" A Japanese in the Levant: Architect Ito Chuta's Vision on the Ottoman Empire and the Levantine Milieu" (original) (raw)
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Levantines of the Ottoman World: Communities, Identities, and Cultures
This book project aims to go beyond the borders of formalistic narratives and to juxtapose a multiplicity of approaches, methodologies, and perspectives in the study of Levantine lives in the Ottoman Empire. We welcome chapters that engage in the current body of scholarship on topics such as Levantine cosmopolitanism, hybridity, marginality, ambiguity, and transnationalism, but we also encourage submissions that critique the centrality of such terminology and theoretical frames in historical scholarship. Ultimately, it is hoped that these chapters will contribute to a deeper understanding of processes of communal and identity-formation in the Ottoman world, and highlight the possibilities of Levantine studies in challenging entrenched disciplinary boundaries. Proposed chapters might pursue, but are not limited to, the following topics: ● panoramic approaches to Levantine communities or publications ● Levantine families, households, and domestic culture; labor, intimacy, and consumption ● Levantine institutions, clubs, schools, and churches, and other social organizations ● Levantine publications, companies, and commercial enterprises; engaging with port-cities studies and the questions of class formation in the Ottoman Mediterranean ● Cosmopolitanism, transnationalism, and internationalism as a Levantine analytic ● Levantine religious spaces and architecture; Levantine life in urban space and traces/hauntings in the built environment of contemporary cities ● Levantine social and cultural interactions with other communities of the Ottoman world; ambiguities, exchanges, passing, and crossings
Oriental by Design: Ottoman Jews, Imperial Style, and the Performance of Heritage
American Historical Review, 2014
This essay proposes that our awareness of the constructed nature of Orientalism, as well as the power of the Orientalist gaze, have made it difficult for us to see individuals who performed their “Orientalness” for international audiences, and in commercial venues, outside of this gaze. It asks, what did the world look like from where they were standing? Can we really assume that their only interlocutors were the Western tourists and travelers they encountered on different occasions? Rather than reject the theoretical insights of the literature on Orientalism, the essay builds upon studies of self-Orientalism, while also suggesting ways for moving that literature in new directions by connecting it to the modern politics of empire. Exploring the example of Ottoman Jews who sold and consumed Oriental goods in various realms, the essay describes their self-Orientalizing gestures as a form of imperial heritage performance resonant with broader trends in the political and cultural landscape of the modern Ottoman Empire and beyond. Indeed, it argues, such performances were part of a global development that witnessed the proliferation of folkloric forms of national or imperial identification during the nineteenth century.
The Levantines though originally a given name for the people of the Eastern Mediterranean by the Europeans began to cover the Europeans who resided permanently in significant port cities of the Ottoman Empire such as Izmir, Istanbul, Mersin, and Alexandria following the capitulations granted to European countries from the sixteenth century onwards. The privileges granted by the capitulations allowed Europeans to expand their commercial activities within the Ottoman Empire, positioning the Levantines as pivotal players in the commercial life and cultural mosaic of Eastern Mediterranean port cities. These Europeans, through extensive cultural exchanges with local Turks, Greeks, Armenians, and Jews, developed a unique cultural identity distinct from traditional European norms in aspects such as language, lifestyle, religion, dress, and living spaces. In the first half of the nineteenth century, British travelers visiting the Ottoman Empire documented their observations of the Levantine communities in their travelogues. This study examines the observations of British travelers regarding the Levantines residing in Izmir and Istanbul during this period. The primary objective is to analyze the formation of the Levantine identity, the factors contributing to this identity, and how the British perceived and evaluated this unique cultural identity. Within this framework, the study will evaluate the social, cultural, and economic lives of the Levantines in the Ottoman Empire and how these aspects were perceived and interpreted by British travelers. This examination aims to elucidatev how the Levantines developed their distinctive identity as part of the multicultural fabric of the Ottoman Empire and how this identity was assessed by British travelers.