The scholarship on Egyptian nationalism supports a narrative that depicts Egypt emerging as an independent political entity in the mid-19th century and steadily marching towards becoming a sovereign nation-state in the first decades of the 20th century. There has been little focus, however, on the role that Ottoman imperial culture played in the emergence of Egyptian nationalism, even though the most recent literature emphasizes the significance of empires and imperial cultures in the process of nation-state formation around the world. To fully understand the context from which Egyptian nationalism emerged, Ottoman cultural consciousness in Egypt from the mid-19th to early-20th centuries should be analyzed. Based primarily on documents from the Ottoman Archives as well as Arabic-language newspapers, this paper takes Ottoman orders and medals as important cultural symbols while using them as an analytical tool to examine the relationship between Istanbul and the ruling and intellectual elite in Egypt. It argues that even though Egypt was gradually becoming politically more autonomous within the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptian ruling and intellectual elite continued to operate within the Ottoman cultural network. The paper situates Egypt firmly within the Ottoman context and demonstrates how the development of a distinct Egyptian national identity was not an isolated process but took place within the framework of Ottoman imperial culture. Moreover, underlining the role that imperial cultures played in the formation of nation-states, the paper also contributes to the debates on the emergence of nation-states in the Middle East as well in the wider post-colonial world.

This paper explores the diplomatic connections between the Moroccan Alawi state and the Ottoman Empire in the eighteenth century through the mediation of dragoman-turned-consular agents in Ragusa (Dubrovnik). As an Ottoman vassal state with consuls across the Mediterranean, Ragusa and Ragusan agents offer a unique backdrop to highlight the complex exchanges that existed between Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. During the last half of the eighteenth century this included negotiations both for peace and competing claims for sovereignty throughout the Mediterranean. Using this robust activity as a backdrop, I will demonstrate how Ragusa consolidated and established its role as a mediator between the Ottoman Empire and Morocco through a specific class of dragomans-turned consuls. Particularly during the second half of the eighteenth century, this class of Ragusan intermediaries were sent on missions first to Morocco and the Ottoman North African provinces before being appointed to their positions as dragomans and, if successful, consuls in Istanbul. Thus, figures such as Duro Curi? gained first hand experience and training in North Africa and then spent extended periods of their careers becoming integrated into the diplomatic milieu in Istanbul. As a result of this early career training in North Africa, the dragomans’ diplomatic and political networks extended across a North African-Ottoman axis. Maintaining these connections allowed the dragomans to operate effectively as mediators of the oftentimes complex and tense relationship between Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. Examining such cases, allows us to re-center discussions of early modern Mediterranean diplomacy around this often overlooked east-west axis and use the experiences of dragomans-turned-consuls as a way to better understand the machinations of diplomatic activity in Morocco and the Ottoman Empire. This paper engages with correspondences and reports in Arabic, Italian, and Ottoman Turkish, to demonstrate how the various diplomatic impulses and modes of conflict mediation that these intermediaries were able to employ became well integrated into the foreign policies and diplomatic bureaucracies of both Morocco and the Ottoman Empire throughout the eighteenth century.

In 1713 Ottoman General Kelian-Hussein found himself in Constantine, Algeria to reestablish peace and preserve Ottoman sovereignty in the defiant region, but military acumen alone was not enough. Multiple governors had come and gone so frequently in the preceding six years that little, apart from their names, found its way into the historical record, and tribes in the Aurès Mountains were in full armed rebellion. Kelian’s first expedition to quell the mutiny met only embarrassing defeat at the hands of the locals. Nineteenth-century French Arabist, Ernest Mercier, attributed Kelian’s later military successes to his travels throughout the province and the increase in tax revenues from the south to fund further exploits. This seems a reasonable explanation, but it elides the significant fact that Kelian married into one of the prominent Aurès tribes. Despite Ottoman strictures against such marriages, this became common practice in Constantine to shore up support among influential local leaders. Marriage into a prominent Algerian family provided an Ottoman official military and political backing that was essential to his success and longevity. Without such ties, provincial governors did not last long, often suffering dismissal or, increasingly in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exile and assassination. For many of Constantine’s governors, only traces of their history remain in eighteenth-century European travel narratives, nineteenth-century French and Arabic chronicles, and diplomatic records. Through reconstructing the details of their lives, I argue, first, that between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, ethnicity, real and fictive kinship networks, and integration into Constantinois society determined the success and longevity of an Ottoman governor’s tenure in office. Secondly, my evidence shows that local Algerian elites contributed to both the selection and removal of governors in Constantine, demonstrating a greater role in Ottoman governance than hitherto recognized. Third, by the nineteenth century, a rising numbers of Kulughli governors suggests that the dual processes of Ottomanization and localization, observed in other Arab provinces, had finally taken root in Constantine in the last three decades of Ottoman rule. Frequently overshadowed by the weight of French colonialism’s legacy, the Regency period remains an understudied era in the history of Algeria. This prosopographical study of Constantine’s provincial governors reveals the ways in which Ottoman governance worked on the ground and the essential roles that local Algerian notables played in the effectiveness of Ottoman administrators.

The projection of state power to provinces has been one of the core of the Ottoman and later Turkish modernization. The appointment of governors to remote corners has not only signified the ever growing presence of the state but enabled Imperial and Republican rulers to offer political representation in the power structure. What geographical and ethnic patterns characterize this representation? How do changes in ruling ideology and elites shape the nature and length of these assignment patterns? To address these questions in a systematic way, this paper presents an original dataset of the centrally appointed governors of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic from Abdülhamid’s coming to the throne in 1876 to the election of Erdo?an as President of Turkey in 2014. Using a wealth of primary and secondary sources, the dataset focuses on biographical information on the Ottoman and Turkish governors and their tenures. It includes information about their names, birth and death years, birth places, ancestry, family, tribal, or religious affiliation, ethnic origins, education, languages they speak, each of their assignments, and religious affiliation. An analysis of the dataset reveals interesting patterns regarding how different societal groups have been represented in the administrative power structure. For instance, certain periods have over or underrepresentation of certain ethnic and geographical groups, such as the overrepresentation of Albanians during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II, the significant underrepresentation of ethnic Kurds during the Turkish Republic, and the increasing number of governors from few provinces in the post-1980 and under the AKP years. Furthermore, tenure lengths are subject to significant changes across periods, provinces and types of regimes. Under rulers who have secured their holds on power (such as Sultan Abdulhamid II between 1890-1905), the tenures of the governors are longer compared to rulers who have less solid hold on power, or under more competitive regimes where government turnover is more frequent. Overall, this study provides the first comprehensive understanding of the persistent and changing patterns of provincial power from the late Ottoman era to the contemporary era.