personal memories revolutionary states and indian ocean migrations

ambitious title as “Tocqueville in the
Ottoman Empire”, might have tackled
these questions, as well as the possible
impact of Tocqueville on Ottoman
intellectuals or statesmen of the second
half of the 19th century.
Ariel Salzmann’s book is set to
become an important contribution to
the present revival in Ottoman studies.
In openly advocating the use of a
concept – the old regime – elaborated in
a different cultural sphere, Salzmann
contributes to breaking the traditional
parameters of Ottoman studies and to
broadening the horizons of post-cultural
_______________________________
Fikret Adanır and Suraiya Faroqhi
(editors)
The Ottomans and the Balkans: A
Discussion of Historiography
Leiden: Brill Press, 2002
Reviewed by Ryan Gingeras ∗
Despite the brief wave of
interest that marked the 1990s, the
Balkans has largely faded from public
discourse. The gradual disappearance of
Southeastern Europe from the pages of
the morning newspaper has had a
profound affect upon the visibility of
the region within both popular and
academic publishing. The once
numerous works related to the fall of
Yugoslavia and nationalism seen on the
shelves of bookstores across North
America and Europe appear now to
have been replaced by studies of the
Middle East and Islam. The book under
review, The Ottomans and the Balkans: A
Discussion of Historiography, was published
as this turn began to take effect. Largely
comprised of a series of papers
submitted at the Congress of German
Historians in 1993, The Ottomans and the
Balkans is a thorough and up-to-date
critique of the historiography of the
∗ Ryan Gingeras is a Ph.D. candidate in History
at the University of Toronto.
94
studies. In addition, her interpretations
of the peculiarities of the Ottoman
regime are particularly convincing. And
if questions do remain, for example
about the passage towards modernity or
about different local conditions, they are
mostly invitations to persevere in the
promotion of conceptual comparativism
between various cultural spheres, which
moves beyond a mere transfer, and of
an Ottoman comparativism, based upon
a critical intimacy with archives.
_______________________________
region, representing a strong rebuttal to
the nationalist and statist frameworks
that define the historical writings in the
region over the last two centuries. At
the core of each of the essays presented
in this work is a shared rejection of the
claim that the “Ottoman yoke” stunted
the growth and development of the
region and denied to its people their
true identity. Further than
demonstrating the inherent tensions and
contradictions within the dominant,
state-centred narratives of the region,
each author suggests new
methodological approaches in dealing
with the Ottoman Balkans.
The writing of history and its
relationship to state-building is a theme
that reoccurs throughout this volume.
As a tool for justifying or legitimizing
state policy, historical inquiry into the
Ottoman past continues to provide a
sounding board for the evolution the
empire’s successor states. The various
interpretations of Ottoman history cited
in this book trace several processes by
which state agendas necessitate the
development of national histories. In
surveying how the legacies of the early
Ottoman state were understood by
historians of the mid-nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, Christoph
Neumann and Büşra Ersanlı respectively
point to a shared belief that the early
Ottoman state’s socio-economic failures
Vol. 5, Fall 2005, © 2005 The MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies