Peasants, migrant workers, survivors and perpetual exiles: Ottoman Armenians
Coffee available from 11am.
This lecture will discuss the pivotal Ottoman era of Tanzimat not just through use of the Ottoman Archives, but also a far less known but just as important source, that of the Armenian Patriarchate. It will argue how unlike Tanzimat’s reputation for reform and the promotion of rights, it actually set into motion a process from the first half of the 19th century which disenfranchised Armenians in every respect and set the foundation for the policies of governance throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. These archival sources show how the Armenian peasants of the provinces became migrant workers, were subjected to forced labour, abusive and oppressive taxation, the kidnapping of their wives and forced deportations, practices that were in fact encouraged by the Tanzimat’s policies. The reservoir of knowledge accumulated throughout the 19th century established the new regime of temporality and territoriality that became the reference point for imperial governance during and throughout the 20th century.
Date: 24 October 2024, 11:15 (Thursday, 2nd week, Michaelmas 2024)
Venue: Balliol College, Broad Street OX1 3BJ
Venue Details: Massey Room
Speaker: Dr Talin Suciyan (Ludwig Maximilian)
Organising department: Faculty of History
Organisers: Joe Leidy (Exeter), John-Paul Ghobrial
Part of: Religion and Mobility in Late Ottoman and Modern Middle Eastern History (The ‘Moving Stories’ Seminar)
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Alexia Lewis