HIST 489T(F) The Rise and Fall of the Ottomans and the Emergence of Modern Turkey (W)
This tutorial is designed to provide an in-depth look at some of the major topics in Turkish history and historiography, including the origins of the Ottomans; the factors which drove and enabled their almost uninterrupted growth from a small Anatolian principality to empire; the features of Ottoman government and society which underpinned the empire's longevity; the question of how to define the concept of Ottoman "decline" and to identify the steps by which "the Terror of the World" of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became "the Sick Man of Europe" in the nineteenth; the nature and effectiveness of the Ottomans' attempts, often under pressure from the West, to reform themselves; the emergence of Greece and modern states in the Balkans; and the collapse of the empire just after the First World War. Attention will also be paid to the background to the emergence of the modern nation state of the Republic of Turkey and its early years under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Format: tutorial. Requirements: 6- to 7-page essay every other week and in-class oral critique every other week during the weekly, one-hour meeting of tutorial pairs with the instructor.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10). Preference given to senior and then junior History majors.
Groups C, E and G
Tutorial meetings to be arranged REPP