The Ottoman Empire and ''the rest of the world'': late Ottoman first person narratives regarding the Ottoman perceptions on the non European world and the Ottoman periphery

Abstract

This thesis is a study of the late Ottoman modes of perceptions and conceptions of the non-European world and their own Arab provinces. It is based on a systematic comparison of the Ottoman perceptions and conceptions with the European colonial discourses and its rhetorical modalities. The main argument of this study is that the Ottoman response to the Western discourses in the context of the non European world and the Ottoman Arab periphery were dualistic in nature. It was the internalization of the fundamental aspects of the European colonial discourses while resisting many aspects of it. The sources used in this study are the late Ottoman travelogues and memoirs. In the course of this study the main characteristics of the orientalist discourse as a fundamental part of the colonial discourses and the rhetorical tools of the colonial discourses are discussed in order to render a systematic comparison with the European discourses possible. Then, it was respectively followed by a systematic comparison between the Ottoman perceptions of the non-European world and the European visions on the non-Europe and between the Ottoman perceptions of the Arab periphery and the European visions on the Orient. This study claims that there were both convergences and divergences between the Ottoman and European perceptions and conceptions of the world around them; it investigates various factors that had contributed to these convergences and divergences.