The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

The Rise of the Western Armenian Diaspora in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire
Author: Henry R. Shapiro
Publisher: Non-Muslim Contributions to Islamic Civilisation
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-11
Genre: Armenians
ISBN: 9781474479615

How mass migration and a refugee crisis transformed Armenian culture in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire At the turn of the 17th century, the historical Armenian population centres in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus were ravaged by war with Persia, rebellion, famine and economic collapse. This instability caused mass migrations towards secure territories in Western Anatolia, Istanbul and Thrace, migrations which catalysed a renaissance of Armenian literary and cultural life in the Ottoman capital. This book traces the emergence, experiences and cultural and literary production of Armenian communities in and around Istanbul and the western provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the early modern period. Using both Ottoman Turkish and little-known Armenian sources, Henry Shapiro provides a systematic study of the Armenian population movements that resulted in the cosmopolitan remaking of Istanbul - and the birth of the Western Armenian diaspora. Key Features  The first English-language book on Armenian cultural history in the early modern Ottoman Empire  Based on original research using Armenian manuscripts and Ottoman Turkish archives  Includes 3 black-and-white maps and 20 photographs of Armenian ruins, historical sites and manuscript pages Henry R. Shapiro is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Polansky Academy for Advanced Study at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute.

Early Modernity and Mobility

Early Modernity and Mobility
Author: Sebouh David Aslanian
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 582
Release: 2023-06-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0300271212

A history of the continent-spanning Armenian print tradition in the early modern period Early Modernity and Mobility explores the disparate yet connected histories of Armenian printing establishments in early modern Europe and Asia. From 1512, when the first Armenian printed codex appeared in Venice, to the end of the early modern period in 1800, Armenian presses operated in nineteen locations across the Armenian diaspora. Linking far-flung locations in Amsterdam, Livorno, Marseille, Saint Petersburg, and Astrakhan to New Julfa, Madras, and Calcutta, Armenian presses published a thousand editions with more than half a million printed volumes in Armenian script. Drawing on extensive archival research, Sebouh David Aslanian explores why certain books were published at certain times, how books were sold across the diaspora, who read them, and how the printed word helped fashion a new collective identity for early modern Armenians. In examining the Armenian print tradition Aslanian tells a larger story about the making of the diaspora itself. Arguing that “confessionalism” and the hardening of boundaries between the Armenian and Roman churches was the “driving engine” of Armenian book history, Aslanian makes a revisionist contribution to the early modern origins of Armenian nationalism.

The Order and Disorder of Communication

The Order and Disorder of Communication
Author: Nir Shafir
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 572
Release: 2024-10-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1503639576

The seventeenth-century Ottoman Empire was rife with polemical debate, around worshipping at saints' graves, medical procedures, smoking tobacco, and other everyday practices. Fueling these debates was a new form of writing—the pamphlet, a cheap, short, and mobile text that provided readers with simplified legal arguments. These pamphlets were more than simply a novel way to disseminate texts, they made a consequential shift in the way Ottoman subjects communicated. This book offers the first comprehensive look at a new communication order that flourished in seventeenth-century manuscript culture. Through the example of the pamphlet, Nir Shafir investigates the political and cultural institutions used to navigate, regulate, and encourage the circulation of information in a society in which all books were copied by hand. He sketches an ecology of books, examining how books were produced, the movement of texts regulated, education administered, reading conducted, and publics cultivated. Pamphlets invited both the well and poorly educated to participate in public debates, thus expanding the Ottoman body politic. They also spurred an epidemic of fake authors and popular forms of reading. Thus, pamphlets became both the forum and the fuel for the polarization of Ottoman society. Based on years of research in Islamic manuscript libraries worldwide, this book illuminates a vibrant and evolving premodern manuscript culture.

From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean

From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean
Author: Sebouh David Aslanian
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2011
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0520282175

Drawing on a rich trove of documents, including correspondence not seen for 300 years, this study explores the emergence and growth of a remarkable global trade network operated by Armenian silk merchants from a small outpost in the Persian Empire. Based in New Julfa, Isfahan, in what is now Iran, these merchants operated a network of commercial settlements that stretched from London and Amsterdam to Manila and Acapulco. The New Julfan Armenians were the only Eurasian community that was able to operate simultaneously and successfully in all the major empires of the early modern world—both land-based Asian empires and the emerging sea-borne empires—astonishingly without the benefits of an imperial network and state that accompanied and facilitated European mercantile expansion during the same period. This book brings to light for the first time the trans-imperial cosmopolitan world of the New Julfans. Among other topics, it explores the effects of long distance trade on the organization of community life, the ethos of trust and cooperation that existed among merchants, and the importance of information networks and communication in the operation of early modern mercantile communities.

Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks

Sultanic Saviors and Tolerant Turks
Author: Marc David Baer
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253045428

An examination of why Jews promote a positive image of Ottomans and Turks while denying the Armenian genocide and the existence of antisemitism in Turkey. Based on historical narrative, the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 were embraced by the Ottoman Empire and then, later, protected from the Nazis during WWII. If we believe that Turks and Jews have lived in harmony for so long, then how can we believe that the Turks could have committed genocide against the Armenians? Marc David Baer confronts these convictions and circumstances to reflect on what moral responsibility the descendants of the victims of one genocide have to the descendants of victims of another. Baer delves into the history of Muslim-Jewish relations in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey to find the origin of these myths. He aims to foster reconciliation between Jews, Muslims, and Christians, not only to face inconvenient historical facts but to confront, accept, and deal with them. By looking at the complexities of interreligious relations, Holocaust denial, genocide and ethnic cleansing, and confronting some long-standing historical stereotypes, Baer aims to tell a new history that goes against Turkish antisemitism and admits to the Armenian genocide. “[Baer] demonstrates not only his erudition and knowledge of the sources but his courage on confronting a major myth of Ottoman history and current Turkish politics: the tolerance and defense of Jews by the Ottoman and Turkish state.” —Ronald Grigor Suny, editor of A Question of Genocide “A very significant study regarding the origins of violence and its denial in Turkey through the empirical study of not only antisemitism, but also its connection to genocide denial.” —Fatma Müge Göçek, author of The Transformation of Turkey

The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power

The Armenian Diaspora and Stateless Power
Author: Talar Chahinian
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2023-11-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 0755648234

From genocide, forced displacement, and emigration, to the gradual establishment of sedentary and rooted global communities, how has the Armenian diaspora formed and maintained a sense of collective identity? This book explores the richness and magnitude of the Armenian experience through the 20th century to examine how Armenian diaspora elites and their institutions emerged in the post-genocide period and used “stateless power” to compose forms of social discipline. Historians, cultural theorists, literary critics, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists explore how national and transnational institutions were built in far-flung sites from Istanbul, Aleppo, Beirut and Jerusalem to Paris, Los Angeles, and the American mid-west. Exploring literary and cultural production as well as the role of religious institutions, the book probes the history and experience of the Armenian diaspora through the long 20th century, from the role of the fin-de-siècle émigré Armenian press to the experience of Syrian-Armenian asylum seekers in the 21st century. It shows that a diaspora's statelessness can not only be evidence of its power, but also how this “stateless power” acts as an alternative and complement to the nation-state.

The Representation of External Threats

The Representation of External Threats
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 482
Release: 2019-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004392424

In The Representation of External Threats, Eberhard Crailsheim and María Dolores Elizalde present a collection of articles that trace the phenomenon of external threats in a multitude of settings across Asia, America, and Europe. The scope ranges from military threats against the Byzantine rulers of the 7th century to the perception of cultural and economic threats in the late 19th century Atlantic, and includes conceptual threats to the construction of national histories. Focussing on the different ways in which such threats were socially constructed, the articles offer a variety of perspectives and interdisciplinary methods to understand the development and representations of external threats, concentrating on the effect of 'threat communication' for societies and political actors. Contributors are Anna Abalian, Vladimir Belous, Eberhard Crailsheim, María Dolores Elizalde, Rodrigo Escribano Roca, Simon C. Kemper, Irena Kozmanová, David Manzano Cosano, Federico Niglia, Derek Kane O’Leary, Alexandr Osipian, Pedro Ponte e Sousa, Theresia Raum, Jean-Noël Sanchez, Marie Schreier, Stephan Steiner, Srikanth Thaliyakkattil, Ionut Untea and Qiong Yu.

A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire

A Brief History of the Late Ottoman Empire
Author: M. Şükrü Hanioğlu
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2010-03-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0691146179

At the turn of the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire straddled three continents and encompassed extraordinary ethnic and cultural diversity among the millions of people living within its borders. This text provides a concise history of the late empire between 1789 and 1918, turbulent years marked by incredible social change.

The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education

The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education
Author: Olga E. Kagan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 508
Release: 2017-03-03
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1317541537

The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education provides the rapidly growing and globalizing field of heritage language (HL) education with a cohesive overview of HL programs and practices relating to language maintenance and development, setting the stage for future work in the field. Driving this effort is the belief that if research and pedagogical advances in the HL field are to have the greatest impact, HL programs need to become firmly rooted in educational systems. Against a background of cultural and linguistic diversity that characterizes the twenty-first century, the volume outlines key issues in the design and implementation of HL programs across a range of educational sectors, institutional settings, sociolinguistic conditions, and geographical locations, specifically: North and Latin America, Europe, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and Cambodia. All levels of schooling are included as the teaching of the following languages are discussed: Albanian, Arabic, Armenian (Eastern and Western), Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, Czech, French, Hindi-Urdu, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Pasifika languages, Persian, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Vietnamese, and Yiddish. These discussions contribute to the development and establishment of HL instructional paradigms through the experiences of “actors on the ground” as they respond to local conditions, instantiate current research and pedagogical findings, and seek solutions that are workable from an organizational standpoint. The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education is an ideal resource for researchers and graduate students interested in heritage language education at home or abroad.