The Ottoman, Iranian, and Russian Revolutions in Comparative and Connected Perspective
Panel 172, 2012 Annual Meeting
On Tuesday, November 20 at 11:00 am
Panel Description
This panel proposes to explore the transimperial/transnational connections during the early twentieth-century revolutions in the Ottoman and Iranian (and even Russian, although to a lesser extent) cases that for the most part have been overlooked by previous scholarship. Each paper on the panel addresses a different aspect of the linkages between the two (and in two cases, three) revolutions.
Based on research from Ottoman and Iranian women's journals, "Women and Revolution in Qajar Iran and Ottoman Turkey" is the first to compare two revolutions through the prism of gender and women by focusing on not only how the two revolutions affected Iranian and Ottoman women's lives and gender relations but also on how the women themselves participated in challenging and even determining the aims of the revolutions. Therefore, it compares and connects the two revolutions through an investigation of women and gender within the larger context of women's movements in the region and beyond.
Through an exploration of visual culture, e.g., cartoons, and literary sources, e.g., poetry, plays, and histories, "Representing Ottoman and Iranian Constitutional Revolutions in Literature, Visual Culture, and History" demonstrates how constitutionalists in both revolutions represented the other's revolutionary struggle. The paper argues that the Ottoman and Iranian constitutionalists drew on shared Islamic and anti-imperialist representations of resistance and viewed their own revolution through the lived experience of their counterparts across the border.
Based on archival documents and memoirs in multiple languages, "A Revolution within the Revolution: Re-Making the Ottoman-Armenian Political Representation, 1908-14" explores how the Young Turk Revolution led to the transformation of Armenian political representation through the influx of Armenian revolutionary elites from the Iranian and Russian revolutions, who challenged and replaced the existing Armenian leadership, which had already been disrupted by the ouster of the Armenian patriarch by the Ottoman state.
"Connecting Revolutions: Armenians and the Ottoman, Iranian, and Russian Revolutions" takes a larger conceptual and theoretical framework by embracing the themes and issues of connected revolutions while being grounded heavily in archival sources and contemporary press. One of the most significant aspects about the three revolutions is the circulation and flow of activists as well as revolutionary literature and arms throughout the three regions before and during the revolutions. This paper views and connects the three revolutions through the lens of the circulation of Armenian revolutionary and intellectual elites.
In 1907, a skilled bomb maker and one of three founders of the leading Armenian revolutionary party (Dashnaktsutiun) of the late nineteenth century, Rostom (Stepan Zorian) sat with Iranian constitutionalist leaders and agreed to a deal. He consented to place the party at the service of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911). Months later, Armenian revolutionaries took up arms against royalists trying to halt the progress of the constitutional revolution. Only two years earlier, Rostom had been far from the Iranian scene, in the Caucasus, during the Russian Revolution (1905), convincing his party comrades there to include the Caucasus in their revolutionary struggle. Fast forward three years to 1908, and Rostom took part in important discussions with Ottoman revolutionaries involved in the reinstatement of the constitution of that year. His geographic mobility, his sudden appearance at pivotal moments in three different states' revolutionary struggles, and his remarkable ease when operating in varied and dramatically different milieus are nothing short of striking. Yet Rostom was only one of many Armenians who made their way through the early twentieth-century revolutions in the Ottoman, Russian, and Iranian region, often participating in two or three of the revolutions. Their involvement points to a fascinating and heretofore unexamined and important feature of modern revolutions: the critical circulation of not just ideas but of individuals and material. A review of the biographies of these individuals, political party documents, and correspondence demonstrates how mobile, active, and dynamic many were in connecting all the major revolutions at the dawn of the twentieth century.
Drawing on Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s contributions to a “connected histories” approach, I argue in this paper that the history of the region and its revolutionary struggles must be seen not as “autonomous” but as “interactive,” i.e., connected through the flow of elites, their ideas, and experiences. In that sense, the fact that Armenian revolutionaries and intellectuals as both local and “global” agents were literally (and at times figuratively) “all over the place,” collaborating in revolutionary activities, being influenced by, and influencing political culture as well as social and political ideologies, points to the connectedness of these revolutions as well as the need to study them “through one another, in terms of relationships, interactions, and circulation” (Michael Werner/Bénédicte Zimmerman). Through the examination of the circulation of individuals and ideas as exemplified but not limited to Armenians, the picture that emerges is one of transimperial connections and “connected revolutions.”
