Governing The Frontiers In The Ottoman Empire

Based on many previously unused sources from Ottoman and British archives, Governing the Frontiers in the Ottoman Empire offers a micro-history to understand the nineteenth century Ottoman reforms on the eastern frontiers. By examining the administrative, military and fiscal transformation of Muş, a multi-ethnic, multi-religious sub-province in the Ottoman East, it shows how the reforms were not top-down and were shaped according to local particularities. The book also provides a story of the notables, tribes and peasants of a frontier region. Focusing on the relations between state-notables, notables-tribes, notables-peasants and finally tribes-peasants, the book shows both the causes of contention and collaborations between the parties.

The Ottoman Empire was one the crucial forces that shaped the modern world. These essays combine archaeological and historical approaches to shed light on how the Ottoman Empire approached the challenge of governing frontiers as diverse as Central and Eastern Europe, Anatolia, Iraq, Arabia, and the Sudan over the 15th to 20th centuries.

A theoretically informed account of how the Ottoman state redefined itself during the last decades of empire.

The Ottoman empire as a political entity comprised most of the present Middle East (with the principal exception of Iran), north Africa and south-eastern Europe. For over 500 years, until its disintegration during World War I, it encompassed a diverse range of ethnic, religious and linguistic communities with varying political and cultural backgrounds. Yet, was there such a thing as an ‘Ottoman world’ beyond the principle of sultanic rule from Istanbul? Ottoman authority might have been established largely by military conquest, but how was it maintained for so long, over such distances and so many disparate societies? How did provincial regions relate to the imperial centre and what role was played in this by local elites? What did it mean in practice, for ordinary people, to be part of an ‘Ottoman world’? Arranged in five thematic sections, with contributions from thirty specialist historians, The Ottoman World addresses these questions, examining aspects of the social and socio-ideological composition of this major pre-modern empire, and offers a combination of broad synthesis and detailed investigation that is both informative and intended to raise points for future debate. The Ottoman World provides a unique coverage of the Ottoman empire, widening its scope beyond Istanbul to the edges of the empire, and offers key coverage for students and scholars alike.

Frontiers of Ottoman Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the surge in research into Ottoman history and culture over the past two decades. The first volume reflects the growing interest in the provinces, communities and cultures outside the imperial capital of Istanbul and covers four major areas: politics and Islam; economy and taxation; development of Ottoman towns and Arab and Jewish communities. Chapters on Ottoman legal and fiscal institutions provide a fascinating insight into the Ottoman government's interaction with the Empire's subjects, while reviews of Egypt and the Arab provinces emphasise the stirrings of Arab nationalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that ultimately contributed to the demise of the Empire.

"Frontiers of Ottoman Studies provides a comprehensive overview of the surge in research into Ottoman history and culture over the past two decades. The first volume reflects the growing interest in the provinces, communities and cultures outside the imperial capital of Istanbul and covers four major areas: politics and Islam; economy and taxation; development of Ottoman towns and Arab and Jewish communities. Chapters on Ottoman legal and fiscal institutions provide a fascinating insight into the Ottoman government's interaction with the Empire's subjects, while reviews of Egypt and the Arab provinces emphasize the stirrings of Arab nationalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that ultimately contributed to the demise of the Empire."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

How do terms used to describe migration change over time? How do those changes reflect possibilities of inclusion and exclusion? Ella Fratantuono places the governance of migrants at the centre of Ottoman state-building across a 60-year period (1850-1910) to answer these questions. She traces the significance of the term muhacir (migrant) within Ottoman governance during this global era of mass migration, during which millions of migrants arrived in the empire, many fleeing from oppression, violence and war. Rather than adopting the familiar distinction between coerced and non-coerced migration, Fratanuono explores how officials' use of muhacir captures changing approaches to administering migrants and the Ottoman population. By doing so, she places the Ottoman experience within a global history of migration management and sheds light on how six decades of governing migration contributed to the infrastructures and ideology essential to mass displacement in the empire's last decade.

A comparative study of the power and limits of bureaucracy in historical empires from ancient Rome to the twentieth century.