The nineteenth-century Ottoman travelogues about Europe provide us with very interesting and informative accounts on the evolution of the Ottoman identity in the Eurocentric modern age. The initial reaction of the Ottoman travelers to Europe was the realization of their country’s ‘backwardness’ vis-à-vis European countries. The Ottoman observers attributed European advancement to scientific and technological progress but more importantly to economic dynamism that provided the material base for progress. More specifically, they suggested that the driving force behind the European success was economic enterprise and hard work. Thus, from then on the question of modernization would be based on the dichotomy between industriousness and indolence. This study aims to show how the Ottoman identity was defined in the nineteenth century in an economic context vis-à-vis modern Europe and how this perceived identity impacted the depiction of an ideal ‘modern Ottoman identity’ towards the end of the century. The answer to the first part of the question comes from some prominent Ottoman travelogues about Europe published in the latter half of the nineteenth century from the anonymous Seyahatname-i Londra (1853) to Ahmed Ihsan’s Avrupa’da Ne Gördüm (1892). In the latter part, the study traces the examples of ‘ideal modern Ottomans’ fictionalized and popularized by prominent intellectuals such as Ahmed Midhat Efendi (e.g. in his Felatun Bey ve Rak?m Efendi, 1876) and Mizanc? Murad Bey (e.g. Turfanda m?, Turfa m??, 1891). Finally, the study compares and contrasts the implicit and explicit definitions of the Ottoman identity in the Ottoman travelogues with the ideal ‘modern Ottoman identity’ in modernist literary works to shed light on the evolution of modern Ottoman identity in the nineteenth century.