THE END OF EMPIRES / Yücel Terzibaşoğlu – May 23, Friday

Empires as the dominant (and long-lasting) state form over the known history of the humankind (compared with city states and nation-states)

Empire is characterised by a flexible form of rule because:

- it establishes indirect methods of rule through distinct contracts with each region in the empire

- it exercises power through intermediaries who enjoy autonomy within their domains in return for compliance and delivery of tribute

This flexibility makes it adoptable to different social structures

Imperial expansion could be very rapid

But also disintegration could be very quick because:

- dominated regions are weakly integrated

- regional power holders have the power to defect

- subjugated populations keep distinct identities, memories and grievances

Some consequences of the collapse of old empires (Ottomans, Habsburgs and Romanovs) at the beginning of the 20th century:

1) the disruption of the basic state structure by dividing a single non-national multi-ethnic entity into a number of notionally ‘national’ but in fact equally multi-ethnic states

2) the attempt to turn these plural entities into homogeneous nation-states had high human costs

Middle East after the First World War

Establishment of different territorial states in the former Ottoman provinces under colonial rule (mandate regimes).

Syria and Lebanon (France)

Iraq, Palestine and Trans-Jordan (Britain)

Mandate: Rule under the new principles of the League of Nations (with eventual self determination)

Balfour Declaration of 1917: establishment of a Jewish national home in the region

Uprisings in the 1920s and 1930s (in Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt)

Colonial policy in the region

Establishment of central administrations (bureaucracy, army, new borders, laws)

Alliance with large landowners (e.g. creation of large landowners from tribal leaders in Iraq)

The impact of white settler communities (French in Algeria, European Jews in Palestine)

GREAT WAR, RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, INDIAN NATIONALISM / Meltem Toksöz; May 12 - 14 - 16

World War I, 1914-1918

Nationalism and imperial rivalry at the hearth of the war

A TOTAL WAR: WHY?

28 Allies (ALLIES) against Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria (CENTRAL POWERS)

Beyond armies and borders: Central powers mobilized 21 million, the Allies eventually called 40 million men

Industrial nature of conflict, mobilizing arms & destroying national economies

Consequences

Demise of 4 empires, Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Germany

9 new nations, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland

Ending British hegemony, primacy of Europe

UNLEASHING

Indian nationalism, from the 1920s

Turkish independence war, 1919

Bolshevik revolution, 1917

CRISIS

1908, Bosnia-Herzegovina annexed by Austria-Hungary

1911, Italy overtakes today’s Libya

1912-1913 Balkan Wars

Imperial rivalry between Germany and the British Empire, by the 1910s with almost equal industrial output

Nationalism and ethnic, economic, colonial ambitions

1871-1914 escalation of rivalry

Europe with powerful nations: Belgium in 1830, Italy in 1861, Germany in 1871

Still a hotbed of nationalism in Eastern Europe and the Balkans -- the Ottoman empire’s Christians, Austria-Hungary’s Slavic peoples

Germany backing both Ottoman and Austria-Hungarian empires

Green, Central powers & German Colonies,
Purple, Allied and colonies, yellow neutral

The Fronts of the War

WESTERN FRONT : Along a line between northern France and the English channel

EASTERN (Russian) Front, later including Poland

The DARDANELLES

IMPERIAL RIVALRY IN ASIA, Japan versus China

The Last 2 Years

Stalemate by the end of 1916

Italy entering war as an Allied Force

In 1917 Germany decides on submarine war

April 1917 the US enters the war

Germany driven out of France in October 1918

January 1918 , Wilson’s 14 Points

The Russian Revolution / Meltem Toksöz – May 14, Wednesday

1917 Bolshevik Revolution

1905 Revolution

1917 October Revolution

19th century Russia

Dynastic monarchy under the Romanovs

19th c capitalism developing under the monarchy with the support of a landed aristocracy

Multiethnic, multiconfessional, multilingual empire

1861 emancipation of serfs

1860 railroads & coal, iron & steel industries

1870s repression of peasants -intelligentsia

1876 Land & Freedom Party assasinating the reformer despot Tsar Alexander II

1905

Imperial rivalry with Japan over Korea and Manchuria, 1904-1905 Russo-Japanese War

Bloody Sunday Massacre: workers marching to the palace in Petrograd

Unrest: workers

Insurrections: peasants

Demonstrations: students

Mutinies: army and navy

New urban councils: SOVIET and DUMA

Early 1917

Protest across society, strikes, mutinies, demonstrations in St. Petersburg(Petrograd-Leningrad)

February: Protesters march to the palace, TSAR abdicated-- unplanned and incomplete Revolution ending Romanovs

Provisional government and the Petrograd Soviet of Workers & Soldiers

Between February and October struggle of the government & the SOVIET

Late 1917

Government refuses what the people most want: ending the war

Promised land reform is also refused, further dissatisfying the peasantry

Lenin: proletariat revolution but under strict discipline and organization

Lenin and Bolsheviks overpowers Russian social Democrat Party

Bolsheviks organize all Soviets: ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS - PEACE LAND BREAD

October 24th, armed insurrection under Trotsky: 10 DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

OCTOBER REVOLUTION

The Bolshevik Party declares 2 decrees, on peace and on land

Brest-litovsk 1918

“Dictatorship of the Proletariat”

No immediate victory - opposition to Bolsheviks

Civil war, 1918-1920 between Red Army and the Whites

Lenin and his demise

1921, end of civil war with 10 million dead and a devastated economy after 7 years of war

NEW ECONOMIC POLICY of Lenin: Market economy and small private business

Bolsheviks continue to argue for a complete revolution, Lenin dies 1924

1928 Stalin triumphs in the party

Indian Nationalism / Meltem Toksöz – May 16, Friday

Mobilizing self-government, Hindus and Muslims

1906 All India Muslim League, joining forces with the National Congress

1905-1911 division and reunion of Bengal

1909 reforms: Indian member in viceroy’s council & Indian provincial representatives

1915 WWI India also at war with Germany

Protests all over India: Rowlatt Acts

1919 Amritsar Massacre

SWARAJ
Gandhi’s Satyagraha

Swaraj : Complete freedom, Tilak only spread after Amritsar Massacre

Satyagraha : Non-cooperation movement based on non-violence (ahimsa), 1920-22

Civil Disobedience Movement Quit India Movement 1930

Salt March & homespun cotton: economic self-sufficiency

1931 Gandhi & British agreement

1937 The India Act: a political compromise

Institutions of self-government: a two chambered legislative body but cabinet under British control

600 princes refused, Muslims feared

Muslim League

Jinnah, a Congress leader

1934 Jinnah leads the Muslim League, declaring that the Congress does not represent Muslims

The idea of Pakistan : land of the pure in Urdu

World War II 1939-1945

India again at war against Germany, promised independence after the war

1946 negotiations to end the war: the Muslim League : A Day of Action

Britain agrees to independence if Indians find a solution

1947 partition of Pakistan and India

REFORM AND REVOLUTION IN EAST ASIA / Selçuk Esenbel

Meiji Modernity and Asian Empire

Asian Revolutions


Meiji Japan as an example of how to modernize as a modern empire (not a nation state) with a nation state core and colonial possessions as the really common experience of 19th century and even twentieth century major power players of the West as well as Japan. Point is that it is a distortion to think modern capitalism/industry/modernist social educational revolutions are based on the nation state frame alone.

Japanese Industrial Revolution 1868-1920 first phase is the model that Asian countries are following to this day. i. e. state/government business collaboration, corporate structures of production, cheap labor, export consumer industries for world markets. Japan did in the 20s and 30s what China is doing now with 60s technology of Japanese firms transplanted to China. Korea and Singapore are using 70s and 80s electronic industries of Japan.

Late Modernizers

Japan, China, India

Weak state model for modernization and revolution
China example
Decentralized regional modern reforms by
local power elites: bureaucrats, warlords,
generals
Political Disunity 1912-1949
Nationalist Republic of China, Chinese Communist Party
Soviets, Warlords

Conclusion: Even if there is political disunity social and economic processes continue as
the background of the Peoples Republic of China and today's China

Colonial Model

India

India's entry to capitalistic economic production/integration to European type modern state structures of centralized administration, education, etc. result partly of the British colonial experience. Hence, while colonialism is politically an unequal experience as native elites are subject to the authority of an alien elite, from a social and economic perspective modernism's entry starts via the filtering "distortions" of colonialism.

Objection

We are going to have the second and last objection meeting on Friday (16 May 2008) in TB 507, between 14:30 and 17:00. We will be happy if those who already had the opportunity to see their exams do not come, because of the time restriction.

Film

There will be a film projection this Friday (May 16, 2008) at 17:00 in GKM. The movie, "All Quiet on the Western Front" (dir. Lewis Milestone, 1930), is based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque with the same title. It is considered a landmark film in the history of cinema, and one of the most powerful statements about World War I.

Midterm exams

The midterm exams are going to be available on May 7th, Wednesday (tomorrow) in TB 507. Students may come and see their exam papers.

STATES AND NATIONS / Selim Deringil; April 18 - May 5

Official Nationalism: “An anticipatory strategy adopted by dominant groups who are threatened with marginalization or exclusion from an emerging nationally imagined community”.

----Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities p 95.

Paradoxes of Nationalism:

1/ Objective modernity vs. Subjective antiquity.

2/ Claimed universality of nationalism.

3/ Political power of nationalism vs. philosophical/theoretical poverty.

4/ The “nation” as a cultural construct.

5/ Actually linked to the rise of capitalism.

Invented Tradition:

“ ‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms or behaviour by repetition which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past.”

Eric Hobsbawm, “Inventing Traditions” p 1.

The Ottoman Empire as a part of World Developments.

The Tanzimat Edict of 1839.

1/ The result of foreign pressure or domestic forces?

i)The idea of “equality for all subjects of the empire”

ii) Quarantee of Life, Honour and Property.

iii) Just taxation

iv) Defined period of military service.

2/ The idea of the “rule of law”. Şeriat meaning both religious and secular law.

The Reform Edict of 1856.

1/ Much more openly foreign intervention. Immediately after the Treaty of Paris of 1856. Price paid for the inclusion of the Ottoman Empire in the “European Concert of Nations”. Deals almost exclusively with rights and privileges of non-Muslims. Foreign pressure: good or bad?

The issue of “equality” in the world at the time of the declaration of the Tanzimat Edict of 1839.

1/ In Britain Roman Catholics could not be elected to Parliament untill 1829.

2/ Russia still had serfdom. Serfdom abolished in Russia in 1861.

3/ The United States fought a civil war over the issue of slavery in the 1860’s.

The World of Revolutions. What Lenin called “the combustible material of world politics”.

1/ The Russian Revolution of 1905.

2/ Young Turk Revolution of 1908.

3/ Iranian Revolution 1906

4/Chinese Revolution 1911.

5/ Mexican Revolution under Emiliano Zapata (1879-1919)

P0litical Transformations in Russia in the 18th and 19th Centuries

Suggested reading: Cynthia Hyla Whittaker, “The Idea of Autocracy among Eighteenth Century Russian Historians”.


1/ Russians were always obsessed with “catching up with the West” or “being equal with the West”. This became particularly evident after the Enlightenment. Wanted to see Russian autocrat as an equivalent of other European monarchs. This created a movement among the educated elite toward greater participation in politics and an appraisal of the character of Russian autocracy as a legitimate form of government.

2/ Russian historians were all amateurs. Catherine II (1729-1796) herself published “Notes Concerning Russian History”. Russian historians adopted the Western model of writing history as centred on the ruler. They intended to prove that Russia after Peter the Great was in the process of “Europeanization” and had adopted the Enlightened principles of progress and secular causation. Peter the Great (1682-1725) was held up as the model of an elightened ruler. The rulers of Russia also gave these historians a duty to “do battle” with Western historians who tried to show Russia a primitive or barbarous.

3/ The dominant figure in the century was Voltaire (1694-1778). Voltaire claimed that it was “the great actions of kings that have changed the face of the earth”. Russia was obsessed by Voltaire. When, in 1756, his Essai sur les Moeurs et l ’Esprit des Nations (Essay on the Morals and Spirit of Nations) went on sale in St-Petersburg , it sold 3,000 copies on the first day.

4/ The secular role of the Tsar as the primary figure in raising the cultural level of the people was to take precedence over his religious role as the defender of Orthodoxy. The ideal Tsar became the reforming Tsar. Thus all Russian history came to be written in a retrospective perspective according to the Enlightenment principles of reform and progress.

5/ Various interpretations of legitimate autocracy . The focus of the debate was “whether autocracy, despite the risk of despotism, might still be preferable in Russia to aristocracy or democracy, with their threat of becoming oligarchic or anarchic. ” ( p36)


6/ The Dynastic Interpretation of Russian autocracy.
Peter’s reign as the “culmination of Russian history” (p 37). “Dynastic historians presented the Russian educated pulic an autocracy the equal of any ruling house of Europe, an important desideratum when the country was just entering the Western family of nations”.

7/ The Empirical Model
The historians who defended the Empirical model , “concluded like most European thinkers, that democracies are appropriate only in small states, aristocracies only where there are an educated population ...and limited monarchy of the British variety...where people are both enlightened and well acquainted with notions of individualism. None of these characteristics applied to Russia. Without such conditions a state headed by a strong ruler who would wield unlimited powers and work through a bureaucracy to effect the common good”. (p 40).
The source of autocratic power was the idea that the monarch was like father . This was very similar to the Ottoman formulation of the sultan as “peder-i müşfik” or “affectionate father”.

8/ The Nondespotic Interpretation.
The focus shifted in the 1770’s from the benefits of unlimited power to the danger of its becoming despotic and the danger of power wielded in an unjust, cruel or arbitrary manner. The Ottoman equivalent would be “istibdat” as was used by the opponents of Abdülhamid II (1876-1909).

9/ Love-hate relationship between Russia and Europe.
From the 18th century onwards the Russian intelligentsia (a Russian word) tried to prove that it was “European”. At first the achievements of Peter the Great and later Catherine II seemed to show that Russia had taken its place in the Western family of nations.

10/ The Shock of Napoleon.
After the French Revolution had illustrated that the Enlightenment had turned fundamentally against autocracy this came as shock to Russia. Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, was to create another shock. But Russia was on the winning side and Russian troops marched into Paris in 1814. It seemed that Russia had actually rescued the West from despotism.

11/ The Revolution of December 1825.
In December 1825 a group of young military officers inspired by the ideas of radicalism of the French Revolution, tried to stage a revolution in St Petersburg. The attempt was a fiasco.
The TsarNicholas I was extremely harsh with these youg aristocrats, hanging some and sending others into exile in Siberia. Russia seemed once again to have become a despotism.

12/ The Crimean War 1854-1856.
The defeat of Russia by the alliance of the Ottoman Empire, Britain and France. Once again Russia seemed to be thrown out of the European family of nations. The love hate relationship with Europe continued.

13/ Slavophiles and Westerners.
Russia had two capitals. St Petersbug and Moscow. Two cities symbolizing two different worlds. St Petersburg Russia’s window on the West. Moscow, mystic Orthodox Russia.
Slavophiles rejected the West and beleived that Russia was superior. One of the most famous slovophiles was Dosteyevski. Another major figure who beleived in the basic goodness of the Russian peasant was Tolstoy.

14/ The Attraction of the West vs. the “Russian Soul”.
The way in which the Russian intelligentsia overcame its feeling of inferiority towards Europe was to argue that the West had technological progress etc. But that it was materialistic and shallow whereas Russia was great because it had the “Russian Soul”. Nobody was very clear about just what this was.

Make-up Results

(over 40)
Karen Deleon: 22.5
Deniz Inhanli: 14.5
Ersin Maden: 22
Seyda Ozsoy: 13.75
Ahu Saha: 23
Taha Sirin: 9
Ceren Ulku: 24.5
Sebnem Yapareller: 20.25