This paper examines how the Province of Naples was represented in Sultan Abdülhamid II’s (r. 1876-1909) Photography Collection and analyzes late Ottoman perceptions of the Italian province to highlight and broadly reflect upon the Ottoman interest in the region. The photographs in the sultan’s collection spread through the pages of five albums, the majority of which have captions in Italian and their translations, or rather adaptations, into Ottoman Turkish. Comparatively studying these captions has been illuminating from a multicultural perspective because this approach has provided important information regarding the intended meaning of the photographers responsible for creating the images and the received meaning by the Ottomans as consumers of the images. Each Ottoman re-working of an Italian caption signals the way in which the photograph’s intended meaning was transmitted or transformed while it traveled from one culture to another. Hence, in some cases, the language skills of the viewers of a photograph determined how they perceived and made sense of the image. Word-to-word translations were less common than adaptations into the local context and examples where the information was sometimes “lost in translation” were not infrequent. In addition to examining the photographs in question visually, materially, and textually, this paper also investigates the way Neapolitan geography was approached by the Ottoman press and Ottoman travelers to the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that the growing interest in Neapolitan scenes, geography, culture, and heritage could be linked to the Ottoman state’s agenda of urban planning, archaeology, and museology. Overall, by focusing on a particular geographical area, that is the Province of Naples, this study aims to widen the scope of scholarly discussions on Abdülhamid II’s Photography Collection that have so far concentrated on analyzing mainly the Ottoman self-representations. What has been overlooked, however, is the substantial presence of photographs that entered the sultan’s collection from abroad. Overall, my presentation addresses this lack of scholarly attention by focusing on a particular geography as an effort that hopes to pave a new trajectory for further research.

In the tumultuous last quarter of the 19th century, many Ottomans produced universal history narratives for the reading public, as textbooks for the newly established universities, as column series in the prolific medium of the age, newspapers, and as print books. This was after all the century of reform in the empire, which meant the formation of the modern state, in the name of saving the empire. I situate Ottoman Turkish universal history writing in this age as a new genre for recasting empire in history in general, and for rescripting Ottoman history in world history in particular. The ways in which Ottoman Turkish universal history narratives situate the changing Ottoman Empire, in a world where 19th century Western historical discourse of ‘progress’ was already engrained in the idea that history was European, reveal an intellectual milieu far more complicated than the very problematic positionalities of ‘traditional’ versus ‘modern’. Indeed, the universal history oeuvre of Ahmed Midhat (1844-1912), a well-known literati of the age, circumvents the binary narratives of reformist versus Islamic, of constitutionalist versus Pan-Islamic despotic, of Turkish nationalist versus Ottoman imperial. His three different and voluminous universal histories published in the 1880s and 1890s have never been studied. Yet they point, I argue, to a particular construction of empire distinct from both its own past version and European colonial empire.

This paper examines a little-studied proposal for the administrative reorganization of the Ottoman Empire which found a growing number of adherents among the Ottoman Turkish political and intellectual elite in the period following the Ottoman defeat in the First Balkan War in late 1912. This proposal involved the division of the empire into six ‘general inspectorates’ (umumi müfettişlikler), each to be headed by a general inspector equipped with wide-ranging powers to govern the territory under his control in accordance with the ‘needs and characteristics’ of the local population. This proposal was passed into law by the government of Said Halim Pasha in July 1913, but its implementation was prevented by the outbreak of the First World War. This paper draws on Ottoman state documents and contemporary Ottoman print publications to trace the origins and evolution of this proposal, as well as the circumstances surrounding its implementation and eventual abandonment. This paper argues that the proposed division of the empire into general inspectorates constituted a novel attempt to reorganize the Ottoman state on the basis of the imperial rule of difference, at a time when the future shape of the Ottoman Empire was the subject of considerable debate. It thereby contributes to an emerging challenge to the historiographical consensus regarding the final years of the empire, which has long held that the Ottoman defeat in the First Balkan War led the Ottoman Turkish governing and intellectual elite to embrace Turkish nationalism and to implement a series of homogenizing policies which culminated in the demise of the empire in 1922 and the subsequent foundation of the Turkish Republic. Challenging the teleology inherent in this narrative, a number of historians have recently argued that we should instead view the period following the Ottoman defeat as one of intellectual ferment and confusion, in which multiple visions of the Ottoman state – national, federal, imperial – were articulated and competed with one another. By highlighting one particular proposal for the reorganization of the Ottoman state which emerged during this period, this paper aims to broaden our understanding of late Ottoman visions of the state, and to complicate the narrative of the transition from empire to nation-state.

This paper examines the formation of local subjectivities in early 20th-century Ottoman Manastir within the context of transnational connections shaping these identities. It demonstrates Romania as a participant in shaping identities and influencing the efforts of Greek, Bulgarian and Ottomans states. The focus lies in the experiences of two individuals navigating their way to and within the local Vlach community, which had often been assimilated into nationalist narratives of Eastern European states over the course of 20th century. The Aromanian-speaking Vlach community underwent a process of Hellenization and/or joined the Bulgarian exarchate around the turn of the century. Leveraging linguistic ties with Vlachs, the Romanian state positioned itself as their protector, intensifying pressure on the Ottoman state to grant a millet status, which was aimed to facilitate practice of religious ceremonies and education in the Aromanian/Vlach language. Methodologically, this paper traces tensions, conflicts, and instances of violence surrounding these two local figures before and after 1905 when Vlachs officially gained millet status. Historical evidence present series of conflicts between the Greek-Orthodox church, local community, Romanian state and Ottoman state: Protests against and arrest of a former Greek-Orthodox priest who recently undertook a new role as the priest for Vlach community; a letter to the inspector to Vlach schools regarding increasing hatred between Vlachs and Greeks; and a death letter from Romania to a Greek-Orthodox notable in Manastir. This research contributes to the historiography of ethno-religious communities in the Balkans, aiming to historicize the experiences of Vlachs. Significantly, it expands our historical perspective by illustrating ordinary people and local figures as active agents employing complex strategies and negotiations in shaping their identities and gaining power. It underlines the intricate and fluid nature of identities during an era marked by contesting nationalisms, influenced by the local, mundane and transnational factors. In a broader context, this paper extends our understanding of competition over the Balkans by underlining the web of networks, ambitions and conflicts over the political control in the region. Within the framework of Ottoman-Greek relations, the Vlach case provides insights into Ottoman state’s efforts to counter Greek nationalism within its territories.

Early scholarship on Ottoman modernization has primarily focused on state-led initiatives to revitalize the empire. While these studies were necessary, they often overlooked the role of non-state actors in shaping the modernization process. Recent research has helped to address this gap by highlighting how Ottoman citizens contributed to modernization. This paper adds to this body of research by examining the emergence of informal settlements in the 19th century as a form of grassroots modernization. Throughout the 19th century, Ottoman elites introduced various regulations to formalize urban spaces, often based on European models. These regulations distinguished between legitimate urban development and traditional or informal settlements. Traditional settlements comprised a significant portion of Ottoman cities and were considered fair due to their long history and social acceptance. However, informal settlements, which emerged as a modern phenomenon, were increasingly seen as a problem by local and central authorities by the 1890s. For residents of informal settlements, these spaces represented a response to the inadequacies of formal urbanization and state policies in addressing modern urban challenges. In the early 1880s, Muslim immigrants, including marginalized groups like Romanies, faced a housing crisis after being evicted from state-provided temporary shelters in 1883. They began occupying marginal plots near railways, quarries, rivers, or graveyards, constructing shelters from salvaged materials like waste boards and oil cans. Armenians, Greeks, and Jews from the most vulnerable segments of their communities also joined them in search of affordable housing. The earliest informal settlements took place in various locations such as Kumkapı, Nişantaşı, Göztepe, Kireçburnu, and Feriköy. The state responded to the growing presence of informal settlements by developing monitoring mechanisms and alternative housing policies. This paper sheds light on the early formation of informal settlements around the Ottoman capital, drawing on archival materials from Ottoman archives in Istanbul and Sofia, supplemented by documents from the Library of Congress, including newspaper collections and the papers of US diplomatic staff stationed in the Ottoman Empire.

This paper will argue for the pivotal role played by an emergent social class of professionals in the transformation of Jewish society and communal life during the late Ottoman Empire. Drawing insights from the fields of historical sociology and global history, it will outline the social, cultural, and political roles adopted by Jewish professionals and, in turn, trace the formation of an incipient class identity. To this end, it will focus in particular on the early political journalism of one Abraham Galante (1873-1961) and the network of collaborators/correspondents who assisted in the production of his Cairo-based journal La Vara [“The Staff”] (1905-1908). Galante, best known today for his expansive writings on Ottoman Jewish history, was in his early career a provocative educator-journalist. After clashing with the municipal rabbinic establishment in Izmir over a critical article in the local Ladino press, Galante—like many young Ottoman liberals of his generation—followed the path of exile to Cairo where he could work beyond the reach of Ottoman censors. Drawing on a network of professional colleagues across the Ottoman Mediterranean, he established La Vara as a medium intended to energetically polemicize against Ottoman Chief Rabbi Moshe HaLevi (1827-1910) and those authority figures in Ottoman Jewish communities both large and small who aligned with him and his conservative politics, derisively terming this element as la banda preta [“the black gang”]. This paper will present La Vara and the political project to which it gave voice as a key expression and index of the convictions, grievances, and aspirations of the nascent Ottoman Jewish professional class. Rabbi Moshe HaLevi, who benefited from the patronage and support of Sultan Abdulhamid (1842-1918), was coerced into resignation in late Summer 1908 following the reinstitution of the constitutional regime and the derogation of Abdulhamid’s personal authority. The paper will conclude by following the members of the La Vara network into the early Second Constitutional period (1908-1912) as the Jewish professional class and its associated ideological tendencies claimed the mantle of communal leadership under vastly transformed political conditions.