The Young Ottoman and the Young Turk movements are considered to be the first clear expressions of a desire for a constitutional and parliamentarian regime in the Ottoman Empire. As already demonstrated in the existing literature, the foremost objective of the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks was to orchestrate an institutionalized limitation to the power and authority of the sultan, by effecting a constitution and parliament. On the other hand, however, there is a consensus in the existing studies that it was the political system of Europe, which had provided the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks with the motives and inspiration for their political projects. 1Ş erif Mardin, for instance, emphasized that the constitutionalist movements in the Ottoman Empire from the Patriotic Alliance (_ Ittifak-ı Hamiyet) to the Young Turks 'thought of themselves as aiming to follow the political lead of Europe'. 2 Bernard Lewis also emphasized that the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks 'learned' the concepts such as constitutionalism and parliament 'from their European teachers'. 3 This narrative in the literature gained so much a hegemonic character in time that many other prominent historians such as Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Stanford Shaw, Roderic H. Davison, Kemal Karpat and Feroz Ahmad also took up this pattern, refining and strengthening it. 4 Needless to say, it is unviable to oppose this approach categorically as there is no doubt that one of the major goals of the Young Ottomans and the Young Turks was to integrate the Ottoman Empire into what they thought as the 'Western World'. 5 They did not only introduce the political system and institutions of Europe, but also acquainted the Ottoman public with its social and cultural structures. In many of his writings, for instance, Namık Kemal praised such civic establishments as theatres, libraries and observatories in Europe, even applauding a zoo in London in his article 'Terakki' (Progress). 6 Therefore, one could assert that the emphasis in the current literature mirrors the historical reality to a great extent. Nevertheless, existing studies on the Young Ottoman and the Young Turk movements show a serious deficiency at the same time. Accepting the western influence as the sole source of the constitutionalist movements' political agenda, they concentrate on European impact in an isolated manner, thus overlooking not only the manifold sources of Ottoman constitutionalism, but also the means of legitimation that the Young Ottomans
Although the establishment of history as a discipline has been examined extensively for European, North American, and, partly, Asian contexts, the Ottoman case still constitutes a neglected issue in the study of the global history of historiography and, in broader terms, of modern intellectual history. The present article focuses on the late Ottoman intellectual world and explores the making of the historical discipline in the Ottoman Empire. It argues that this transformation was the consequence of a number of interrelated factors, such as the turbulent developments in late Ottoman politics, Ottoman(ist) efforts to forge a “national” historical master narrative after the 1908 Constitutional Revolution, and Ottoman historians’ engagement with European historical thought and writing. Besides examining these factors and the ways in which they interacted, the article deals in detail with the works of late Ottoman historians to probe the Ottoman case of the professionalization of history.
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