A Global history of Hungary: concept, implementation, reflection
FERENC LACZÓ - ANDRÁS VADAS - BÁLINT VARGA
In this article, editors of A Global History of Hungary – two recently published volumes in the Hungarian language that contain 203 brief chapters by 159 contributing authors on a total of 1 048 pages – introduce their concept of consistently applying transnational methods to reinterpret a country’s history on the long term and discuss their key ambition to embed Hungarian history in global frames for the first time. The article then discusses the specific manner this overarching concept has been implemented, including the main research questions posed and the types of chapters both volumes contain. The three editors also reflect on how they have drawn on and adapted a new west European “model” of history writing, the challenges this has posed and the opportunities it offers for the history writing of the semi-peripheral parts of Europe. Last but not least, the article addresses more theoretical questions raised by the current wave in historiography to globally contextualize the histories of individual countries - a wave to which A Global History of Hungary clearly belongs.
Keywords: transnational and global history globalization and deglobalization European historiography nationalism and national historiographies Hungarian history Ottoman history
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A historical overview of the Köroğlu epic: Banditry and nostalgia between Iran and Anatolia
ALİ AYDIN KARAMUSTAFA
This article analyses the Köroğlu epic from a historical perspective. It offers an overview of the tradition, demonstrating that the Caucasus version of the epic is the richest and most suited for historical study. The nostalgia for an ideal imagined past channeled through the figure of the bandit places allows us to place the story in the seventeenth century context. Köroğlu represented a new type of warrior hero with a distinctly anti-state attitude who departed from the previously dominant “gazi” warrior model found in the traditions of the region. The story of this new figure, imbued with a strong tribal identity, reflected the crises faced by the Ottoman and Safavid states beginning in the late sixteenth century.
Keywords: Köroğlu, Caucasus, banditry, nostalgia, warrior-hero, epic
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The Intellectual origins of early socialism and radical republicanism in the Ottoman Empire
BANU TURNAOĞLU
This article aims to integrate early Ottoman socialist ideas into the global map of socialist thought of the nineteenth century. The first part of the article will analyse the socialist and republican language of the radical branch of the Young Ottomans by examining the writings of Mehmed, Reşad and Nuri Beys. The second part reconstructs the Ottoman debates between the opponents and defenders of the Paris Commune and the First International on the meanings, effects and possible threats of socialism and communism and examines what the Ottoman press and radicals understand by socialism and what the Commune and socialism meant to them. This article will show that, contrary to the conventional historiography, socialism did not emerge belatedly in the Ottoman Empire. The Revolutions of 1848 and, more importantly, the Paris Commune of 1871 were significant turning points in Ottoman leftist discourse. This early development of Ottoman socialist perspectives demonstrates that the Ottoman authors were fully aware of global intellectual trends rather than being passive observers. Reexamining the social and political thought of the neglected radical wing of the Young Ottoman movement will encourage
us to better understand how Ottoman intellectuals interpreted the society and international order in which they lived and to rethink alternative meanings or interpretations of republicanism.
Keywords: Socialism, Young Ottomans, the Paris Commune, radicalism, republicanism
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The Turk as “other” during the Asia Minor campaign:
the view of the press
NİKOS CHRİSTOFİS
The prevailing perception among Greeks today views Turkey and the Turks as their significant “others”. The prevalence of such a perception can be detected largely in the Greek national narrative which was built through the years based on the argument of eternal Turkish expansionism against Hellenism. This well-structured, “demonised” image of the “other” requires the simultaneous production of a “traumatic sense of victimisation” which establishes, justifies and reproduces the given image of the “other”. Against this background, the present article focuses on the Greek-Turkish War of 1919-1922 and will try to show how the Turk was presented in the Athenian Press, both Venizelist and royalist. In particular, the article utilises the newspapers Estia (Hearth) and Kathimerini (Daily), a Venizelist and a royalist, respectively, and it will show that although the newspapers belonged to two opposing ideological camps, they aligned in how they presented Turkey and the Turk, in the public opinion.
Keywords: Asia Minor Campaign, otherization, Greek press, Stereotypes
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The ideological outlook of the national resistance movement in the Ottoman Empire after the First World War
ERIK J. ZÜRCHER
The nationalist resistance movement in Anatolia between 1918-22, which was organized primarily by the members of the Committee of Union and Progress who held the power in their hands between 1913-18, was framed within the realities of the Ottoman Empire during the first phase of the resistance. The nationalist resistance fought to preserve the empire, whilst clearly framing itself as a struggle for national emancipation. It is possible to talk about four distinct points of emphasis in this resistance movement, the impacts of which varied over time: the legacy of the empire, Muslim nationalism, the Wilsonian self-determination, and anti-imperialism. Consequently, the resulting outcome was an ideologically hybrid movement. Although the main axis of the resistance movement always remained a strong combination of the legacy of the empire, Muslim nationalism and the Wilsonian program, the movement’s certain interpretations of anti-imperialism including influences from Bolshevism and radical socialism with Islamists references found limited appeal as a movement emphasizing emancipation of the colonized and exploited peoples. There was no contradiction with regards to this hybrid nature of the movement in the minds of those who led the resistance since what they aimed to keep alive was not the Ottoman Empire as such but a nation-state of the Ottoman Muslims.
Keywords: Legacy of the Empire, Muslim Nationalism, Self-determination, Nation-state
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“Our ministry is full of joy”: Loyalty, expertise and competition in the social formation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
MÜZEYYEN EZEL ÜNAL
This study deals with the social formation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara. It aims to discuss the continuities and ruptures in the process of transition from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Ottoman Empire to the republican Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the lenses of loyalty, expertise, and competition in the early years of the republic. It attempts to discuss the practices of re-employment, the reasons for this preference, the practices of inclusion and exclusion and how these practices were constructed in the formation of the institution. In doing so, it joins to the new diplomatic studies literature, which sees diplomacy as a social practice and diplomatic institutions as social constructions. The memories, observations and letters of diplomats are amongst the main sources of this study.
Keywords: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, diplomacy, diplomats, loyalty, expertise
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“You always get beaten, this time you should hit back”:
Examining the Karabük-Zonguldak rivalry in the 1950s through
the lens of football
GÖKER GİRESUNLU - CAN NACAR
Two state-run industrial enterprises, the Ereğli Coal Company and the Karabük Iron and Steel Works, which were founded in the 1930s transformed Zonguldak and Karabük profoundly. While both enterprises had football teams, Kömürspor and Demir Çelik Gençlik, competing in the local amateur league since the early 1940s, the introduction of the multi-party system and the end of the Republican People’s Party’s rule had transformed the sociopolitical context in which these clubs operated. Democrat Party’s liberal policies led to the rise of a group of capitalist entrepreneurs in Karabük in the 1950s. These entrepreneurs, who were influential in local politics, sought a leading role in the town’s socioeconomic growth. To secure greater access to centrally distributed resources, they engaged in propaganda and lobbying efforts to make Karabük, which was then a district of Zonguldak, a province. This study shows that, as part of these efforts, they utilized the increasingly popular game of football. During the latter half of the 1950s, the local press, which was mostly under their control, used the mounting rivalry between Kömürspor and Demir Çelik Gençlik to emphasize, on the one hand, the progress Karabük had made recently, and, on the other, the provincial administration’s unfair treatment of it.
Keywords: 1950s, Football, Local Rivalry, Zonguldak, Karabük
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New resources on the Istanbul labor movement: An anarcho syndicalist in the Ottoman capital: Zacharias Vezestenis
STEFO BENLİSOY
Studies on Ottoman labor history and on the beginnings of socialist movement in the Empire have long been based on nation-centric approaches treating the Ottoman labor and socialist movement as the prehistory of distinct national labor and socialist histories. This approach led to the neglect of la bor movements or organizations and labor militants that does not fit into this homogenizing picture. Also, the radical demographic transformation of what would become the Republic of Turkey during the catastrophic decade of 1912- 1922 eradicated almost totally the poly-ethnic and multreligious working classes of the late Ottoman capital. The present article aims to problematize this neglect and even silence in the respective national historiographies and provide a much broader picture of the late Ottoman labor and socialist movement by concentrating on a pioneering figure of the Istanbul labor movement. The article will scrutinize the political ideas of Zacharias Vezestenis, the secretary of the Union of Syndicates of Istanbul through his articles published in the French revolutionary syndicalist press during the Balkan Wars. Vezestenis’ articles also shade light to the situation of the Istanbul’s labor classes and labor movement during the turbulent times of the Balkan Wars.
Keywords: Ottoman socialism, labor history, Balkan wars, Vezestenis, Union of Syndicates of Constantinople, antimilarism, revolutionary syndicalism
