Most current historiography, however, tends to operate on the basis of a “lid model” whereby at least some empires (the oriental ones?) are conceived as lids closing upon a set of ingredients (peoples) that are kept under but intact until the lid is toppled and those peoples, unchanged (unspoilt, as nationalists would like to see it), simply reenter the grand flow of history as what they once were. They may have experienced changes in terms of numbers and material realities but not in essence. Readers may also be familiar with this view from the recent example of Soviet dissolution, which was widely analyzed in terms of history beginning again for the peoples of the former USSR. But can one see the expression of Kirghiz or Belarus national identities, for instance, in terms of a reassertion? Were they not constructed to a large degree, in terms of identifying with a particularly delineated territory as homeland, for instance, during the Soviet era, which was a formative historical experience for all of them?
A recent publication that appeared in the most authoritative encyclopedia in the field of oriental studies takes us closer to our specific subject matter. In the lead essay to the entry on “Othmanli” (= Ottoman), “the subject peoples of the Balkans” are described as “for centuries peoples without history” until the nineteenth century.19 Where, in this depiction, could a historian fit the Muslim Slavs and Albanians, for instance? Or, how does one deal with the movement, under Ottoman rule, of Orthodox Slavs to areas now contested in Bosnia?
The Ottoman state/identity was not a lid that closed upon already formed national identities (of Arabs, Bulgarians, Turks, etc.) only to be toppled after a few centuries when those identities reasserted themselves. Some of these identities were formed to some extent, but they were reshaped (some might say, de-formed) under the aegis of, through the structures of, in response or reaction to, the Ottoman Empire. This is not a question of Ottoman influence but of a long and formative historical experience that shaped various communities and peoples under Ottoman rule through their interaction with each other as well as with peoples and ideas from neighboring civilizations. So the establishment of Ottoman rule in southwestern Asia and southeastern Europe, even if one sees it in black-and-white terms—namely, as either a yoke or a blessing—did mean much more than a lapse in what would otherwise have been the natural flow of the history of a given set of nations. Ottoman rule is part of the history of various communities, some of whom were able (and some unable) to shape and imagine themselves into a nation in the modern era thanks to a “historical consciousness” of their own (real or imagined) pre-Ottoman identity on the one hand and to that long and formative historical experience mentioned above on the other.
Specific issues of policymaking often do not require recourse to a historical argument, but the deeper matrix of orientations in which policy is made is inextricably linked with issues of national, that is, historical, identity in the political culture of nation-states. “Who we are,” at least in political discourse, is taken to be a major determinant of “how we should act.” Such linkages ultimately bring history-writing to the political sphere since national identity is defined and redefined through a historical discourse. “Who we are” is a culmination of “who we have been.” While this is valid for all nation-states to some degree or other, it is particularly pointed in some which have not resolved their identity questions as successfully as others; and this is valid for most, if not all, of the Ottoman successor states.
This is not to say that any such resolution is ever final; I do not mean that France, for instance, has defined its national identity in a decisive manner, that its historiography has comfortably removed itself from the sphere of politics, and that younger nation-states will eventually do the same. There is nothing to warrant such optimism. There are similar problems in the “mature” nation-states as well, and we are constantly reminded by the reactions in Europe and North America to the growth of the numbers of Muslims or blacks or freedom-or opportunity-seeking refugees from the Third and Second Worlds that these problems can easily become more acute in the West. The assertion of regional identities across Europe is another reminder of the fact that the relative homogeneity of modern European nation-states, which arguably served as models in much of world politics and historiography, disguises a multilayered history. It now seems that that homogeneity is in part a cultural construction, built through not only historical exigencies and certain forms of exclusivism but also a linear narrative of the story of “our true nation, one united people across time.”20
There is no doubt, however, that the question of identity is particularly acute in Ottoman successor states, including Turkey, a relatively young nation-state, the historiographical (and thus also political) discourse of which has been the major ingredient of Ottoman studies in this century. The thrust of political ideologies runs just as deep in the historical consciousness of the other post-Ottoman nation-states of the Balkans and the Middle East. But the Turkish case is the more significant one for our purposes because of its obvious, but not necessarily to-be-taken-for-granted, centrality in Ottoman studies.
Three major issues still make up the underlying currents of tension in different national interpretations of Ottoman state building, though versions of the near consensus reached among Turkish historians in the first half of this century are accepted by international scholarship at large.21These issues are not necessarily discussed any more—at any rate they do not inspire many original research projects—but one can still feel the tension generated by differences of opinion on them. First is the rather racially conceived question of numbers: how many Turks came to Asia Minor, how many Anatolian Christians converted, what is the ratio of “real” Turks to converts in the composition of the later “Turkish” society under the Ottomans? Although there was heated debate on this question in the earlier part of this century, as we shall see in the next chapter, it was resolved in favor of “real” Turks.22 National historiographic discourses could hardly accommodate a different answer, whether one considers the Ottomans to be one's own or one's enemy. Thus, a nationalist Turkish and a nationalist Greek historian might easily agree that the Ottoman state was built by Turks, while the ethnic origins of a particularly favorable character such as an artist or a “good vezir” may be disputed.
Second is the issue of dislocation and violence caused by the migrations and the invasions; like the next question, it is one of respectability. There is a tendency on the one hand to portray them as sheer violence and, on the other, to see the migratory process as rather pacific. Here, most of the Turkish historians took the position that such disruption was minimal, while the nationalisms that defined themselves as liberation movements from the yoke of an alien people tended to emphasize the violence in the process that led to the rise of Ottoman power.23 It is not only the desire to cater to the pacific values of the modern world that compels historians to magnify the level of violent power displayed by the other side or to reduce that displayed by their own. Some macho bravado is also involved here. Namely, it is also to portray defeat as due to the numerousness and violence of the enemy's military forces or to protect victory from being attributed to sheer numbers and brute power (rather than bravery, values, faith, tactics, etc.).
Whatever the motives, there are two main strategies here that can be mixed in varying degrees: to argue that the expansion was very or only minimally violent, or to argue that the rule of the conquerors or of the former regime was more tyrannical than the other and made violence legitimate. Thus Turkish historians, for instance, have gladly borrowed and chosen to focus on the modern European image of a “degenerate” Byzantium and of a rapacious feudalism before the Ottoman order: some violence may have been exerted but only for a good cause in the end.24
Third is the issue of influence whereby an otherwise hostile national tradition might recognize the good things in its foe only to then “demonstrate” that the good thing is actually of one's own but taken over by the other as an “influence.” Here the burning issue was, and to some extent still is, whether and how much the Ottomans (read Turks) were influenced by the Byzantines (read Greeks), though on this issue the “Turkish consensus” is most deeply respected in the international scholarly community. As we shall see in the next chapter, the creation of the Ottoman administrative apparatus has been particularly controversial in this regard, with some historians arguing that it was all based on Byzantine models and