carolingian sources started to provide more information about the Mauri. This study examines these sources through a terminological analysis, suggesting that changes in terminology reflected Carolingian authors' increasing knowledge of the Muslims of al-Andalus.
Open Access
The establishment of large çiftliks: indebtedness and property acquisition in 18th-century karaferye (veria)
(Brill, 2024-12-05) Laçin, Bedirhan
Çiftliks, i.e., landed estates, were profitable for wealthy investors in the Ottoman Empire, yet detailed information about how they were established and operated is limited. This study delves into the 18th-century practices of local elites in Karaferye (mod. Veria), a town within the province of Selânik (mod. Thessaloniki), who acquired arable lands from peasants thanks to the latter's debts and security concerns. Interestingly, the debt burden was not exclusive to the peasants; it also affected the local elites who acted as creditors, leading to the phenomenon known as the cycle of debt. Following the ceding of their lands, the peasants transitioned from independent cultivators to wage laborers (ecir). The article draws its empirical base from the land investments of the Saricazâdes, one of the most powerful local families, and similar local notables in 14 villages in the rural hinterland of Karaferye. © Bedirhan Laçin, 2024. Published with license by Koninklijke Brill BV.
Open Access
The myth of “Zaim”/“Zuema”: revisiting 1950s Lebanese elite taxonomy and circulation
(Taylor & Francis Inc., 2025-01-12) Paksoy, Taylan
This study challenges the prevalent use of the term “Zaim/Zuema” in analyzing Lebanese political leadership during the 1950s. While Arnold Hottinger popularized this terminology through his influential work on the 1958 Lebanese Crisis, this paper argues that such categorization oversimplifies and exoticizes the complex nature of Lebanese political elites. Building on and critiquing subsequent frameworks by Albert Hourani and Wade Goria, this study proposes a more nuanced categorization based on historical boundaries: “political elites of Mount Lebanon” and “notables of the attached areas.” Through examination of primary sources and contemporary accounts, the paper demonstrates how the Lebanese political landscape of the 1950s featured diverse actors ranging from aristocrats and feudal chiefs to modern politicians and ideological movement leaders. The study particularly focuses on the elite circulation during the 1952 “Rosewater Revolution” and the 1958 Crisis, revealing how personal rivalries, regional pressures, and global dynamics intersected in Lebanese politics. By relocating Lebanon’s political dynamics within a broader framework of elite circulation theory, this research challenges both the simplistic categorizations and conjectural localizations of terminology, contributing to a more sophisticated understanding of Lebanese political history in the mid-twentieth century.
Open Access
The Byzantine insular countryside in the early middle ages (ca. 600-ca.900): The cases of Sicily, Cyprus, and Crete in (partial) light of environmental archaeology
(Routledge journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd., 2024-09-17) Zavagno, Luca
This paper provides an overview of rural surveys and environmental archaeology studies on Sicily, Cyprus and Crete during the Byzantine Empire. It re-evaluates traditional interpretations of agricultural settlement patterns, ecosystems and populations from Late Antiquity to the early Middle Ages (late sixth to late ninth century). The prevailing narrative that these islands were devastated by Arab incursions, leading to widespread depopulation, economic collapse and abandonment of rural sites in favour of fortified hilltop settlements, is questioned. Instead, the study employs a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, combining environmental and climatic data with historical and archaeological evidence. This method offers a more nuanced understanding of how insular rural societies adapted to changing environmental and human conditions during the Byzantine Empire's transition from an economically unified region to a fragmented Medieval Mediterranean. The findings highlight the resilient nature of land use and rural settlement patterns amidst the transformation of the empire's political, military and administrative structures.
Open Access
Ottoman Passports: Security and Geographic Mobility, 1876-1908
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-10-02) Torunoğlu, Berke
Open Access
Benjamin Franklin and the poetics of the new diplomacy
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) Weisbrode, Kenneth
This essay interprets the literary means Benjamin Franklin used in establishing a novel style of diplomatic representation. This style dispensed with much, but not all, of the ritual of what was then regarded as the old, European diplomacy in which diplomatic actors performed the dual role of representation, being both representative and representational; that is, as both spokespeople for, and emblems of, their national cause. Through them one is able to detect the interweaving of existing diplomatic standards and protocols in a self-consciously New World vocation with its own demands for recognition from the imperial center.
Open Access
Ottoman diplomacy in Greece: the case of Syros, 1830–1900
(Routledge, 2024-08-07) Torunoğlu, Berke
The island of Syros in the Cyclades almost spontaneously emerged in 1830 as a prominent transit and trade hub for Greece and the Ottoman Empire. The present work is an attempt to conduct a deductive reading on the impressive number of documents produced by the Ottoman Consulate General of Syros (& scedil;ehbenderlik) records to answer two interrelated questions: (I) how the Ottoman Empire engaged with its former territory and (II) what kind of diplomatic tools the Sublime Porte used to deal with the security challenges it perceived emerging in the Eastern Mediterranean after the establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom in 1830. Delimiting a definition of illegality during the Age of Mobility in the Middle East, the states depended on one another to control and define the movements of illegality but paradoxically refused to cooperate. Frustrated, the Ottoman Empire, appropriated from European international legal thought, acted in typical nineteenth-century imperial coerciveness and considered using force to occupy Syros to compel the Greek state. The current article asserts that the Ottomans not only appropriated the French model of diplomacy but also European justifications of imperialism as it pertained to diplomatic coercion.
Open Access
Select document: the last will and testament of Diarmaid Ó Conchobhair, prior of Cluain Tuaiscirt na Sionna
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-05-01) Thornton, David E.
It was not common for members of religious orders in the late middle ages to make a last will and testament because profession as a regular removed their testamentary capacity. This article prints the Latin text of the testament of Brother Diarmaid Ó Conchobhair, prior of Cloontuskert na Sinna, O.S.A., County Roscommon, drawn up in 1462 and proved a year later in London, along with a translation. It also offers a discussion of the testament, including Ó Conchobhair’s stated intention of going on pilgrimage to Rome, in the light of otherevidence relating to both its testator and to the monastic orders in general in late medieval Ireland and England.
Open Access
Nuclear topsy turvy: the security-economics nexus in Turkish-American relations
(Routledge, 2024-10-16) Gheorghe, Eliza; İplikçi, Murat; Tokatlı, Fatih
This article discusses the shift in Turkey's nuclear alliance with the United States from client to junior partner. Ankara sought to bring the Turkish economy and military forces in line with those of its patron to signal its loyalty. But power asymmetries made it so that Washington became Ankara's lifeline. From the 1950s until the mid-1960s, American policymakers applied a top-down style of alliance management, making important decisions without consulting Ankara. But the mid-1960s marked a turning point in the nature of this relationship, as Turkey became better able to stand on its own feet. Rather than relying on unilateral measures, the Americans had to consult and coordinate with Ankara. Also, Turkey could reject key American proposals involving nuclear weapons, such as the creation of a Multilateral Force for NATO, and even create some ambiguity about its nuclear intentions to signal its loss of faith in the American security guarantee.