Learning outcomes
The course offers an analysis of the disgregation of the Ottoman Empire, and the formation of a new political map of the Middle East after WWI.
The aim of the course is to provide an understanding of the long-term state-building and nation-building processes in the region. The course underlines the notion of non-binary complexity, and the dense overlapping of local, regional, and international factors.
At the end of the course, students are expected to have a firm understanding of the major historical and political events, analyze factors and actors, establish cause-effect relationships. Students are also expected to critically assess reading materials and acquire the ability to re-elaborate course contents both in written and oral form. Prospect students heading to fieldwork in the region shall duly emphasize those contents that are crucial to their thesis project.
Course contents
This course is divided in ten blocks, which correspond more or less to a ten-week schedule: the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the formation of the republic of Turkey, state-building
and nation-building in Syria and Lebanon, the early stage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the rise of nationalisms and Islamic reformism/radicalism, the complex relationship between modernity and nativism.
Week 1: Methodology and sources. The geographical and historical context after the end of the Abbasid Caliphate.
Week 2: The Ottoman Empire and its institutions. Government, laws, and sources of legitimization.
Week 3: Transition and reforms in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire: the "tanzimât" between change and continuity.
Week 4: From the Treaty of Berlin to the Balkan Wars: the demise of empires and the rise of nation-states.
Week 5: WWI and the Paris Peace Conference.
Week 6: The onset of republican Turkey. Opposing notions of modernization and relations between state and civil society.
Week 7: Early stages of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Week 8: Sectarianism, identity politics, and the "authoritarian modernization paradigm" in Syria and Iraq.
Week 9: Islamic counterpolitics in the twentieth centuries. Political Islam in Turkey, Iran, Lebanon.
Week 10: The Middle East and the experience of modernity.
Reccomended or required readings
Zürcher, Erik Jan. "Turkey: A Modern History". London: I.B. Tauris, 1993.
(Or the translation in Italian: "Storia della Turchia: dalla fine dell'impero ottomano ai giorni nostri". Roma: Donzelli, 2007.)
All the following readings are requested as part of the program.
1. Two readings chosen among the following four:
1.1. "Empire and Population", in İnalcık, Halil (ed.). "An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 11–43.
1.2. "Symbols of Power and Legitimation", in İnalcık, Halil (ed.). "An Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, 1300–1914". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 609–622.
1.3. Imber, Colin. "Ideals and Legitimation in Early Ottoman History", in Kunt, Metin, and Christine Woodhead (eds.). "Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World". New York: Longman, 1995, pp. 138–153.
1.4. Faroqhi, Suraiya. "Politics and Socio-Economic Change in the Ottoman Empire of the Last Sixteenth Century", in Kunt, Metin, and Christine Woodhead (eds.). "Süleyman the Magnificent and His Age: The Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern World". New York: Longman, 1995, pp. 91–113.
2. Findley, Carter Vaughn. "The Ottoman Lands to the Post-First World War Settlement", in Francis Robinson (ed.). "Cambridge History of Islam: The Islamic World in the Age of Western Dominance". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, vol. 5, pp. 31–78.
3. Anscombe, Frederik. "On the Road Back from Berlin", in Yavuz, M. Hakan, and Peter Sluglett (eds.). "War and Diplomacy: The Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin". Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2011, pp. 535–563.
4. Yavuz, M. Hakan. "The Transformation of 'Empire' through Wars and Reforms. Integration vs. Oppression", in Yavuz, M. Hakan, and Peter Sluglett (eds.). War and Diplomacy: The Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2011, pp. 17–55.
5. Yavuz, M. Hakan. "Warfare and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars as a Catalyst of Homogenization", in M. Hakan Yavuz, and Isa Blumi (eds.). "War and Nationalism: The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913, and Their Sociopolitical Implications". Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 2013, pp. 31–84.
6. One reading chosen among the following two:
6.1. Parla, Taha, and Andrew Davison. "Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order?" Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004, pp. 68–140.
6.2. Göçek, Fatma Müge. "The Transformation of Turkey: Redefining State and Society from the Ottoman Empire to the Modern Era". London: I.B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 98–184.
7. Ziadeh, Radwan. "Power and Policy in Syria: Intelligence Services, Foreign Relations and Democracy in the Modern Middle East". London: I.B. Tauris, 2011, pp. 1–35.
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