Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire (review)

Possessors and Possessed is a major study of the advent and growth of the idea of the museum in the Ottoman Empire from the late nineteenth century until its collapse in the aftermath of World War I. Wendy Shaw shows that Ottoman museum and archaeological practices developed in response to European imperialistic designs. But the Ottomans did not passively copy the Europeans. Rather, they adopted this institution selectively and modified it to reflect their own cultural and political aspirations. Ottoman elites, while anxious to present their museums, collections, and displays as symbols of modernity and conformity to European cultural norms, nevertheless carefully designed them to counteract conceptions of the Ottoman Empire as the Other.

In a fast-crumbling empire, museums increasingly expressed and served a nationalist agenda. They produced models for a new Ottoman identity, especially during the decades of the empire's transition to a nation-state. The narratives of national identity and history they developed not only helped shape the state ideologies of the late Ottoman Empire, but have persisted in the Republic of Turkey of today.

Early Ottoman collections consisted of spoils of war and religious relics. After the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, the city's landmark Byzantine basilica of Hagia Irene was turned into an armory, and later it also housed Islamic and Christian relics. When two collections of the sultan were added in the mid-nineteenth century, the basilica was divided into the Magazine of Antique Weapons and the Magazine of Antiquities. The latter received chief attention in response to European archaeological intrusions into Ottoman territories, and in 1869, to signify the sultan's patronage of antiquities, it was renamed the Imperial Museum and moved to another building.

Under Osman Hamdi from 1881 to 1910, a French-educated lawyer and painter, the museum developed into a prominent Ottoman institution—albeit not on a par with its European counterparts—which regulated the collection of antiquities throughout the empire, sponsored legislation to check exports and smuggling, and initiated archaeological excavations. The government soon discovered that the museum could be a tool for state ideologies. Between 1876 and 1909 Sultan Abdülhamid effectively used museum displays to enhance his imperial image at home, while abroad he promoted his empire through exhibits at international expositions and photographic displays. He even had a model military museum set up in his palace, and he was planning to build a full-scale version when he was deposed in 1909.

Europeans came hunting for antiquities in Ottoman territories at the same time they were exerting economic and political pressure on the empire. Ottomans thus perceived the removal of antiquities not simply as a loss of historical treasures but as a threat to their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Through their own collection, preservation, and display of antiquities, they hoped to reassert their territorial sovereignty, invalidate European prejudices of presumed Ottoman negligence of antiquities (often used as a justification for their removal), solidify the relationship between the land and its present peoples, and demonstrate Ottoman modernity and "European-ness."

Ottoman museums accordingly emphasized the artifacts and spatial arrangements that linked the Ottoman to the European, most symbolically via the antiquities of the Hellenic and Roman civilizations, in which Europe traced its golden past. Natural history and contemporary arts were for the most part excluded. An interest in Islamic arts developed and enthusiasm for military collections revived only in the empire's final decades, when wars and territorial losses caused it to pursue a more nationalist agenda.

Although most of her book deals with the museums of Istanbul, Shaw also pays attention to nascent museums elsewhere. In no case was she able to provide statistics as to the number of visitors. It is clear, however, that museums were primarily for elite visitors, whether Ottoman or foreign. Shaw includes a chapter that looks at how technology rendered antiquities and archaeological sites more accessible...