The Ottoman Millet System: Non-Territorial Autonomy and its Contemporary Legacy

Barkey, Karen; Gavrilis, George

doi:10.4324/9781315667140-2

Cited by 7 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The Ottoman millet system according to this view operated as a critical antecedent that combined with factors such as ruling elite competition, responses of minority groups, legal definitions and international pressure to shape the later trajectory of government policies towards minorities. Barkey and Gavrilis (2016) articulate a similar argument about Lebanon where millet-like features persisted because both local communities and state officials made calculated decisions within a very constrained environment and at many points along the way found that changing these features would be difficult.…”

Section: A the Religious Cleavage As An Ottoman Legacymentioning

confidence: 87%

Nation‐building policies in the Balkans: an Ottoman or a manufactured legacy?

Mylonas

2019

Nations and Nationalism

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Are post‐Ottoman nation‐building policies in the Balkans a legacy of the millet system? Some contend that the discriminatory nation‐building policies along religious lines employed by Balkan nations ruling elites are a legacy of the Ottoman era millet system (administration by religious affiliation); others argue that the Ottoman legacy is palpable in the millet‐like features preserved in the minority rights protection system resulting from World War I, and yet other scholars see the millet system as a critical antecedent. Studying closely the policies towards non‐core groups in the post‐Ottoman Balkans, one finds that the ‘Ottoman legacy’ is much more differentiated than is commonly assumed and that effects vary widely from place to place. Moreover, I argue that the persistence of certain features from one period to another may be an actual legacy in some cases, but there is also a possibility that we are dealing with a manufactured legacy, where elites choose to intervene and perpetuate an institution or a particular feature of it. I empirically demonstrate this distinction in a crucial case using archival sources.

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Section: A the Religious Cleavage As An Ottoman Legacymentioning

confidence: 87%

Nation‐building policies in the Balkans: an Ottoman or a manufactured legacy?

Mylonas

2019

Nations and Nationalism

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“…Postnationalist scholars reject the idea that the Ottoman period represented an obstacle for the historical progress of the Balkan society (Blumi 2003, 10). They affirm that the empire allowed local communities to preserve their autonomy and enjoy a relative state of peace that lasted until the advent of modernity (Barkey and Gavrilis 2016;Blumi 2011, 33;Yosmaoglu 2012, 1). In their views, the Ottoman context appears as a space of continuous cultural and political interaction where identities were blurred or hybrid (Blumi 2003, 14;Dragostinova and Hashamova 2016).…”

Section: The Postnationalist Approachmentioning

confidence: 93%

The Impact of Nationalism on Albanian–Slav Relations in Late Ottoman Macedonia: A Historiographical Review

Bego

2019

Nationalities Papers

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The aim of this article is to inquire how recent and more consolidated historiographical trends consider the impact of nationalism in the late Ottoman Balkans. I focus on historical accounts of Albanian–Slav interaction in the late Ottoman Macedonian context, although the inquiry also includes texts that do not only engage with this epistemological field. I confront research efforts that have been published from the early 1960s to the present in order to understand the continuities and the discontinuities that characterize the work of historians. A preliminary investigation has allowed me to outline two main historiographical approaches: the national historiographies and the postnationalist approach. Such a distinction has become tangible especially after the end of the Cold War when a new generation of historians started to question the validity of the studies conducted by their colleagues in the past decades by pointing at the methodological and ideological issues that limited their work. In this article I evaluate to what extent the work of postnationalist historians is different from that of traditional historiographies and finally reflect on the possibility and benefits that might come from a dialogue between the two approaches.

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“…A mosaic of ethnonational groups, the Ottoman Empire presented myriad political and social complexities for its rulers and subjects. The Sublime Porte’s millet framework, its method of governance through religious communities, reinforced rigid ethnic hierarchies at the same time as it fortified some minorities’ identities (Barkey and Gavrilis 2016, 24–42). Ronald G. Suny (2015) has argued that “along with the discrimination, abuses, and inferiority that Armenians were forced to endure, the millet system provided considerable benefits and a degree of cultural and political autonomy” (44).…”

Section: British Travelers and The Armenian Questionmentioning

confidence: 99%

British Travelers and the Armenian Question During the First Half of the 19th Century

Riegg

2018

Nationalities Papers

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Marshaling an array of travelogues from British adventurers who visited the Russian-Ottoman-Persian borderlands during the first half of the 19th century, it is clear that the Armenian Question arose in the British consciousness earlier than previously thought. Influenced by their origins and the political circumstances of the countries through which they journeyed, British travelers highlighted in their narratives the political status of the Armenians and the trends affecting them throughout the borderlands. Ethnoreligious and socioeconomic strife between Armenians and other various groups remained a persistent theme that linked the disparate accounts and authors. Frequently overlooking core religious, cultural, political, and social factors and identities that distinguished the Turks, Persians, and Kurds, British travelers issued essentialized explanations for Armenian struggles that highlighted their status as a religious minority surrounded by ostensibly hostile majorities. Well before the outbreak of the Crimean War, British adventurers contextualized Armenian misery within the British-Russian geopolitical rivalry. Thus, early British adventurers established the cultural and political groundwork for the more famous discussions of the Armenian Question during the last decades of the 1800s.

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The Ottoman Millet System: Non-Territorial Autonomy and its Contemporary Legacy

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Nation‐building policies in the Balkans: an Ottoman or a manufactured legacy?

Nation‐building policies in the Balkans: an Ottoman or a manufactured legacy?

The Impact of Nationalism on Albanian–Slav Relations in Late Ottoman Macedonia: A Historiographical Review

British Travelers and the Armenian Question During the First Half of the 19th Century

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