Late Ottoman Society: The Intellectual Legacy (Soas/Routledge Curzon Studies on the Middle East)

When the Ottomans commenced their modernizing reforms in the 1830s, they still ruled over a vast empire. In addition to today's Turkey, including Anatolia and Thrace, their power reached over Mesopotamia, North Africa, the Levant, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. The Sultanate was at the apex of a truly multi-ethnic society. Modernization not only brought market principles to the economy and more complex administrative controls as part of state power, but also new educational institutions as well as new ideologies. Thus new ideologies developed and nationalism emerged, which became a political reality when the Empire reached its end. This book compares the different intellectual atmospheres between the pre-republican and the republican periods and identifies the roots of republican authoritarianism in the intellectual heritage of the earlier period. "This volume brings together a set of essays dealing with intellectual developments in late Ottoman society. Under the impact of European expansionism and modernization the Ottoman Empire underwent profound transformations. Important features were the development of a market economy and modern political and administrative structures; the splitting up of the empire into separate nation-states; and the coming into being of a professional middle class and various groups of modern intellectuals."--BOOK JACKET