Nation-Making and the Language of Colonialism: Voices from Ottoman Van in Armenian Print Media and Handwritten Petitions (1820s to 1870s)

Abstract

This dissertation integrates the eastern borderland region of Van into the history of Ottoman modernization in the nineteenth-century. Through a case study of Van, this dissertation traces processes of secularization and democratization in the context of Ottoman Armenian nation-making. In an in-depth study of Armenian print culture, I read newspapers, periodicals and books produced in Venice, Istanbul, the Russian Empire and Van in conjunction with handwritten petitions from Van Armenians directed to the Constantinople Armenian Patriarchate and the Catholicosate of Ējmiatsin—the highest office of the Armenian Church located in the Russian Empire. Weaving together different modes of communication, this dissertation illustrates how Van and its inhabitants shaped Ottoman modernity. To decenter the role of the Ottoman state reforms launched in 1839, known as the Tanzimat, this dissertation begins instead with the 1820s. I examine Ottoman modernization through the spheres of technologies of communication, education, and discourses on love of nation and patria, as well as the politics of representation voiced by migrants from Van in Istanbul. I analyze how the language of colonialism in print media forged enduring categories of difference between the metropole and the Ottoman East as it simultaneously served to cultivate affective bonds among Armenians and their patria—Armenia.