Empire of Exile: Treason and Banishment in Late Ottoman History

FAIN: FT-278927-21

Lale Can
CUNY Research Foundation, City College (New York, NY 10031-9101)

Research and writing for a history of internal exile in the late Ottoman Empire (1700-1900).

This project investigates how one of the world’s most important empires—the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922)—deployed exile as a tool of governance and offers a novel case study of treason in Middle East history. It reconstructs how exile shaped Ottoman political and social history, particularly conceptions of imperial belonging and territoriality. Weaving together legal, administrative, and literary sources, it considers the exercise and limits of state authority and violence, the notion of a collective that traitors were charged with acting against, and the emergence of an idea of an imperial homeland. In essence, “Empire of Exile” asks what it meant to be an Ottoman subject through the study of people accused of threatening the social and political order. The NEH grant will support the writing of a journal article that charts the constellation of crimes that constituted treason and traces the emergence of a uniquely Ottoman culture of exile.