OTTOMAN HOUSES IN ANATOLIA AND THE BALKANS Ottoman houses in Anatolia and the Balkans are situated in the areas, which were the part of the Ottoman Empire during many centuries and where the Ottoman centralized legal system was applied. This houses belonged to Muslims and Christians, who were local landowners, merchants, and craftsmen. Design of the houses reflects the statute and lifestyle of their owners. Most of the preserved houses originate from the 17th century until the transition of the 19th to the 20th century. They are multi-storeyed houses, which have some external and internal features. It is typical that they have overlapping upper storey to the sides, which are buttressed by wooden braces. Most frequently their ground floor is walled from stones and the upper floors has wooden, half-timbered frame with the filling of an unburnt bricks. The ground floor was used as a service area and on the upper floors there are habitable rooms. These rooms were divided into the male and the female-family section, they could be also divided according to the seasons to the rooms for the winter living and for the summer living. Specific feature of the rooms in ottoman houses is mulifunctionality.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / David A. Graff / Cotton was the most important commodity in the economy of the industrialized Western world in the mid-nineteenth century, as vital then as petroleum is today. It was widely believed that a prolonged interruption of the cotton supply would lead not merely to a severe economic depression, but possibly to the collapse of Western Civilization. Three quarters of the world’s cotton supply came from the Southern states of the United States. When the American Civil War erupted and cotton supplies were cut off, the British Cotton Supply Association was faced with the difficult task of establishing cotton cultivation in other locations. In order for the effort to succeed, the British had to obtain and distribute millions of pounds of American cotton seeds. The United States government, the Illinois Central Railroad, and a number of organizations and individuals cooperated to obtain the necessary seeds that the British had to have. American farm equipment manufacturers assisted by designing, making, and distributing portable cotton gins and other implements needed by cotton growers overseas. U.S. consuls overseas sometimes assisted the Cotton Supply Association with seed and equipment distribution. This dissertation is about the implementation of the grand economic strategies of the United States and Great Britain. It is also about the people who implemented those strategies on the ground, people as diverse as Union agents who went into Confederate territory to procure cotton seeds, farmers in Illinois, British consuls who distributed seeds grown in Illinois to farmers in the Ottoman Empire, and English colonists who flocked to Fiji with high hopes of becoming cotton planters. It attempts to measure the impact of the cotton boom and subsequent bust that resulted from the American Civil War on societies around the world.

M.A.

En Turquie, il y a un intérêt croissant pour le passé ottoman au cours de la décennie dernière. Le désir pour le passé ottoman semble envahir la société turque. Les images, les objets et les discours liés à l'histoire ottomane ont fait leur apparition dans les séries télévisuelles, les discours politiques, les manifestations sur les médias sociaux, dans l'architecture et la décoration de maison. Cette étude vise à comprendre les raisons d'un tel essor pour le passé ottoman dans la société turque par rapport à la transformation de l'histoire, et les changements dans les modes d'engagement avec le passé dans les sociétés occidentales modernes. Elle tente d'analyser ce nouvel intérêt à travers les références à la fois à la dynamique interne de la modernisation turque et aux changements structurels plus généraux au sein des sociétés modernes. Les débats sur le néo-ottomanisme affirment que cet intérêt est le résultat de la stratégie politique turque dans la scène politique internationale, ou bien qu'il est une tentative délibérée du gouvernement conservateur pour mettre en place un nouveau discours historique. Cette étude, au-delà de ces arguments, soutient que l'intérêt trouvé vers le passé ottoman est une conséquence de la convergence des changements et des ruptures que la société turque a confronté depuis les années 1980 et des continuités au sein de la modernisation turque.La transformation et les changements survenus après par l'intégration de l'économie turque au réseau néo-libéral mondial ne sont pas seulement limités au domaine économique, mais aussi ont affecté les structures sociales, culturelles et politiques. Cette formation sociale a provoqué la transformation des formes d'engagement avec le passé de la société turque. À cet égard, la montée de la nostalgie ottomane implique un changement structurel de la société, ce qui nécessite d'éclairer les changements que les sociétés modernes ont subi à la suite du capitalisme tardif et de son édifice néo-libéral. Cette transformation a provoqué un changement de la temporalité où le passé devient une réserve de références ahistoriques. La temporalité post-moderne provoque l'effondrement des structures sociales, politiques et culturelles dans un abîme des références vides ahistorique à la suite de détemporalisation de l'histoire. La nostalgie ottomane de la société turque peut être expliquée par rapport à ce changement temporal. D'autre part, parmi ces changements et la transformation, les continuités des caractéristiques fondamentales de la modernisation turque devraient également être soulignées. L'intégration de la société turque dans l'économie de marché néo-libéral a été réalisé par un coup d'État qui a créé une condition sociale dans laquelle une vaste autoritarisme de l’État et de l'économie de marché libre ont existé côte à côte. Cette étude affirme que la caractéristique fondamentale définissant la modernisation de la Turquie est un modernisme réactionnaire. Celui-ci est entendu dans ce travail comme une adaptation sélective de la modernité occidentales.C’est dans l’objectif d'éviter les complexités de la société moderne. Cela a causé une réduction de modernisation au développementalisme monolithique. Ce modernisme réactionnaire s'établit à travers une distinction fondamentale entre la civilisation et la culture. Dans cette distinction, alors que la civilisation signifie un développement technologique, la culture se réfère aux caractéristiques innées de la nation comme des caractéristiques étrangères aux idéaux universels des Lumières. Du kémalisme organiciste, corporatiste et solidariste au néo-libéralisme autoritaire de la période post-1980, le modernisme réactionnaire se soutient comme une caractéristique essentielle et continue de la modernisation turque. [...] / In Turkey, there has been an increasing interest towards the Ottoman past in recent years. The appetite for the Ottoman past seems invading the Turkish society. The images, objects and discourses related to the Ottoman history have been appearing in from television series, political discourses and manifestations to social media, from architecture to house decorations. This study aims to understand the reasons for such a revival of the Ottoman past in Turkish society within the framework of the transformation of the history, and the changes in the ways of engagement with the past in modern societies. It attempts to analyse this new interest through the references both to the internal dynamics of the Turkish modernisation and to the more general structural changes within the modern societies. The debates over the neo-Ottomanism either claim that it is strategic policy in the international political stage, or assert that it is a deliberate attempt of the conservative government to establish a new historical discourse. This study, beyond these arguments, contends that the interest towards the Ottoman past is a consequence resulting from the convergence of the changes and ruptures that the Turkish society has been experiencing since the 1980s and of the continuities within the Turkish modernisation. The transformation and changes brought by the integration of the Turkish economy into the global neo-liberal network were not only limited to the economic field, but also affected the social, cultural and political structures. This social constitution caused the transformation of the ways and forms of engagement with the past in the Turkish society. In this regard, the surge of the Ottoman nostalgia implies a structural change of society that can only be explained through illuminating the changes that the modern societies have been undergoing as a result of the arrival of late-capitalism and its neo-liberal edifice. This transformation brought up a change in the temporality in which the past becomes a reserve of ahistorical references. The late-modern or post-modern temporality causes the collapse of the social, political and cultural structures into an abyss of the ahistoric empty references as a result of detemporalisation the history. The Ottoman nostalgia in the Turkish society can be explained within this change of temporality. On the other hand, among these changes and transformation, the continuities of the fundamental characteristics of the Turkish modernisation should also be emphasised. The integration of the Turkish society into the neo-liberal market economy was brought up by a coup d’état which created a social condition in which extensive state authoritarianism and free-market economy have existed side by side. This study claims that the fundamental characteristic defining the Turkish modernisation is reactionary modernism which means a selective approach to modernity in order to avoid the complexities of the modern society by reducing the modernisation into monolithic developmentalism. Reactionary modernism establishes itself on a fundamental distinction between civilisation and culture. In this distinction, while civilisation means a technological development, culture refers to the innate characteristics of the nation as alien features to the universal ideals of the Enlightenment. From the organicist, solidarist corporatism of Kemalism to the neo-liberal free-market authoritarianism of the post-1980 period, the reactionary modernism sustained itself as the continuing characteristic of the Turkish modernisation. [...]

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The Ottoman Empire was in serious decline by the late nineteenth century. Years of misrule, war, and oppression of its various nationalities had virtually driven the Turks from Europe, leaving the weakened Empire on the verge of collapse. By the 1870s the Armenians were the most troubling group, having gained international sympathy at the Congress of Berlin. As a result, violence against the Armenians had escalated dramatically by the turn of the century. They felt, however, that their fortune had changed when the liberal Young Turks seized power from the Sultan in 1908. Unfortunately, the Young Turks had a much more ominous plan for the Armenians. When they entered World War I as an ally of the Central Powers, they decided to use the cover of war to exterminate the Ottoman Armenians. Over one million Armenians were murdered, and the Turkish government's crimes went unpunished in the postwar world.

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This dissertation addresses early British intelligence activities and Anglo-Ottoman relations by viewing the activities of army officers and private individuals as a collective pursuit to safeguard British imperial interests. It offers a new understanding of the relationships between intelligence, grand strategy, and diplomacy before the Great War. It also examines the role that pre-1914 intelligence played in that conflict. The Boer War had shown that the geographic expanse of the British Empire was a source of strategic danger as well as a foundation of global power. The revelation of weakness propelled Britain to begin collecting intelligence on possible sources of conflict in preparation for the next war. A 1906 border incident between Egypt and Turkey marked turning points in Anglo-Ottoman relations and British intelligence efforts. Intelligence began to focus on railways that threatened Britain’s commercial position, on the disposition of Arab tribes who might revolt against Turkish authority, on the state of the Turkish army, and on the extent of European activity in Turkey. In 1914, British policy in the Middle East was unco-ordinated. Needing an effective means of combatting the Turco-German Jihad proclaimed in 1915, London created the Arab Bureau as an advisory organ based in Cairo. It became the central repository for much of the intelligence gathered before 1914. Officials in Cairo and London created new maps, compiled route reports, and assembled intelligence handbooks for distribution. Once the Arab Revolt began in 1916, intelligence helped marshal Britain’s resources effectively in pursuit of victory. Placing pre-1914 intelligence in the context of British imperial concerns extends our understanding of Anglo-Ottoman relations by considering strategic and diplomatic issues within a single frame. It demonstrates the influence of the Boer War in initiating intelligence-gathering missions in the Ottoman Empire, showing that even those undertaken before the establishment of a professional intelligence service in 1909, although lacking organization, were surprisingly modern, and ultimately successful. Analysis of under-utilized sources, such as the handbooks created by the Arab Bureau and the Royal Geographical Society, demonstrates the value of pre-war intelligence in detailed ways. It deepens understanding of the role British intelligence played in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and shows how one nation’s intelligence, military, and diplomatic bodies operated separately and collectively in an era that presented them with unprecedented challenges and opportunities.

This thesis examines world-system inspired historiography on transition to capitalism in the Ottoman Empire that has been developed as a criticism of the modernization theory that was dominant in the analyses of the Ottoman transformation. It is argued that although the world system inspired analyses overcome the restrictions imposed by the modernization analyses that are based on the deficiencies of Ottoman society compared to the West, they are also crippled with their own restrictions. Considering change as a product of external dynamics, and ignoring internal relations and potentials, it commits the same mistake of regarding the &lsquo / periphery&rsquo / as stagnant and shorn of any life, dynamics for creating change and therefore history. In this perspective, the peripheral societies such as the Ottoman society do not have the potential to be the actor of change but can only be subjected to it. Therefore, it is argued that the world-system inspired accounts fall short in understanding the process of change in the Ottoman Empire and the dynamics behind it. On that account, this thesis stresses the importance of studying the uneven but mutual relations between internal and external factors in order to understand social transformations that occur in and through the social relations and contradictions. There is, therefore a need to develop an account of the transition of the Ottoman Empire to capitalism with the help of such an approach.

This dissertation addresses early British intelligence activities and Anglo-Ottoman relations by viewing the activities of army officers and private individuals as a collective pursuit to safeguard British imperial interests. It offers a new understanding of the relationships between intelligence, grand strategy, and diplomacy before the Great War. It also examines the role that pre-1914 intelligence played in that conflict. The Boer War had shown that the geographic expanse of the British Empire was a source of strategic danger as well as a foundation of global power. The revelation of weakness propelled Britain to begin collecting intelligence on possible sources of conflict in preparation for the next war. A 1906 border incident between Egypt and Turkey marked turning points in Anglo-Ottoman relations and British intelligence efforts. Intelligence began to focus on railways that threatened Britain’s commercial position, on the disposition of Arab tribes who might revolt against Turkish authority, on the state of the Turkish army, and on the extent of European activity in Turkey. In 1914, British policy in the Middle East was unco-ordinated. Needing an effective means of combatting the Turco-German Jihad proclaimed in 1915, London created the Arab Bureau as an advisory organ based in Cairo. It became the central repository for much of the intelligence gathered before 1914. Officials in Cairo and London created new maps, compiled route reports, and assembled intelligence handbooks for distribution. Once the Arab Revolt began in 1916, intelligence helped marshal Britain’s resources effectively in pursuit of victory. Placing pre-1914 intelligence in the context of British imperial concerns extends our understanding of Anglo-Ottoman relations by considering strategic and diplomatic issues within a single frame. It demonstrates the influence of the Boer War in initiating intelligence-gathering missions in the Ottoman Empire, showing that even those undertaken before the establishment of a professional intelligence service in 1909, although lacking organization, were surprisingly modern, and ultimately successful. Analysis of under-utilized sources, such as the handbooks created by the Arab Bureau and the Royal Geographical Society, demonstrates the value of pre-war intelligence in detailed ways. It deepens understanding of the role British intelligence played in the defeat of the Ottoman Empire and shows how one nation’s intelligence, military, and diplomatic bodies operated separately and collectively in an era that presented them with unprecedented challenges and opportunities.