According to a minimal definition, diversity was one of the characteristic features of empires from classical times to modern colonialism. Empires assembled different regions under their rule, populated by a variety of peoples with their own languages, cultures, religions and laws. Unlike modern nation-states, empires acknowledged diversity and regional differences and accommodated their rule accordingly. Cem Emrence's book explores how these features played out in the context of the nineteenth-century Middle East. Emrence's basic argument is that in order to understand the late Ottoman Empire (and, as a consequence, the modern Middle East) we have to consier intra-imperial differences. The book distinguishes three typical zones of development in the nineteenth century: the coast, the interior and the frontier. The author is less interested in the deep causes of the emergence of these zones, be they ecological, economic or other, than in focusing on the ways in which political and social actors on the local and the imperial level interacted and produced different paths or “trajectories” to modernity. In each of these zones a different social group, with its own political culture and style of contestation, was dominant, further accentuating the peculiarity of its path. Taken together these factors were responsible for the different historical experiences inside the late Ottoman Empire, as well as for post-imperial political and social developments in its different regions.
The first chapter summarizes the historiography on the late Ottoman Empire. The “modernization approach” of the 1950s and 60s explored the policies of the imperial centre during the Tanzimat in its attempts to modernize the empire. The “macro-models” approach of the Wallerstein school, by contrast, highlighted external economic processes as the agents of change in the Ottoman Empire. The third, more recent, “bargaining perspectives” approach gave more weight to local dynamics and negotiations between the Ottoman centre and actors in the periphery that determined the process of Ottoman modernization. Despite its very critical attitude the book that aims at a synthesis and does not rely on original research remains indebted mainly to the last two of these three historiographies.
In chapter 2 the author describes the coastal trajectory, largely following in the tracks of the historiography on Ottoman port cities of Western Anatolia and the Levant and their specific economic, cultural and political milieu. Merchants, together with a new urban middle class, were the principal historical actors in these locations in the nineteenth century. This new elite worked for the modernization of their cities, transforming them into the cosmopolitan environments that were best suited to their business interests. The economic power of the port cities made them relatively independent of the imperial centre. Typically, competition for higher economic benefits in these locations was organized along class lines, e.g. in strikes. In the dependent hinterland competition was often translated into a language of communal conflict.
In the interior described in chapter 3, which the author locates in Syria and Anatolia, late Ottoman routes to modernity looked quite different. Here the centralization policy of the state was successful and created a new urban elite, which the author calls the “Muslim bloc”. Owing to the low level of integration into international markets the central state was able to determine state office as the principal way to power and wealth. Consequently, the urban elites in the interior – merchants, tax farmers, absentee landlords and local bureaucrats – were defined by their close connection to the central state. Economic interests as well as the cultural and educational politics of the late Ottoman state deepened this connection. Political contestation erupted from within the local elite in the form of factional struggle, but there was also popular protest about economic issues, sometimes in the form of bread riots, which could not acquire a class basis as in the port cities.
Ottoman rule was weakest in the frontier zone described in chapter 4. Centralization policies regarding security, infrastructure, administration and education and ideologically sustained by an Ottoman colonial discourse were partly successful in the near frontier (Eastern Anatolia, Northern Iraq). At the far frontier Ottoman power was much too weak and local leaders, who acted as entrepreneurs of violence, extracted protection money and were active in smuggling, remained in power. Political contestation in the frontier zone came in the form of rebellions for local autonomy. Mobilization was most successful when it could rely on religious networks.
The final chapter deals with the modification and dissolution of the three trajectories, coinciding with the post-1908 phase of Ottoman history. The author identifies the Young Turks, who tried to subject all three zones to their centralism with mixed success, as the main actors in this process. All three zones were transformed, especially by the state of constant war from 1912 to 1922, however, some of their features were carried over into the post-Ottoman era of new nation-states.
In summary, the three trajectories model: coast, interior and frontier, succeeds in describing intra-imperial differences in the nineteenth century. It is flexible because it avoids geographical determinism and does not seem overly artificial and because it is developed in close connection with empirical findings from existing historiography. Unfortunately the author consciously limits its application to Anatolia (excluding Eastern Anatolia) and the Ottoman Arab provinces. The interesting case of the Ottoman Balkans where, it can be argued, several trajectories intermingled, remains outside the scope of the book. Perhaps the greatest merit of the proposed model would be if it inspired further comparative research on different regional developments in the late Ottoman Empire, such as the fine examples provided by scholars like Isa Blumi and Yonca Köksal.
