Morality, Emotions, and Political Community in the Late Ottoman Empire (1878-1908)

Abstract

The last decades of the 19th century saw a global preoccupation with notions of morality and proper conduct. The Ottoman Empire was no exception. Taking the imperial center and the city of Istanbul as its geographical focus, the dissertation investigates Ottoman-Turkish moral debates and highlights the diverse ways by which local actors adapted, transformed, and drew upon global intellectual and material resources, such as Benjamin Franklin’s ideas of frugality or Singer personal sewing machines. The thesis examines three main areas of moral concern to Ottoman writers and politicians: (1) “Civilized” behavior and manners on an individual and societal level in the context of imperialism; (2) presumably needed new economic ethics for an empire ever more integrated into an industrialized and globalized economy; and (3) the preoccupation with public order in a rapidly growing urban space. Drawing on sources from morality books and etiquette literature to schoolbooks, economic manuals, popular novels, and newspaper articles, morality (ahlak) emerges as a crucial concept for late Ottoman intellectuals in envisioning a bounded and strongly hierarchical, albeit always contested political community. Moving beyond binaries such as secularism/religion or tradition/modernity, the dissertation argues that layering local trajectories with globally circulating resources gave moral writings persuasion and resonance. Individual and social emotions also figured prominently as motivational factors and rewards for acting morally, challenging ideas of an increasing emotional restraint caused by the modern “civilizing process”. Furthermore, the thesis proposes that formulations of a stratified political community structured by morality could potentially integrate different classes and ethno-religious communities into the larger Ottoman community. While recognizing that morals in discourse and practice were always contested and differed substantially by space and framework, the dissertation suggests that the violent break-up of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century was not a necessary telos based on immutable ethno-religious loyalties or ideological affiliations. Instead, it points towards the process’s fundamentally political and globally embedded nature and argues for returning agency to the period’s actors.