The Everyday and the (Extra-)Ordinary in (Post-)Ottoman Worlds, 1870s-1930s

Historians working on different historical periods and landscapes have identified changes in everyday life through various processes—industrialisation, urbanisation, the evolution of consumption, political reform, and revolution, among others. While some scholars have worked with global narratives based on socio-economic structures, others have focused on specific parts of the world to highlight more particular combinations of factors that shaped the lives of “ordinary” individuals. This paper focuses on the end(s) of the Ottoman Empire and efforts to construct new beginnings in former Ottoman territories as its primary terrain for identifying and examining historical change in the daily lives of a wide range of social actors. It concentrates on Turkey and the Arab Middle East from the late nineteenth century through the interwar period, but also draws on wider perspectives that extend across North Africa, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Class discussions and research exercises will aim to unpack the conceptual and terminological cornerstones of history “from the ground up” in ways that help qualify the “post-Ottoman” in specific, tangible terms. We will discuss everyday forms of resistance, compliance, and coexistence; the difficulties of defining order, centre, and normality in (former) Ottoman domains; the changing margins and forms of marginalisation in society; subjecthood, nationality, and citizenship; and questions of legacy and heritage. Engagement with multiple types of historical sources—including textual, visual, and audio materials—is essential to this paper. In addition to fostering new approaches to imperial demise, regime change, and state succession, the paper aims to enable interventions in broader debates about historical method and agency. Its effort to see beyond national, regional, and epochal divides is linked to a broader aim of expanding the spectrum of social actors whose agency has been at the centre of historical inquiry. The paper invites renewed critical attention to the meanings ascribed to the end(s) of the Ottoman Empire and to the ways in which the empire’s (extra-)ordinary peoples navigated both endings and beginnings amid profound change.