Abstract
Before deconstructing the discursive imagery of modern Japan that proliferated in Ottoman Turkish and Arabic newspapers, journals, books, government documents, and other forms starting in the late nineteenth century, the Ottoman social and political milieu into which this discourse was introduced must be elucidated so that we can better understand the influence Japan’s achievements had upon peoples in the Empire, how such information flowed within Ottoman society, and the role of this discourse in affecting or legitimating change in the structure of the Ottoman polity. As mentioned previously, Ottoman societal organizing principles historically had been based around the sharp distinction made between the askeri or ruling elite, and the reaya, the Ottoman masses, on the one hand, and upon the categorization of communities as Muslim or non-Muslim, on the other. The Islamic Ottoman polity ultimately centered around the Sultan as protector of his subjects, with mediation between the masses and the Ottoman authorities by the religious classes.1 The arrival of ideas to the Empire from the European Enlightenment and the French Revolution profoundly disrupted this traditional class and communal system.
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Notes
See Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1964) for an understanding of this dynamic.
From Bernard Lewis’s The Emergence of Modern Turkey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 326. In Hasan Kayali’ s Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 24, he describes the evolution of Ottomanism this way: “The Tanzîmât principle of political equality begot the concept of Ottomanism, a common allegiance of all subjects in equal status to the Ottoman dynasty … formal equality before the law, coupled with secular restructuring of social institutions and centralization, provided the framework upon which an identification with country and people … could be built by stressing the powerful symbol of the dynasty…. The Young Ottomans also promoted the concepts of legal representation and popular sovereignty that would erode the intercommunal divisions within the Empire and focus the loyalty of Muslim and Christian alike on a geographical fatherland comprising Ottoman territories as well as the ruling Ottoman dynasty. Having provided an Islamic basis to their ideas, the Young Ottomans believed their vision of the Ottoman state would be readily acceptable to Turks and Arabs.”
Carter Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 21: “Those who knew most about the West—at first scribal diplomats—became a vanguard of Westernization.”
Huri İslamoğlu-İnan (ed.), The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 22–23.
Selim Deringil, “The Invention of Tradition as Public Image in the late Ottoman Empire, 1808–1908,” Comparative Studies of Society and History 35:1 (January 1993), 4.
Caesar Farah, “Censorship and Freedom of Expression in Ottoman Syria and Eqypt,” in William H. Haddad and William L. Ochsenwald (eds.), Nationalism in Non-National State: The Dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1977), 183–184. The Ottoman censors rather arbitrarily found terms or news offensive, sometimes to an absurd degree. Decisions were left to the judgment of the particular censor in a geographical region of the Empire. During Abdülhamid II’s reign the chief secretary to a province (the mektûpcî) was in charge of censoring the local press.
Ralph S. Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses: The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985), 101–102: “As was to happen later in Europe, the coffeehouse became something of a literary forum … there might be heated discussions on art, the sciences, or literature…. The coffeehouse quickly became the place of exchange of information, where news of the palace or Porte was spread by word of mouth…. One wishing to hear the latest news—or, more likely, the freshest rumors—needed only to station himself in the coffeehouse for a short time.”
Hattox, Coffee and Coffeehouses, 101–102. For a more recent study of the coffee-house as a public political space and Ottoman state efforts to monitor or control it, see Cengiz Kırlı, “The Struggle over Space: Coffeehouses of Ottoman Istanbul, 1780–1845” (New York: SUNY Binghamton unpublished dissertation, 2000). For a cultural analysis of the coffeehouse, see
Alan Mikhail, “The Heart’s Desire: Gender, Urban Space and the Ottoman Coffee House,” in Dana Sajdi (ed.), Ottoman Tulips, Ottoman Coffee: Leisure and Lifestyle in the Eighteenth Century (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 133–170.
Ahmed Emin, The Development of Modern Turkey as Measured by Its Press (New York: Columbia University, 1914), 132–133.
Mehmed Zeki, Japonya’nın Mâzisi, Hâli, İstakbâli (İstanbul: Mehmed Zeki Matbaası, 1308/1892), 2–3.
Translation from Engin Deniz Akarli, The Problems of External Pressures, Power Struggles, and Budgetary Deficits in Ottoman Politics under Abdülhamid II (1876–1909): Origins and Solutions (PhD Thesis, Princeton University, 1976), 75.
Ibid., 83–85. The principles of the Charter Oath outline (1) deliberative assemblies and state affairs decided by public opinion; (2) all classes uniting to carry out affairs of state; (3) freedom to choose any profession; (4) evil customs of the past discarded; and (5) knowledge shall be sought throughout the world. From Mikiso Hane, Modern Japan: A Historical Survey (Colorado: Westview Press, 1986), 86.
İsmet Bozdağ, Abdülhamid’in Hatıra Defteri: Belgeler ve Resimlerle (İstanbul: Kervan Yayınları, 1975, 5inci baskı), 117. Statement dated March 31, 1917.
From British expatriate Sir Charles Eliot, Turkey in Europe (London: Edward Arnold, 1908), 426: “I have heard on good authority that when the Sultan’s officers congratulated him on the defeat of his old enemy Russia, he replied that he did not by any means consider the result of the war a matter of congratulation, because he and the Czar were the only autocratic monarchs in Europe, and the defeat of the Czar meant a blow to the principle of autocracy.”
Nâmık Ekrem, Japonlar (İstanbul: Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete Matbaası, 1322/1906). In his introduction Ekrem mentioned his essay being appended to Japonya Sularında because the translated text was written in idiomatic language that was not clearly discernible. The identity of “Kont Bvvar” remains a mystery; apparently this book first came out in 1903 but I was unable to locate a copy of it.
Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt: Culture, Society and the Press (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 77. He edited the journal al-Hasna’ (1909–1912) and published articles in women’s periodicals, frequently exploring the position of the Japanese woman in society.
Ami Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East: A History (Oxford University Press, 1995), 63.
See Jesuit Father Luis de Inslam, “Port Arthur,” al-Mashriq 8:2 (January 15, 1905), 49–57;
Jesuit Father Yūsuf Khalīl, “Ahm al-Ḥawādith fī’ l-Sana al-Ghābira,” al-Mashriq 8:2 (January 15, 1905), 73–82.
See Şükrü M. Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Richard Weikart, “The Origins of Social Darwinism in Germany, 1859–1895,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54:3 (July 1993), 483.
Abdullah Cevdet, “Russie, Turquie et la paix générale,” İctihâd 1 (September 1904), 4–5.
Feroz Ahmad, “The Late Ottoman Empire,” in Marian Kent (ed.), The Great Powers and the End of the Ottoman Empire (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984), 12.
Edhem Nejât, “Japonya’da Mektepler,” Sirât-i Mustakîm 6:137 (4.1327/1911), 107.
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© 2014 Renée Worringer
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Worringer, R. (2014). Ottoman Politics and the Japanese Model. In: Ottomans Imagining Japan. Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137384607_5
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