Provincial Cosmopolitanism' in Late Ottoman Anatolia

An Armenian Shoemaker's Memoir

Bibliographic Data

ID2108910
AuthorsNora Lessersohn (Harvard University, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume57
Issue2
Pages528-556
Publication date2015-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417515000122
OpenAlexW2016876335
LanguageIT
Citations received9
References cited27

This paper examines the nature of late Ottoman provincial intercommunal interactions and affiliations as they appear in the memoir of Hovhannes Cherishian (1886-1967), a shoemaker from late Ottoman Marash (present-day Kahramanmaraş, in southeastern Turkey). The paper is situated within the larger discourse of 'untold histories' that historians have begun to address in revising the deeply ingrained post-Ottoman nationalist historiographies that dominate both academic and popular discourses. Conventional historiographies have represented former late Ottoman subject communities (e.g., Greek, Jewish, Armenian) as insulated and homogenous proto-nation-states. In the revisionist historiography, the late Ottoman Armenian voice, especially the provincial one, has been noticeably absent. Here I utilize Cherishian's memoir to examine the life and thoughts of one late Ottoman Armenian provincial subject. I focus especially on his treatment of intercommunal interactions in Anatolia and present-day Syria between 1897 and 1922. His accounts of these often extended intercommunal interactions, affiliations, and networks are characterized by intercommunal and interpersonal openness, sympathy, intimacy, and pleasure, even as he presents them side-by-side with descriptions of deportation and death at the hands of the late Ottoman state. I develop the idea of what I call 'provincial cosmopolitanism' to conceptualize and represent the disposition, affinity, and process of identity formation that enabled Cherishian to create and operate these interpersonal relationships and networks that propelled his life, a historical condition to which we are not currently privy in most historiographical accounts of the late Ottoman period

Ancient history · Archaeology · Armenian · Art history · Cosmopolitanism · Diaspora · Genocide · Historiography · Memoir · Nationalism · Political science · Sociology · Subject (documents) · Gender Studies · History · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Turkey's Politics and Society

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