Book | The Well-Protected Domains by Salim Deringil

Mavi Boncuk | The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909 (Series) 
by Salim Deringil[1]

ISBN-13: 978-1860643071
ISBN-10: 1860643078

Hardcover: 260 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Press (July 1, 1997)

How did the late Ottoman Empire grapple with the challenge of modernity and survive? Rejecting explanations based on the concept of an Islamic empire, or the tired paradigm of the Eastern Question, the author argues that far richer insights can be gained by focusing on imperial ideology and drawing out the striking similarities between the Ottoman and other late legitimist empires like Russia, Austria and Japan.

[1] Selim M. Deringil (born Ottawa, 19 August 1951) is a Turkish academic, and professor of history at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.

Deringil earned his doctorate from the University of East Anglia in 1979, and joined Boğaziçi University the same year. He is a notable lecturer on Late Ottoman History, Ottoman Islam and relationships between Ottomans and Europe. He has lectured in the United States, England, France, Lebanon and Israel. He has written several essays on the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the history of the Republic of Turkey. His book "The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909" was awarded the "Turkish Studies Association Fuad Köprülü" prize in 2001.

Partial bibliography

Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War : an "active" neutrality, ISBN 0-521-34466-2

“A  Tale of two colleges, Syrian Protestant College and Robert College. Convergent and Divergent Histories,” In the House of Understanding; Essays in the Honor of Kamal Salibi. AUB Press. 2017. 

Conversion and Apostasy in the Late Ottoman Empire. (Cambridge University Press 2012). Winner of MESA Fuad Koprulu Book Prize 2013.

“‘The Armenian Question is Finally Closed’. Mass Conversions of Armenians during the Hamidian Massacres of 1894-1897.” Comparative Studies in Society and History. Vol  51. (2009) 344-371.

“The Turks and Europe: Uninvited Guests or Sharers of  a Common Destiny?” Middle Eastern Studies September 2007 Vol 43 pp 709-723.

I Kala Prostatevomeni Epikratia. (Greek translation of The Well Protected Domains) translator: Stefanos Papageorgiu. Papazisi Press, Athens 2003.

“‘They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery’: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate.” Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol 43. July 2003.

The Well Protected Domains. Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909. I.B Tauris Publishers, Oxford & New York 1998 (pb. edition 2000).

The Ottomans, the Turks, and World Power Politics. Collected articles. ISIS Press Istanbul 2000.

Winner of MESA Fuad Koprulu Book Prize 1999.

Review

In the past decade, studies on the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire have taken an “archival turn.” Scholars, such as Engin Deniz Akarli, Suraiya Faroqhi, Hasan Kayali,Şevket Pamuk and Zeynep Celik, have begun reassessing the Ottoman archives in order to challenge the sweeping historical narratives of an earlier generation of scholars, like the theses about the inevitable demise of the empire or about the radical break in political culture with the emergence of the Turkish Republic. This is also the case with Selim Deringil’s The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909 (London: I.B.Tauris, 1998),which considerably revises our understanding of Sultan Abdülhamid II’s centralization program.Using recently opened government archives, Deringil sets out to understand the rationale and implementation of the sultan’s cultural politics: the sultan’s regime sought, on the one hand, to promote political loyalty to an autocratic dynasty among  Muslim subjects by propagating an Islamic understanding of modernity, and, on the other, to showcase the Ottoman state as a multi-ethnic European power. Deringil shows this by investigating how government officials documented controversial issues, such as school curricula, conversion of heterodox Muslims to state orthodoxy, proceedings of forced conversions of Christians, foreign missionary activity, and anti-Ottoman propaganda abroad. What emerges is a fascinating account of how the considerable documentation officials produced aimed to forge and implement a new symbolic language of polity and society, and, moreover, to convert both local and foreign critics to the Ottoman sultan’s cause. Clearly, documentation was an importantstrategy by which the regime legitimated its power.Deringil’s range of references—both palace archives and memoirs--is impressive. Yet his mastery of sources would have profited from a more theoretically grounded analysis of the relation between documentary practices, canons of representation and power relations, as they have been explored by historians and anthropologists in recent decades (e.g, N.Z. Davis, N. Dirks, C. Ginzburg, J.W. Scott, A. Shryock, A. Stoler, M.R. Trouillot). That is, treating archival documents as politically and socially constituted artifacts rather than as transparent texts. By taking the latter perspective, the author ends up discussing hegemonic state tradition without sufficiently addressing how competing social and political visions among state officials affected the writing of documents. More careful attention to these issues would have added another dimension to this insightful work.The Well-Protected Domains is a significant contribution to studies on late Ottoman society and polity. Moreover, the highly accessible, informative and stimulating discussion makes this book ideal for students interested in the sociology of the state, comparative religion, and modernity.Sam 

KaplanBen-Gurion University of the Negev