CROSSING BORDERS CITIZENSHIP AND EMPIRE: Austro-Hungary, Ottoman, and Russia

I. OVERVIEW

The "Citizenship and Empire" project places contemporary arguments about nationality, international inequality, and migration in a deeper historical context by looking at the conflicting ways in which both empires and their opponents defined units of membership and forms of affinity. It builds on recent workshops involving University of Michigan faculty on the Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg empires and on imperial hegemonies in Latin America and the Pacific Rim. The project aims to bring together discussions of these different empires to explore, among other periods, the moment at the end of the 19th century when European colonial empires and American imperial hegemony expanded just as failed attempts to reform Ottoman, Russian and Habsburg were underway.

The initial initiative focusing on the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires had five interconnected aims:
(a) to go beyond the traditional emphasis on the British and French empires as the blueprint in the discussion of empires by specifically focusing on three non-Western European ones, namely the Ottoman, Habsburg and Russian empires;
(b) to enhance inter-center participation by bringing together participants from the Center for Russian and East European Studies and Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies;
(c) to promote interdisciplinary participation on these issues by bringing together historians, sociologists, political scientists and literary analysts;
(d) to establish new international ties with institutions abroad, in this case Bogaziçi University in Istanbul; and
(e) to set the stage for the next step of the project, namely the International Institute's Advanced Study Center seminar on "Empires, States, and Political Imagination" in 1999-2000.

The major project activity was a workshop held at Bogaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey from July 5-7, 1998. Nine participants from the Czech Republic, Turkey, and the USA were asked to submit 3-5 page discussion pieces on the subject of citizenship and empire, especially as it pertained to the comparison of the Ottoman, Romanov and Habsburg empires. Along with the letters of invitation, the participants were also sent two recent articles on the topic [by Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler (U-M) and Karen Barkey and Mark Von Hagen (Columbia)] as well as a short bibliography of the major works on the three empires. Five scholars from France, Germany, and Turkey were invited to serve as discussants.

II. PARTICIPANTS AND FUNDING

The principal organizers of the "Citizenship and Empire" project were Jane Burbank, Fred Cooper, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Scott Spector. Support for the Istanbul workshop was provided by the Ford Foundation grant to the International Institute and Bogaziçi University.

Faculty Participants
Cem Behar (History, Bogaziçi University - Ottoman Empire)
Faruk Birtek (Sociology, Bogaziçi University - Turkey, France)
Rogers Brubaker (Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles - Hungary)
Jane Burbank (History, U-M - Russia)
Fred Cooper (History, U-M - East Africa)
Selim Deringil (History, Bogaziçi University - Ottoman Empire/Middle East)
Fatma Müge Göçek (Sociology and Women' s Studies, U-M - Ottoman Empire, Turkey)
Jitka Maleckova (History, Charles University - Ottoman Empire/Middle East, Central Europe)
Claus Offe (Political Science, Humboldt University - Europe)
Ilber Ortayli (History, Ankara University - Russian and Ottoman Empires)
Scott Spector (German Languages and Literatures, U-M - Central Europe)
Ilkay Sunar (Political Science, Bogaziçi University - Russian and Ottoman Empires)
Binnaz Toprak (Political Science, Bogaziçi University - Turkey)
Lucette Valensi (History, École des Hautes Études - Middle East)


III. RESULTS AND PROSPECTS

The most significant discussions at the Istanbul workshop occurred around the constitution of the boundaries of empires, the nature of the transformation from empire to nation-state, and the effects these processes have on citizenship and identity formation. Particular attention was given to the "grammar" of empire - the vast repertoire of symbols associated with each empire - and to the often tenuous relationship between the rhetoric/theory of empires (and nation-states), and the actual praxis. Ottomanism, Russification and similar attempts revealed the constant effort of empires to create an imagined coherence (an effort that is very much a concern of nation-states as well). The general comparison across empires and nation-states articulated one crucial difference: empires ruled over subjects and domains, not territories - hence their boundaries and the identities of its inhabitants, including imperial minorities, were, from this perspective, much more malleable.

In an effort to summarize the proceedings, the participants tried to identify comparative dimensions of the three empires. They concluded that breakpoints - historical junctures - help identify these comparative dimensions. These were:
(a) all three empires broke up at the point of reform;
(b) all three were highly porous;
(c) intrusion of the West and modernization as an imperial project was present in all three;
(d) while the French and British colonial empires collapsed much later, these transoceanic empires ended at about the same time; periods of imperial collapse thus should be analyzed comparatively as well; and
(e) in all cases, the category of empire was made extinct.

This project has had several significant outcomes and, pending additional funding, anticipates further activities. Istanbul workshop participants Faruk Birtek, Jane Burbank, Fred Cooper, Selim Deringil, and Fatma Müge Göçek participated in a panel presentation on Empire and Citizenship at the November 1998 Social Science and History Association annual meeting in Chicago. Turkish participant Selim Deringil gave several lectures on workshop themes during a week-long visit at the University of Michigan in November 1998. Jane Burbank and Fred Cooper are finalizing plans for the International Institute's Advanced Study Center (ASC) seminar on "Empires, States, and Political Imagination" that they will direct in 1999-2000. This seminar relates closely to the themes of the "Crossing Borders" project and will emphasize an inclusive approach to different imperial projects over time (premodern empires included) and space. Pending the availability of funds, students from this seminar will attend a workshop tentatively scheduled in February 2000 as a follow-up to the Istanbul meeting. To expand the student-faculty networks established by the Crossing Borders project and generate further insights into the transformation of empires, there may also be one or two other "satellite" workshops associated with the ASC seminar.

IV. CORE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN FACULTY

Jane Burbank is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies (Fall 1998). Her principal publications include Intelligentsia and Revolution: Russian View of Bolshevism, 1917-1922 (Oxford University Press, 1986); Imperial Russia: New Histories for the Empire (edited with David L. Ransel, Indiana University Press, 1998); and A Different Justice: Legal Culture and Modernity in Russia (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). Among her current projects is a monograph on legal culture of Russian peasants, 1905-1917.

Fred Cooper is Charles Gibson Collegiate Professor of History and Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies. His recent books include The Dialectics of Decolonization: Nationalism and Labor Movements in Postwar Africa (University of Michigan Press, 1992); Confronting Historical Paradigms: Peasants, Labor, and the Capitalist World System in Africa and Latin America (editor, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge University Press, 1996); and Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (edited with Ann Stoler, University of California Press, 1997).

Fatma Müge Göçek is Associate Professor of Sociology and of Women's Studies. Her publications include East Encounters West: France and the Ottoman Empire in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 1987); Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East: Tradition, Identity, and Power (edited with Shiva Balaghi, Columbia University Press, 1994); Rise of the Bourgeoisie, Demise of Empire: Ottoman Westernization and Social Change (Oxford University Press, 1996); and Political Cartoons in the Middle East (editor, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998).

Scott Spector is Assistant Professor of German and of History. A specialist in German intellectual history, his publications include "Beyond the Aesthetic Garden: Politics and Culture on the Margins of Fin-de-Siècle Vienna," Journal of the History of Ideas (October, 1998); "Another Zionism: Hugo Bergmann's Circumscription of Spiritual Territory," Journal of Contemporary History (January, 1999); and Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Kafka's Fin de Siècle (University of California Press, forthcoming).


Go to Next Report
Back to Crossing Borders
Back to the International Institute