The “Subjects” of Ottoman International Law

Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 223–234 Copyright © 2016 Ottoman and Turkish T Studies Association. doi:10.2979/jottturstuass.3.2.02 The “Subjects” of Ottoman International Law Lâle Can and Michael Christopher Low The impetus for this special issue of the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association grew out of a series of workshops and panels, all of which pointed toward a critical mass of new research on Ottoman engagement with questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and extraterritoriality. In heated discussions about what it meant to be an Ottoman “national” versus a “citizen” or “subject,” and conversations about the provenance of the legal advisors in the Ottoman Foreign Ministry who did the day-to-day work of defending the empire ’s sovereignty, there was a clear consensus that these topics merited greater attention and precision in terms. As guest editors, our own paths toward these subjects grew out of a recognition of what was missing in our work on different facets of Ottoman management of the steamship-era hajj. While neither of us set out to make international law a central concern of our research, questions of jurisdiction and protection, nationality and subjecthood, mobility regulation and passports, and the documentary practices underpinning them seemed to continually redirect our efforts. At every turn in the Ottoman archive, digital searches for “foreign pilgrims” directed us to a trove of documents produced E\WKHMXULVWVDWWKH2WWRPDQ2I¿FHRI/HJDO&RXQVHO +XNXN0úDYLUOL÷LøVWL úDUH2GDVÕ), the Hamidian-era bureau formed to navigate the landscape of Eurocentric international law. These archival sources provided unparalleled insight into the mechanics of empire, and disrupted long-held assumptions about imperial logic and governance. However, as we began to grasp the sigQL ¿FDQFHRIWKLVEXUHDXIRUVWXG\LQJWKH+DPLGLDQHUDZHEHFDPHDFXWHO\ aware of the deep disconnect between its omnipresence in the Ottoman archive and its curious absence in the extant historiography. In trying to understand the role that the +XNXN0úDYLUOL÷L øVWLúDUH2GDVÕ played in diplomacy and statecraft , we quickly found that many of the most basic institutions and practices 224 Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Vol. 3.2 related to the Ottoman state’s formulation and dissemination of international legal expertise had barely garnered more than stray remarks.1 The work of addressing these lacunae resulted in collaborations with colleagues that revealed a wider constellation of shared frustrations. Foremost among them was the pervasive assumption that Ottoman legal reforms, both international and domestic, were merely reactions to the pressures of the EastHUQ 4XHVWLRQ$QLQWHUUHODWHGSUREOHPKDVEHHQWKHFRQÀDWLRQRIWKHGLSORPDWic history of the Eastern Question with the history of international law, both of which have been marred by an over-reliance on European sources. While there is a recognition that the Ottoman state struggled to prove its acceptance of the emerging civilizational norms of “international society” in a bid for full and equal membership in the European family of nations, the story of this effort remains skewed.2 Previous studies of Ottoman engagement with international law have tended to overemphasize certain aspects of public international law that grew out of the Eastern Question: peace treaties, annexation, border demarcation , and territorial losses. Likewise, existing scholarship has generally put forward a rather narrow vision of private international law associated with consular jurisdiction over European merchants and their non-Muslim protégés. This myopic emphasis on non-Muslim minorities has reinforced a reading of late Ottoman history that foregrounds the salience of religious and identity politics. Another consequence of this approach has been the tendency to ignore the empire’s Muslim populations, or to analyze Ottoman relations with Muslim colonial subjects 1. For noteworthy titles on Ottoman international legal institutions, see Aimee M. Genell’s dissertation and forthcoming book project, “Empire by Law: Ottoman Sovereignty and the BritLVK 2FFXSDWLRQRI(J\SW±´ 3K'GLVV&ROXPELD8QLYHUVLW\ 7XUDQ.D\DR÷lu , Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire, and China (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Umut Özsu, “Ottoman Empire,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of...