World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

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Ottoman Reform Provincialized: 19th-Century Case Studies (377) - NOT_DEFINED activity_field_Panel
 

· NOT_DEFINED date: THU 22, 5.00-7.00 pm

· NOT_DEFINED institution: Chiba University (Japan)

· NOT_DEFINED organizer: Jun Akiba

· NOT_DEFINED language: English

· NOT_DEFINED description: The integration of Ottoman provinces into the imperial system was one of the significant aspects of the nineteenth century reforms. Starting in the Tanzimat era, the imperial center increased its control over provinces through forming a new provincial bureaucracy, incorporating/eliminating local intermediaries, and investing in socio- economic development and infrastructure in provinces. In this process, top-down state projects faced with bottom-up responses of local groups. This panel analyzes provincial reforms as a negotiated process that resulted from the interaction between state projects and local responses in different regions of the Ottoman Empire.

Chair: Dilek Barlas, Koç University, Istanbul

Paper presenter: Jun Akiba, Chiba University, Japan, Education and Social Mobility among the People of the Eastern Black Sea Region during the Late Ottoman Period
Jun Akiba studies people’s initiatives in adapting themselves to the Ottoman reforms and participating in t Ottoman system in the Eastern Black Sea region, a borderland district where residents had achieved a remarkable presence in Ottoman bureaucracy and education since late 19th century. He analyzes the background and mobility of these people within the conte of the social and administrative changes that took place after the Tanzimat reforms.

Paper presenter: Masayuki Ueno, University of Tokyo, Japan, Reforms Demanded: Eastern Anatolia in the Eyes of Istanbul Armenians 1870-1877
Masayuki Ueno studies responses of Ottoman Armenians to the Ottoman reform policy.
He analyzes the debate among Armenian community about the reforms in Eastern
Anatolia and their involvement in military service in the 1870-1877 period. He argues thatthe achievement of equality between the Muslims and non-Muslims promised by the
Reform Edict was considered as ‘panacea’ among the leading figures of the Armenian
community.

Paper presenter: Yonca Köksal, Koç University, Istanbul, Issues and Problem in Studying Provincial Reforms: Balkans and Anatolia during the Tanzimat
In an attempt to develop a relational perspective in which Tanzimat
applications could be studied as an interaction between central state policies and
responses of local actors, Yonca Köksal analyzes regional diversity by comparing
examples of reform policies from the provinces of Tuna, Edirne and Ankara. She argues
that the variation of reform outcome was a result of social networks at the local level in
which local elites were positioned differently, varying socio-economic conditions, and
specific needs of the state from provinces.

Paper presenter: Marc Aymes, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris, Wanderings around the Epistemological Leap
Referring to archives from the mid-19th century provincial administration, Marc Aymes sheds a kaleidoscopic light on the episteme of the Ottoman reform era and asks a critical question: What if the Tanzimat were, instead of an empire-wide scenario featuring the all-out centralization and standardization of Ottoman statecraft, a project designed to better latch onto forms of ‘local knowledge’?