Scholarly Publications - History

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

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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
Bureaucrats into merchants: tea, capitalism and themaking of the Republican bourgeois
(Routledge, 2024) 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
Open Access
How the powerful maintained their power: land, violence and identity in fin de siècle Palu
(Routledge, 2024) Wilson, Owen Robert; Kalkan, Halil İbrahim
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.
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; Tokatlı, Fatih; İplikçi, Murat
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.
Open Access
Cross-cultural encounters on Byzantine Islands (ca.600–ca.900) an archaeological perspective
(Taylor and Francis, 2025-01-02) Zavagno, Luca; Fregulia, Jeanette M.
From late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, it was on the islands of the Mediterranean that many of the important moments in Byzantine political history unfolded. 1 Despite their importance, the islands of the Mediterranean have been dismissed in Byzantine historiography as isolated and peripheral places. 2 Notwithstanding their importance for the histoire événementielle de Byzance (in other words, the evental history of Byzantium as based on a short-term timescale) more often than not Byzantine historians have focused their attention on the so-called Byzantine heartland, a region made up of the Anatolian plateau and the Aegean. 3 Because of this focus, other regions, particularly the islands, which remained under the rule of Constantinople, were regarded as marginal to any understanding of the political, social, and economic changes the Byzantine heartland experienced from the second half of the seventh century onward. This chapter seeks to reassess the role of islands as central to the administrative, military, economic, and religious trajectories of the Byzantine empire; Sardinia, Cyprus, Balearics, Crete, and partially Sicily did not simply guard the access routes to the central and eastern Mediterranean Sea, they also lay at the interface between different sociopolitical and economic systems, acting as important stages for cross-cultural encounters in a medieval Mediterranean understood in part by its connectivities. 4 First, however, an introduction to the role of some islands between 600 and 900 is useful.
Open Access
Introducing the Byzantine city, its histories, ideas and realities
(Routledge, 2024-01-31) Bakirtzis, Nikolas; Zavagno, Luca; Bakirtzis, Nikolas; Zavagno, Luca
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book addresses the history and the realities of the Byzantine city proposing a multifaceted overview of the Byzantine urban phenomenon rather than singling out the trajectories and development of specific sites and regions. It attempts to stress the resilience of urban lifestyle and the centrality of fabric and architecture to the political and social life of cities in the Medieval period and beyond. The book then points to the importance of addressing the regional diversity of Byzantine urban life as well as carefully navigating through what has been hastily labeled as the ruralization, militarization, and decline of the city in the so-called Dark Ages of Byzantium. It also looks at the last centuries of Byzantium through its cities, thus highlighting their central role through the arrival of the Ottomans and beyond.
Open Access
Out of sight, out of mind? The wills of monastic and mendicant bishops in Britain and Ireland, 1350-1535
(Routledge, 2023-11-23) Thornton, David E.
This article examines the wills of bishops in late medieval Britain and Ireland who were members of religious orders, and attempts to answer two questions: to what extent can these wills be distinguished from those made by their secular counterparts; and did these monks, canons and friars refer or allude to their status as regular clergy in the wills? The wills of 47 regular bishops have been identified, dating between 1350 and 1535, from England, Wales and Ireland, and are compared with those of 111 secular prelates for the same period. While only a handful of the monastic and mendicant bishops explicitly mention their status as regulars, the vast majority – and friars in particular – do appear to have made decisions when drawing up their wills that were a result of their religious vocations. Only seven wills make no allusion to their testators’ regular status at all.
Open Access
The emergence of a divided world and a divisible west
(Cambridge University Press, 2023-01-21) Weisbrode, Kenneth; Segers, Mathieu; Van Hecke, Steven
Before the Great War of 1914–18 ended, the successor states of four Eurasian empires split into conservative, liberal and revolutionary camps; ideological battles that had been waged for nearly a century were resumed like trench warfare in the streets of cities, in diplomatic salons, in the pages of broadsheets and in parliamentary halls. By the middle of the 1930s these ideological battles had again brought forth a civil war, this time in Spain, which came as an augury, tragic and bloody, conjoining the past, present and future in a grim garden of forking paths. This was the setting after the Second World War in which some western European nations sought to lay the basis for what would come to be called ‘an ever closer union’, whilst a rather different ‘union’ settled upon their eastern neighbours under Soviet rule. The processes of unification in eastern and western Europe were reactions and stimuli to the diminution of European power during the post-war period.
Open Access
'The sublime objects of liminality': the Byzantine insular-coastal koine and its administration in the passage from late antiquity to the early middle ages (ca. 600-ca. 850)
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-03-08) Zavagno, Luca
This paper focuses on the historical development and dynamics of political and administrative structures in regions of a fragmented empire that cannot be simply described as marginal 'mouseholes'. Rather, it should be acknowledged that these spaces were part and parcel of a wider area (the Byzantine insular and coastal koine), which encompassed coastal areas as well as insular communities promoting socio-economic contact and cultural interchange. More importantly, they also boasted a peculiar set of material indicators suggesting a certain common cultural unity and identity. The koine coincided with liminal territories and the seas on which the Byzantine Empire retained political and naval rulership. Such liminal territories showed varied - yet coherent- administrative infrastructures and political practices on the part of local elites.
Open Access
The Byzantine city and its historiography
(Routledge, 2024-01-31) Zavagno, Luca; Bakirtzis, Nikolas; Zavagno, Luca
This chapter offers an overview of the most important historiographic contributions on the Byzantine city as they encompass a wide methodological and disciplinary array of scholarly expertise: from history to archeology, from literature to hagiography, from material culture to legal studies. Lopez Quiroga stresses the importance of Christianization in molding the post-Roman urban socio-economic and structural landscape.48 He also compares specifically regional outcomes of urbanism in the West and East to conclude that the archeological record does not allow to talk of any break or abandonment but rather of an adaptation transforming classical urban areas in “Byzantine cities.” Zanini also questions the terminological and semantic aspect of the word city in defining a new conceptual model of post-sixth-century Byzantine city. This allows him to describe both the new characteristics and old features of Byzantine urbanism: small, fortified, Christian, and imperial centers.
Open Access
'The Way We Were': a journey in the last fifty years of Byzantine archaeology (1975-2024)
(Cambridge University Press, 2024-12-26) Zavagno, Luca
Open Access
Insular urbanism in Byzantium
(Routledge, 2024-01-31) Zavagno, Luca; Bakirtzis, Nikolas; Zavagno, Luca
Traditionally, islands have not attracted a good deal of attention on the part of Byzantine historiography. In truth, if one leaves aside the pulverized constellation of islets dotting the Aegean basin, which was regarded as part and parcel of the Byzantine heartland in the seventh to ninth century and the real economic pillar of the empire from the tenth century till 1204, the islands of Byzantine Mediterranean have been regarded as mere distant outposts and peripheral worlds. Although an all-encompassing alternative to the only existing systematic account on the history of the Byzantine insular world has yet to be produced, scholars like Salvatore Cosentino, Enrico Zanini, and Myrto Veikou have recently tried to re-assess the role of islands in the Byzantine Medieval Mediterranean. Indeed, it is important to stress the location of insular urban sites along the so-called maritime continuation of the “frontiers” of the Byzantine Empire.
Open Access
‘My name is Euphemios…. Euphemios of Amastris’: memories of a eunuch at his emperor(s)' service in the Byzantine insular and Coastal koine (ca. 680–ca. 740)
(Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2024-01-01) Zavagno, Luca
This chapter will focus on the career of a eunuch of the Koiton or Cubiculum (the imperial bedchamber). Born in Amastris in Paphlagonia in the late seventh century, Euphemios's castration was arranged by his parents and moved to Constantinople, where he served at court under several emperors in the turbulent period following the arrival of the Arabs in the eastern Mediterranean. As the Byzantine empire struggled for its life by drastically rearranging its political, administrative, bureaucratic, and military structures, Euphemios acted as a trustworthy agent and loyal servant to several Byzantine emperors. As he managed to go through all the stages of Byzantine education (from primary to high school), he secured a position at the imperial shipyards of the capital. As the emperor Justinian II rewards him for exposing a conspiracy, Euphemios starts globetrotting across the Mediterranean while at the same time managing to climb his way up the offices of the central Byzantine administration. As Euphemios's fictional life is based on hagiographical sources, Byzantine chronicles, material evidence (seals), and archaeology, this chapter will account for his travels, deeds, and encounters across some important gateway and urban communities of the so-called Byzantine koine. This encompassed liminal insular and coastal urban (and urban-like) communities while also promoting economic interaction, social contact, and cultural interchange. Euphemios's career path and travels on behalf of the Constantinopolitan court took him to Cyprus, Butrint (where he supervised the consignment of supply to the local garrison), Malta (where he helped local military authority in the negotiations with the rising Muslim power in north Africa), Sardinia (where he brokered appeasement between Sardinian political leaders and the Papacy), the Balearics, Amalfi (where he delivered messages granting a pompous Byzantine title to the local ruler), Syracuse (where he was appointed as local stratēgos), and, finally, Ravenna (where he occupied the prestigious role of exarch during the final decades of Byzantine rulership and died just a few years before the capital of Byzantine Italy fell to the Lombards in 751).
Open Access
The bellıcose bıshop of the battle of Nevılle’s cross, 1346
(Routledge, 2024-07-02) Thornton, David E.
This article attempts to identify the anonymous Franciscan bishop who, according to the Lanercost Chronicle, participated at the Battle of Neville's Cross, Durham, against the invading Scots, on 17 October 1346. The Franciscan 'Matthew episcopus Manchensis', previously suggested to be the bishop in question, is shown to derive from a scribal error, but even the corrected Matthew bishop Organchensis was probably not the prelate in question. Rather, it is argued, another Durham suffragan, frater Richard bishop of Bisaccia, may have been in the man at Neville's Cross.
Open Access
Türkiye’de Rekabet Hukuku ve Rekabet Kurumunun tarihi
(Bilkent University, 2022) Hakalmaz, Turaç; Durmaz, Ahmet Fatih; Karaman, Doruk; Güngör, Hazal Eylem; Deringöl, Salih; Sasani, Sena
Rekabet, serbest piyasa ekonomilerinde tüketicinin korunması ve ekonomik refahın sağlanması açısından önemli bir kavramdır. Bu kavram, Türkiye’de 1970’li yıllarda gelişmeye başlayıp 1994 yılında 4054 sayılı Rekabetin Korunması Hakkında Kanun ile hukuki zemine oturtulmuştur. Rekabet Kurumu ise Kanunun kabulünden 3 yıl sonra, 1997 yılında kurulmuştur ve günümüzde hâlen faaliyet göstermektedir. Rekabetin Türk piyasasındaki yeri ve Rekabet Kurumu, bugüne kadar farklı süreçlerden geçmiştir.Bu nedenle rekabet kavramı 1994 öncesi, 1994-1997 arası ve 1997 sonrası olmak üzere üç farklı dönemde incelenmiştir. Bu doğrultuda, önce rekabet kavramı daha sonrasında Rekabet Kurumunun kuruluşundan sonra getirilen düzenlemeler ve emsal kararlarla beraber Türkiye’deki rekabet kavramının tarihi anlatılmış ve emsal kararlarla işlevi gösterilmiştir.
Open Access
Gift exchange as a mean of expression of power: The case of Crimean-Muscovite relations
(Akadémiai Kiadó, 2023-06-21) Türk, Ahmet
In the titulature, the Crimean Khans have particularly emphasized their Chinggisid origins as a proof of their legitimacy. Yasa [Chinggisid Law] and töre [tradition] also played a crucial role in domestic affairs. The political institutions and customs developed by Chinggis Khan continued to exist in the successor Khanates. The practice of demanding luxury goods as tribute from the subject peoples for the consumption of the ruling elite was one of them. In this article, I will first show that the tiş [tusk] was a developed version of the tribute dedicated for the consumption of ruling elite. Second, I will try to show why tiş should be considered as a tribute contrary to the Russian claim that it was a gift and its significance for the Crimean Tatars. Finally, I will demonstrate how the socio-political developments in the Crimean Tatar society like the growing influence of the karaçis and the service mirzas was reflected in the tiş defters [books].
Open Access
The closing of the diplomatic mind
(Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2023-02-05) Weisbrode, Kenneth; Hare, P. W.; Manfredi-Sánchez, J. L.; Weisbrode, Kenneth
Why does today’s diplomatic imagination appear so limited? When, how, and why did it begin to shrink? To understand the current state of diplomacy and how it may be renewed and reformed, one must go back at least 30 years to trace the evolution of the international system when diplomats sought after the demise of the Soviet Union to redefine what had been depicted simplistically as a bipolar world. For many optimists of that generation, today’s polarized and contentious international system may appear disappointing. Disappointment need not last. Diplomatic theory and practice have been renewed many times before in order to adapt to changes in technology, society, and politics, which today go by the name of globalization. Now may be the time for another “new diplomacy.” It could begin by reinvigorating the diplomatic imagination.