Collaboration in Ottoman Governance: The c. 1907 Imperial Census and the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Istanbul

Critical and uncritical scholars alike tend to treat Ottoman Armenians as a cohesive group. This article aims to disrupt that way of thinking. After first presenting a critique of the millet system paradigm, this article turns its attention to historiographic debates over late Ottoman demographic data—a topic that has produced considerable tension between Ottoman studies and Armenian studies scholars. To help bring these historiographies together and to dispel the monolith of “the Armenians,” the succeeding pages use the c. 1907 imperial census as a case study of cooperation between an Armenian institution—the Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate of Istanbul—and the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior. This example demonstrates the interdependence between these two bodies and ultimately shows that, while some Armenians were victims or opponents of the late Ottoman state, others were very much entrenched in it.