Modernity, History and Ideology: History Scholarship During the Reign of II. Abdülhamid
This article examines recent scholarship on the history of the late Ottoman Empire during the reign of Abdulhamid II. In the mainstream scholarship this period has been considered as a parenthesis in the context of the long-term Ottoman- Turkish march towards modernity which supposedly started with the Tanzimat. The recent academic literature, on the other hand, aimed at resituating the Hamidian period within the context of Ottoman-Turkish modernity and broader world-historical context. After briefly surveying the recent literature, the present article focuses on the political and ideological contexts that informed changing attitudes towards the history of Hamidian period. The article argues that the past that historians imagined, and the present that historians live within share the same temporality. This means that we need to rewrite the history of the Hamidian period as social history inspired by our concern to change our present.
NADİR ÖZBEK
