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)
