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Navigating Criminal Justice related Sources for the Ottoman Empire: A “History from Below” Approach
Abstract
This presentation focuses on the varied sources related to Criminal Justice in the Ottoman Empire, particularly petitions, investigative reports, interrogation reports, statistical surveys, memoirs, travel literature, and popular accounts of prison conditions and experiences from a variety of perspectives. While very limited sources remain from non-political prisoners, primarily due to a lack of literacy and preservation of the average prisoners’ experiences, it is possible to recapture echoes of their experiences by utilizing the approach of what Donald Quataert called “history from below” and by reading the archival documents against the grain. Additionally, by coupling “official” archival documentation with popular press, traveler accounts, photographs, contemporary sociological surveys, and political prisoner accounts it is possible to recapture the voices of the subaltern within the prisons themselves. My presentation discusses the pitfalls, limitations, and possibilities of these various official and non-official sources related to crime and punishment within the late Ottoman Empire and what insights they might offer to broader trends and issues in late Ottoman politics, society, administration, and public opinion regarding crime and punishment, and their intersections with changing cultural sensibilities during this period.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Ottoman Empire
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries