Internal colonization, political geography and security in the Ottoman Eastern Provinces (1895–1899)

Abstract

This article analyzes the re-making of the political geography of the Ottoman eastern provinces between 1895–1899, after the Memorandum of Great Powers in 1895, by examining the relationship between internal colonialization and security policies. This study reconsiders the interplay between European colonial techniques and Ottoman internal colonialism by discussing techniques of administration and institutional memory of security. Using archival documents, this work explores the reports and proposals of the General Inspectorate of Anatolia to analyze the construction of the political geography in a borderland as part of the security infrastructure which came along with long-term violence toward the Armenian community.

Keywords:

• Ottoman Empire
• transimperial
• colonialism
• geopolitcs
• Armenian question
• reform
• violence
• security

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Jeremy Salt, ‘Britain, the Armenian question and the cause of Ottoman reform: 1894–96’, Middle Eastern Studies, 26:3 (1990), pp.308–28. Arman J. Kirakossian, British Diplomacy and the Armenian Question from the 1830s to 1914 (Princeton; London: Gomidas Institute Books, 2003).

2 1. Assurance of taking into consideration the views of ambassadors on the appointment of governors, 2. The pardoning of Armenians convicted of political crimes, 3. The return of Armenians who migrated or were exiled, 4. Monitoring and improving the condition of prisons and prisoners, 5. The appointment of an extraordinary commissar to monitor reforms to be carried out in the provinces, 6. Compensation by the state for damages suffered by Armenians in Sason and elsewhere, 7. The establishment of a permanent monitoring committee in Istanbul, 8. The regulation of the problem of religious conversion, 9. The protection and implementation, in full, of legal rights granted to Armenians, 10. An investigation of the situation of Armenians in other parts of Anatolia. See Marcel Leart (Krikor Zohrab), La Question Arménienne à la lumière des documents [The Armenian Question in the Light of Documents] (Paris: Augustin Challamel, 1913), attachment F, 38–52. Münir Süreyya Bey, Ermeni Meselesinin Siyasi Tarihçesi (1877–1914) [Political History of the Armenian Question (1877–1914)] (Ankara: Osmanlı Arşivi Daire Başkanlığı Yayın No: 53, 2001), pp.51, 450–551.

3 Fuat Dündar, Crime of Numbers: The Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878–1918) (New Brunswick and London: Transaction, 2010). Nizam Önen and Cenk Reyhan, Mülkten Ülkeye Türkiye’de Taşra İdaresinin Dönüşümü (1839–1929) [From Land to Country: The Transformation of Local Administration in Turkey (1839–1929)] (Istanbul: İletişim Yayınları, 2011). Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

4 Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011), pp.10–11; Richard Hovannisian, ‘The Historical Dimensions of the Armenian Question, 1878–1923’, in Richard Hovannisian (ed.), The Armenian Genocide in Perspective (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1986), p.24. For an extensive bibliography on the massacres, see George N. Shirinian, ‘The Armenian Massacres of 1894–1897: A bibliography’, Armenian Review 47, no. 1–2 (2001), pp.113–64.

5 For a discussion of international intervention and minority rights, see Stefan Kroll, ‘The justification of international intervention: Theories of community and admissibility’, in Fabian Klose (ed.), The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention, Concepts and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp.73–88.

6 Following the massacre of Armenians in Sasun, ‘… Even if Istanbul is included (into the count of the Armenian population in the eastern provinces), it is clear, in the findings of research and analysis carried out, that, relative to the numbers of other peoples, they do not surpass three or at most four percent of the total…. Conversely, it is said that on the other side of things, the Armenian conspirators have inflated their population numbers and levels, having two kinds of identification issued. … There are those among the Armenians in Russia who have migrated to the summer lands that Kurds in the eastern provinces leave open in the summer. Despite the fact that their populations are truly quite minimal, the increase in this manner of the numbers (of Armenians) within a short time, and atop this, the appointment by some European states of a general governor to that area and the existence of requests to transform such places into privileged provinces make one strongly suspect that, upon reaching such aims, there may be attempts shortly thereafter to appoint a European prince in place of a general governor. Whereas such a situation, there is no need to point out, could result in the bitter outcome of causing the downfall of the Devlet-i Aliye.’ General Secretary of the Palace Tahsin, on behalf of the Sultan, 29 July 1895/ Archives, Yıldız Collection, Armenian Question, vol.2, pp.273–75.

7 Ussama Makdisi, ‘Rethinking Ottoman Imperialism: Modernity, Violence and the Cultural Logic of Ottoman Reform’, in Jens Hanssen, Thomas Philipp and Stefan Weber (eds), The Empire in the City: Arab Provincial Cities in the Ottoman Empire (Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2002), pp.29–48. Selim Deringil, ‘“They Live in a State of Nomadism and Savagery”: The Late Ottoman Empire and the Post-Colonial Debate’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 43, (2003), pp.311–42. Thomas Kühn, ‘Shaping and Reshaping Colonial Ottomanism: Contesting Boundaries of Difference and Integration in Ottoman Yemen’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27/2, (2007), pp.315–31. Christoph Herzog, ‘Nineteenth-century Baghdad through Ottoman Eyes’, in Hanssen, Philipp, and Weber (eds), The Empire in the City, pp.311–28. On the difference between imperialist structures and Ottoman governance in the peripheries, see Vangelis Kechriotis, ‘Postcolonial Criticism Encounters Late Ottoman Studies’, Historein 13, (2013), pp.39–46.

8 Thorsten Bonacker, ‘Security Practices and the Production of Center–Periphery Figurations in Statebuilding’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 43/4, (2018), pp.190–206.

9 Vangelis Kechriotis, ‘Postcolonial Criticism Encounters Late Ottoman Studies’, Historein 13 (2013), pp.39–46.

10 Yonca Köksal, The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era: Provincial Perspectives from Ankara to Edirne, (London and New York: Routledge, 2019).

11 For a further discussion see, Özgür Türesay, ‘The Ottoman Empire Seen through the Lens of Postcolonial Studies: A Recent Historiographical Turn’, Revue d’histoire Moderne & Contemporaine, vol. 60–2, no. 2 (2013), pp.127–45.

12 For a detailed discussion, see Yonca Köksal, The Ottoman Empire in the Tanzimat Era. For another approach on Ottoman provincial borders see, Samuel Dolbee, ‘Empire on the Edge: Desert, Nomads, and the Making of an Ottoman Provincial Border’, The American Historical Review, vol. 127, no. 1 (2022), pp.129–158.

13 Thorsten Bonacker, ‘Security Practices and the Production of Center–Periphery Figurations in Statebuilding’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 43/4 (2018), pp.190–206.

14 Klein, The Margins of Empire. On how both old imperial and new colonial techniques were used in Yemen, see Thomas Kühn, Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference (Boston: Brill, 2011).

15 Charles Pinderhughes, ‘Toward a New Theory of Internal Colonialism’, Socialism and Democracy, 25:1 (2011), p.236.

16 Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development 1536–1966, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975). Thanks to Owen Miller for pointing me in the direction of Hechter’s book.

17 For an analysis of Sasun, see Owen Miller, Sasun 1894: Mountains, Missionaries and Massacres at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Columbia: unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 2015).

18 A. Dirk Moses, ‘Empire, Colony, Genocide: Keywords and the Philosophy of History’, in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York: Oxford, 2008), p.23.

19 Başak Kale, ‘Transforming an Empire: The Ottoman Empire’s Immigration and Settlement Policies in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, Middle Eastern Studies 50:2 (2014), pp.252–71. Ella Fratantuono, ‘Producing Ottomans: Internal Colonization and Social Engineering in Ottoman Immigrant Settlement’, Journal of Genocide Research, 21:1 (2019), pp.1–24. For another aspect see, Fuat Dündar, Hicret, Dîn ü Devlet-Osmanlı Göç Politikası (1856–1908) [Hegira, Religion and State: Ottoman Migration Policy (1856–1908)], (Istanbul: İletişim Yay, 2021).

20 L. Van de Grift, ‘Introduction: Theories and Practices of Internal Colonization. The Cultivation of Lands and People in the Age of Modern Territoriality’, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 3\2 (2015), p.141.

21 On territoriality see, Charles Maier, ‘Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narratives for the Modern Era’, The American Historical Review, 105/3 (2000), pp.807–31.

22 Bonacker, ‘Security Practices’.

23 Naci Çakın, Türk Silahlı Kuvvetleri Tarihi (1793–1908) [The History of the Turkish Military Forces (1793–1908)], III, (Ankara: Genelkurmay Harp Tarihi Başkanlığı, 1978), p.202.

24 See, Klein, Margins of Empire.

25 This information is found in two regulations that form the basis of the Hamidiye cavalry. ‘Süvari Alayları’na Dair Kanunnamedir [Code for Cavalry Regiments], Article: 46, Matbaa’i Osmaniye, Dersaadet’, for 1308, see Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi (BOA), Y. EE.,113/5, (29.Z.1308); for ‘Hamidiye Hafif Süvari Alayları Kanunname-i Humayunu’ [Code for Hamidiye Light Cavalry Regiments], see BOA, Y. EE.,113/6, (29.Z.1312), p.16, 1896. On the breaking up of the tribes that were a part of the Hamidiye cavalry, the first orderly table was sent, stamped, to the center by a document ‘Anadolu Vilayeti Şahanesi Müfettişi Yaver-i Ekrem Şakir Paşa’ [Inspector for the Imperial Province of Anatolia], dated 30 Dec. 1897, and written jointly by Şakir Pasha and Zeki Pasha of the 4th Army, in a report on the Hamidiye Cavalry. See BOA., Y.EE., 81/42, pp.2, 3, (29.N.1315).

26 Edip Gölbaşı, ‘The Official Conceptualization of the anti-Armenian Riots of 1895–1897’, Études arméniennes contemporaines, 10 (2018), pp.33–62.

27 Bonacker, ‘Security Practices’, p.201.

28 Alexander Etkind, Internal Colonization: Russia’s Imperial Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). For the German case see, Elizabeth B. Jones, ‘Keeping Up with the Dutch, Internal Colonization and Rural Reform in Germany, 1800–1914’, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 3/2 (2015), pp.173–94.

29 Bonacker, ‘Security Practices’, p.199.

30 Cenk Reyhan, ‘Cebel-i Lübnan Vilayet Nizamnamesi’ [Provincial Code for Lebanon], Memleket, (2006), pp.171–81.

31 BOA, Y. A. HUS, 164/83, (05.C.1297).

32 BOA, Y. A. HUS, 226/20, (09.L.1306).

33 For example, see Y.EE., 97/89, (03.Ca.1301).

34 Other than in the six provinces, revolts also broke out in the provinces of Halep, Ankara and Adana.

35 On the massacres, see Ali Sipahi, ‘Narrative Construction in the 1895 Massacres in Harput: The Coming and Disappearance of the Kurds’, Études arméniennes contemporaines 10 (2018), pp.63–95; Owen Miller, ‘Rethinking the Violence in the Sasun Mountains (1893–1894)’, Études arméniennes contemporaines, 10 (2018), pp.97–123; Jelle Verheij, ‘“The year of the firman”: The 1895 Massacres in Hizan and Şirvan (Bitlis vilayet)’, Études arméniennes contemporaines, 10 (2018), pp.125–59; Deborah Mayersen, ‘The 1895–1896 Armenian Massacres in Harput: Eyewitness Account’, Études arméniennes contemporaines, 10 (2018), pp.161–83; Ümit Kurt, ‘Reform and Violence in the Hamidian Era: The Political Context of the 1895 Armenian Massacres in Aintab’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 32/3 (2018), pp.404–23.

36 BOA. Y.A.RES. 77/21, (21.Ca.1313).

37 For a discussion see, Verheij, ‘“The year of the firman”: The 1895 Massacres in Hizan and Şirvan (Bitlis vilayet)’. For the British consulate reports see, British National Archives (TNA) FO 881–6820, 370/1 (Longworth to Currie, 21 Oct. 1895), 690/1 (Jewett to Longworth, 13 Nov. 1895) 842 (Currie to Salisbury, 21 Dec. 1895) 854/1 (Longworth to Currie, 17 Dec. 1895); FO 881–6823, 25/2 (Hallward to Cumberbatch, 11 Dec. 1895), 26 (Currie to Salisbury, 6 Jan. 1896) 188/2, Hampson to Currie, 7 Jan. 1896. FO 881–6775, 251/2, Barnham to Currie, 15 Aug. 1895).

38 İlkay Yılmaz, ‘Governing the Armenian Question through Passports in the Late Ottoman

Empire (1876–1908)’, Journal Historical Sociology 32, (2019), pp.388–403.

39 For only a few such examples, see BOA. A.MKT.MHM. 620/15, (16.L.1313); BOA. Y.PRK.BŞK. 45/75, (16. L.1313).

40 The documents included under file number BOA, İ.DH.1337/3, (21.S.1314) and 1337/4, (21.S.1314) mostly contain information of this sort.

41 James Scott, Seeing Like a State (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998).

42 For such recommendations, see BOA., Y.EE., 133/13, (13.S.1315) and BOA., Y.EE., 133/15, (28.Ra. 1315). See Nadir Özbek, ‘The Politics of Taxation and the “Armenian Question” during the Late Ottoman Empire, 1876–1908’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 54:4 (2012), pp.770–97.

43 For instance, the post office in Van was reorganized according to administrative partitions. On recommendations related to plans for the administration of pontoon bridges and ferries on Van Lake, to shorten the road between Erzurum, Van, and Başkale, and be able to monitor the church on the island of Akhtamar, as well as tramway infrastructure and mining searches (on finding and making use of coal, iron, naft (a hard oil or grease), and other materials), see BOA, Y.EE.,132/21, (23. Ş.1316).

44 For Eastern Rumelia, a distinction was made between city and village types of townships. Another important discussion involved creating a division based on religion; see Reyhan and Önen, Mülkten Ülkeye, p.276

45 ‘Vilayet-i Şahanede İcra Kılınacak Islahata Dair Tebliği Resmi’[Official Statement for the Reform in the Imperial Provinces], 8 Jan.1896, Düstur, 1. Tertib, vol. 7, Ankara Başvekalet Matbaası, 1941, pp.116–18. For the practice see BOA., İ.DH., 1337/4, (21.S.1314). The document in question presents a detailed breakdown of the townships in the sanjaks of Erzurum and Beyazid.

46 ‘Mülga Vilayat Merkez Mutasarrıflıklarının İadeten Teşkili Hakkında İrade-i Seniyye-i Muntazamın Tebliğ-i Resmi’ [Official Statement for the Re-foundation of the Abolished Second Degree Administrative Centers of the Imperial Provinces], ed. Sarkis Karakoç, in Külliyat-ı Kavanin, Document no: 6147.

47 BOA., Y.EE., 133/8, (12.Ra.1314).

48 These were also sent to the Islahat Teftiş Komisyonu [Inspection Commission for the Reforms]. BOA., Y.EE., 133/8, (12.Ra.1314).

49 Y.EE., 133/14, (21.R.1313).

50 BOA., Y.EE.,133/8, (29.R.1313).

51 BOA., Y.EE., 133/12 (03.Ş.1313).

52 Y.PRK.DH., 5/28, (30.B.1309). It was reported that previously, in a population count carried out in 1886, a census had been carried out in all the sanjaks of Erzurum, except for Beyazid, but that this could not be done in Beyazid, as the people were entirely nomadic. BOA., DH.MKT, 1379/9, (20.S.1304).

53 BOA., Y.EE., 133/14, (21.R.1313). Şakir Pasha’s recommendations on tax reform are in the same document.

54 BOA., Y.EE., 131/39, (03.M.1314). BOA., Y.EE., 131/47, (27.Ca.1314). BOA, Y.EE.131/53, (10.C.1315).

55 Sadettin Pasha had previously been tasked with suppressing the uprising in Bosnia Herzegovina. Following his duty on the reform commission in the eastern vilayets, he was also stationed in the struggle against guerilla organizations in the Balkans.

56 According to Ottoman state correspondence, Armenian revolutionaries in Van had set in motion an uprising, attacking military patrols, after setting up barricades, opening portholes in the walls of their homes to be able to shoot out, and digging trenches. As for the American Protestant missionary Reynolds, known for his stance against the revolutionaries, he wrote that there had long been chaos and discord in the city and that he assumed that the armed conflict in question was between Kurds and soldiers. Hans Lukas Keiser, Der verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Türkei 1839–1938 [The Missed Peace: Mission, Ethnicity and State in the Eastern Provinces of Turkey 1839–1938] (Zurich: Chronos, 2000).

57 On the correspondence of the American ambassador regarding the massacres, see https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1896/d373.

58 BOA, Y.EE., 131/47, (27.Ca.1314).

59 BOA, Y.EE., 131/47, (27.Ca.1314).

60 BOA, Y.EE., 131/39, (03.M.1314).

61 BOA, Y.EE., 132/1,(05.S.1315). BOA, Y.EE.,132/2, (14.S.1315).

62 BOA, Y.A.RES., 98/69, (17.Za.1316). Also see BOA, Y.EE., 132/1, (05.S.1315). BOA, Y.EE.,132/2, (14.S.1315).

63 Karaca, in examining the Salname-i Umumiye [Ottoman Statistical Year Books], determines that the tabulation of nahiye prepared by Şakir Pasha was not put into practice. Ali Karaca, Anadolu Islahatı ve Ahmet Şakir Paşa (1838–1899) [Anatolian Reform and Şakir Pasha(1838–1899)] (Istanbul: Eren Yay, 1993), p.162. See Salname-i Umumi 1315 (Istanbul), pp.563–67.

64 BOA. İ. DH., 1275/100278, (10.L.1309).

65 BOA. Y.A. HUS. 314/14, (02.C.1312).

66 BOA. DH. MHC. 23/23, (07.B.1317).

67 BOA. ŞD. 2148/26, (01.R.1303) for a later date see BOA. DH. EUM. EMN. 112/22 (29.M.1332).

68 BOA. Y.PRK. AZJ. 23/80, (19.B.1310).

69 Özbek, 2008, pp.56–61.

70 BOA. Y.PRK.ASK. 61/17, (28.N.1307).

71 On the complaints of the Governor of Van to Sadettin Pasha about Kurdish tribes, see Sadettin Pasha, Sadettin Paşa’nın Anıları: Ermeni-Kürt Olayları (Van, 1896) [Memoirs of Sadettin Pasha: Armenian Kurdish Incidents (Van, 1896)], ed. Sami Önal (Istanbul: Remzi Kitabevi, 2003), p.30. The Governor of Erzurum also saw the arming of Kurds as a misguided means, and in 1892, when relations between him and Zeki Pasha became strained due to this matter, he was dismissed from duty. See Klein, Margins of Empire, pp.78, 87. For a further discussion, see Erdal Çiftçi, Fragile Alliances in the Ottoman East: The Heyderan Tribe and The Empire, 1820–1929, unpublished PhD dissertation (Bilkent University: Ankara, 2018), pp.209–13.

72 BOA. Y.PRK.DH. 10/52, (29.Z.1315). On Orientalist and civilizing discourses as applied to Kurds, see Klein, Margins of Empire.

Additional information

Funding

Einstein Stiftung Berlin.