This thesis is a local analysis of non-Muslim community in the Ottoman Empire. It investigates the workings of community as seen from an Ottoman province in Asia Minor, exploring a series of social and institutional practices among Orthodox Christians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The study aims to offer alternative angles in understanding this notion and to demonstrate the actual complexity of its application. The perception of Orthodox Christians as a compact and immutable body with clearly defined boundaries that separated it from the Ottoman state and society (i.e. a millet) is no longer convincing or tenable, and fails to make sense of the Orthodox Christian presence in the Ottoman Empire. While this old millet view remains dominant in mainstream historiography, newer historians have been questioning the corporatist perception of Ottoman non-Muslims. The present study aims to carry this alteration further. Rather than reducing the issue to an 'either-or' question, that is whether there was a community or not, this study offers a more nuanced approach to an understanding of how Orthodox Christians lived in the Ottoman world. It poses communal dynamics as being shaped and un-shaped by a set of relations, contexts and situations. When, why and how did it matter that someone was an Orthodox Christian in Ottoman society? What were the particular areas and historical circumstances in which Orthodox Christians were tied to other Orthodox Christians and in what manner? The study uses the local perspective to explore these social ties and relations in practice, carrying out a wide-ranging survey, to cover, in tum, physical and human geography, administration, finances and taxation, corporate status, juridical practice and nationality. This on-the-ground analysis of the meanings and structures of community offers other angles to the ones often portrayed by leading authorities and centres
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:531242 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Ozil, Ayse |
| Publisher | Birkbeck (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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