Travel, civilization and the east : Ottoman Travellers’ perception of “the east” in the late Ottoman Empire

Download

index.pdf

Date

2010

Author

Palabıyık, Mustafa Serdar

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

373
views

864
downloads

This thesis analyzes the Ottoman travellers’ perception of “the East” in the late Ottoman Empire. In doing that, it links the Ottoman intellectual debates on the concept of civilization to their perceptions on the non-European lands and peoples. It mainly argues that the Ottoman intellectuals’ attempt to create a synthesis between the material elements of Western civilization and their own morality resulted in a perception of the East different from the Western perceptions. While the Western perceptions envisage a monolithic, unchanging and static East, the Ottoman perceptions vary in accordance with the temporal and spatial setting as well as with the intellectual inclinations of the travellers. Hence, this thesis contributes to the literature by fulfilling the gap about the Ottoman perceptions of the concepts of civilization and the East, by questioning the limits of existing literature on the Ottoman perception of the East which defines it as Orientalist/colonialist, by attracting attention to the use of Ottoman travel literature in understanding the Ottoman identity and their perception of the world, and, finally, by underlining the importance of the Ottoman perceptions of civilization and the East in understanding the historical roots of the “identity question” in Turkey.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12611743/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/19455

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Contributions of the Ottoman Empire to the construction of Modern Europe Palabıyık, Mustafa Serdar; Yurdusev, Ahmet Nuri; Department of International Relations (2005) This thesis aims to analyze the contributions of the Ottoman Empire to the construction of modern Europe in the early modern period. Conventional historiography generally argues that the Ottoman Empire contributed to the emergence of the modern European identity only through acting as the ءother̕ of Europe. This thesis, however, aims to show that such an analysis is not enough to understand the Ottoman impact on the European state system. Moreover, it argues that the Ottoman Empire contributed to the constr...
Forces of liberalism and conservatism in the nineteenth century: a comparative study on the İtalian peninsula and the Ottoman Empire Bordignon, Mattia; Soykut, Mustafa; Department of Middle East Studies (2011) This thesis analyses the position of the Ottoman Empire and the Italian penin- sula and their position in the international scenario during the 19th century. This work studies the developments in the Ottoman Empire and the Italian peninsula from the beginning of the Tanzimat (in the Ottoman Empire) and the Risorgimento (in the Italian peninsula), until the Crimean War, and eval- uates the consequences of these events for the European balance of power. These developments took place at a time when Europe was ...
Continuities and changes in the minority policy of Greece: the case of western thrace Chousein, Ali; Tayfur, Mehmet Fatih; Department of International Relations (2005) This thesis analyzes the Greek minority policy of Western Thrace by dwelling on the history of the Muslim Turkish minority of Western Thrace from the beginning of 1920s until today. Until the early 1990s, changes in the Greek policy of Western Thrace had not been observed. However, the year 1991 marks a turning point both in the attitude of Greece towards the Muslim Turkish minority and in the history of the Western Thracian minority. As a result of the change in the Greek minority policy of Western Thrace ...
Premises and assumptions of the Ottoman State tradition paradigma : a critical evaluation of Metin Heper's contribution Kaya, Safiye Yelda; Yalman, Osman Galip; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2005) In this thesis, Metin Heper̕s analysis of the Ottoman state and state-society relations is examined. Heper̕s analysis is evaluated as an exemplar of the Ottoman state tradition paradigm. The examination of Heper̕s studies is intended to shed light on the premises and assumptions of this paradigm. In particular, the study focuses on the way Heper characterizes Ottoman state-society relations in contradistinction to the prevalent pattern of state-society relations in Western social formations so as to demonst...
Multi-functional buildings of the T-type in Ottoman context : network of identity and territorialization Oğuz, Zeynep; Altan, Tomris Elvan; Department of History of Architecture (2006) This thesis focuses on the Ottoman buildings with a T-shaped plan and their meanings with respect to the central and centrifugal tendencies in the Ottoman context in the fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The emergence of the multi-functional buildings of the T-type in the Ottoman realm is simultaneous with the burgeoning of a state in the early Ottoman frontier milieu, which is profoundly intermingled with the notion of gaza; whereas the demise of the use of the T-plan is coincident with ...

Citation Formats

M. S. Palabıyık, “Travel, civilization and the east : Ottoman Travellers’ perception of “the east” in the late Ottoman Empire,” Ph.D. - Doctoral Program, Middle East Technical University, 2010.