Introduction

Alloul, Houssine; Eldem, Edhem; de Smaele, Henk

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-48932-6_1

Houssine Alloul⁴,
Edhem Eldem⁵ &
Henk de Smaele⁶

411 Accesses

Abstract

In the introductory chapter, the editors explain and situate the main questions and objectives of the book. It is suggested that the book can be seen as a form of ‘transnational microhistory’: through a detailed and multi-perspectival reconstruction of the failed assassination plot against Sultan Abdülhamid II and the events it triggered, the different contributors to this edited volume collectively elucidate the international and global interconnections that not only forged the 1905 conspiracy, but also defined its aftermath. These interconnections are disparate and complex, but this book lays them bare through its focus on embodied experiences: the micro-reality of macro-phenomena. This introduction evokes and engages with different historiographical (sub)fields and debates that are relevant for such a wider understanding of the dramatic events of 1905: the history of European imperialism and the international position of the Ottoman Empire during the Hamidian era; the growth of transnational anarchism and radicalism, noticeable in the Ottoman Empire as well and eliciting reaction from the government; the intensifying spiral of terrorism and state repression; the turn to violent action by Armenian revolutionary organizations; the rise of the figure of the political prisoner and, finally,of transnational humanitarian activism.

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Notes

1.
On the domestic political and symbolical significance of the Friday prayer ceremony, see S. Deringil (2011/1999) The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire 1876–1909 (London: I. B. Tauris), pp. 16ff, and specifically at pp. 23–25; and D. Stephanov (2012) ‘Minorities, Majorities, and the Monarch: Nationalizing Effects of the Late Ottoman Royal Public Ceremonies, 1808–1908’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Memphis), pp. 34–35, 182–183, and 211–214. Recently, some Russian footage has been discovered of the selamlık in which Abdülhamid II is shortly visible. The footage probably dates from after the 1908 Young Turk Revolution and can be watched on YouTube.
2.
Yıldız (Star in Turkish) was the name given to a palatial complex built on the hill overlooking Beşiktaş, on the Bosphorus. Although the history of this imperial domain goes back to the seventeenth century, it owes its development as an imperial palace to Abdülhamid II, who, finding his predecessors’ seaside palaces of Dolmabahçe and Çırağan too vulnerable, turned this location into his heavily guarded and inaccessible residence. In 1885–1886 the Sultan added to this very eclectic assemblage of kiosks a mosque bearing his name, Hamidiye Camii, built at a stone’s throw from the palace, thus allowing him to perform his public Friday prayers within the secured perimeter of the palace. This palace was so closely associated with Abdülhamid that Yıldız came to be used in the political jargon of the time to represent his personal and autocratic rule, while the (subdued) government continued to be named after the [Sublime] Porte (Bab-ı Âli).
3.
It is not our ambition to have the last word on the ‘specifics’ of the conspiracy and we readily admit that many thorny questions remain shrouded in mystery. For instance, did St Petersburg ‘know’ of the plot? Were some of the conspirators actually working for foreign governments? Did Sofia withhold from Istanbul some intelligence on the conspiracy? How to understand the ARF’s ‘plan B’, which envisioned in case the attempt would fail, bombing ‘for eight to ten consecutive days’ major Ottoman and foreign landmarks in Istanbul and Izmir, but was quickly uncovered by the police? (The quote is from a study by Garabet K. Moumdjian, which provides some details on this parallel plot. See (2011) ‘From Millet-i Sadıka to Millet-i Asiya: Abdülhamid II and Armenians, 1878–1909’, in M. H. Yavuz and P. Sluglett (eds.) War and Diplomacy: The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), pp. 332–333.) Some of these more thorny issues are touched upon in Chap. 2.
4.
A Turkish author of crime novels has very recently published a novel based on the event: Ahmet Küçükkerniç (2015) Kıskaç. Yıldız Suikastı [The Clamp: The Yıldız Attempt] (Istanbul: Profil Yayıncılık). While working on this book, we have been contacted by radio broadcasters, several journalists and even a playwright.
5.
See the epilogue.
6.
M. Davis (2007) Buda’s Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (London: Verso). We thank the anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.
7.
W. Resseler and B. Suykerbuyk (1997) Dynamiet voor de Sultan. Carolus Edward Joris in Konstantinopel (Antwerp: b+b).
8.
V. Engin (1995) ‘Sultan II. Abdülhamid’e Düzenlenen Ermeni Suikasti ve Bu Sebeple Belçika İle Yaşnan Diplomatik Kriz [The Armenian Attempt on Sultan Abdülhamid II and the Ensuing Diplomatic Crisis with Belgium], BELLETEN, 225, 413–428; C. Verbruggen (2009) Schrijverschap in de Belgische Belle Époque. Een sociaal–culturele geschiedenis (Ghent: Academia Press; Nimeguen: Vantilt), pp. 161–166; F. Georgeon (2003) Abdülhamid II. Le sultan calife (1876–1909) (Paris: Fayard), pp. 389–393; R. Kévorkian (2011) The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History (London: I. B. Tauris), pp. 35–36; Moumdjian, ‘From Millet-i Sadıka to Millet-i Asiya’; S. Delbecque (2012) “‘Die jongen moet vrijkomen’. De aanslag van Edward Joris op de Ottomaanse Sultan Abdülhamid II”, MA thesis (University of Antwerp).
9.
L. Briggs, G. McCormick, and J. T. Way (2008) ‘Transnationalism: A Category of Analysis’, American Quarterly, 60 (3), 625–648. Quote is at p. 644. See also Chap. 3 for a detailed treatment of some of these questions.
10.
G. G. Iggers (1997) Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press).
11.
There are many exceptions of course and especially the work of Akira Iriye on U.S.-Japanese relations has been exemplary to many scholars in the field.
12.
M. Werner and B. Zimmermann (2006) ‘Beyond Comparisons: Histoire croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory, 45, 30–50.
13.
See e.g. L. Colley (2007) ‘One Life reveals a Global History’, RSA Journal, 154, 38–43; L. Hunt (2014) Writing History in the Global Era (New York: Norton). For a similar plea within the field of IR studies, see B. Mabee (2007) ‘Levels and Agents, States and People: Micro-Historical Sociological Analysis and International Relations’, International Politics, 44, 431–449.
14.
L. Putnam (2006) ‘To Study the Fragments/Whole: Microhistory and the Atlantic World’, Journal of Social History, 39, p. 616.
15.
Introduction to the 2013 H-Diplo Roundtable Review, vol. 14, of J. D. Meehan (2011) Chasing the Dragon in Shanghai: Canada’s Early Relations with China, 1858–1952 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).
16.
R. Kowner (2007) The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War (New York: Routledge); C. Aydin (2007) The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York: Columbia University Press); P. Mishra (2015/2012) From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia (London: Penguin); S. Esenbel (2004) ‘Japan’s Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945’, The American Historical Review, 109, 1140–1170.
17.
M. Gerbig-Fabel (2008) ‘Photographic Artefacts of War, 1904-1905: The Russo-Japanese War as Transnational Media Event’, European Review of History, 15, 629-642.
18.
Z. I. Búzás (2013) ‘The Color of Threat: Race, Threat Perception, and the Demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902–1923)’, Security Studies, 22, 573–606.
19.
A. M. Nordlund (2015) ‘A War of Others: British War Correspondents, Orientalist Discourse, and the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905’, War in History, 22, 28–46.
20.
D. Howland (2011) ‘Sovereignty and the Laws of War: International Consequences of Japan’s 1905 Victory over Russia’, Law and History Review, 29, 53–97.
21.
R. Worringer (2004) ‘“Sick Man of Europe” or “Japan of the Near East”?: Constructing Ottoman Modernity in the Hamidian and Young Turk Eras’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 36, 207–230.
22.
H. Jones (2009) ‘Algeciras Revisited: European Crisis and Conference Diplomacy, 16 January–7 April 1906’, EUI Working Papers. Max Weber Programme.
23.
R. Schulze (2000) A Modern History of the Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris).
24.
O. F. Khalil (2014) ‘The Crossroads of the World: U.S. and British Foreign Policy Doctrines and the Construct of the Middle East, 1902–2007’, Diplomatic History, 38, 299–344; G. Çetinsaya (2003) ‘The Ottoman View of British Presence in Iraq and the Gulf: The Era of Abdulhamid II’, Middle Eastern Studies, 39, 194–203. The British General Staff, asked about the possibility of a British attack on the Dardanelles, came to the conclusion, however, that such an undertaking would be highly hazardous. See K. Wilson (2013) ‘Reality-Check 1906–1907: The British Government Recognizes the Limitations of its Power of Offence against the Ottoman Empire’, Middle Eastern Studies, 49, 517–527.
25.
J. D. Savage (2010) ‘The Stability and Breakdown of Empire: European Informal Empire in China, the Ottoman Empire and Egypt’, European Journal of International Relations, 17, 161–185.
26.
J. Burman (2009) ‘British Strategic Interests versus Ottoman Sovereign Rights: New Perspectives on the Aqaba Crisis, 1906’, Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History, 37, 275–292.
27.
On German-Ottoman relations, see S. McMeekin (2010) The Berlin-Baghdad Express: The Ottoman Empire and Germany’s Bid for World Power (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press); İ. Ortaylı (2006) Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda Alman Nüfuzu (Istanbul: Alkım).
28.
M. S. Palabıyık (2015) ‘International Law for Survival: Teaching International Law in the Late Ottoman Empire (1859–1922)’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental & African Studies, 78, 271–292; Ö. Kürkçüoğlu (2004) ‘The Adoption and Use of Permanent Diplomacy’, in A. N. Yurdusev (ed.) Ottoman Diplomacy: Conventional or Unconventional? (London: Palgrave), 131–150; S. Kuneralp (1982) ‘The Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic’, in Z. Steiner (ed.) The Times Survey of Foreign Ministries of the World (London: Times Books), 493–510.
29.
The literature on this subject is vast. See, for instance, L. R. Schumacher (2014) ‘The Eastern Question as a Europe Question: Viewing the Ascent of ‘Europe’ through the Lens of Ottoman Decline’, Journal of European Studies, 44, 64–80; I. B. Neumann IB. (1999) Uses of the Other: ‘The East’ in European Identity Formation, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), 39–64.
30.
On the complex system of international ‘stratification’, see E. Keene (2014) ‘The Standard of ‘Civilisation’, the Expansions Thesis and the 19th-century International Social Space’, Milennium: Journal of International Studies, 21, 651–673. For a concrete attempt to rank nations according to their prestige, see (for what it is worth) J. D. Singer and M. Small (1966) ‘The Composition and Status-Ordering of the International System’, World Politics, 18, 236–282. In this list, ‘Turkey’ reached fourth position in 1827, where it remained until the middle of the century. It then gradually dropped to tenth position in the 1880s. By 1904, it ranked twelfth.
31.
On the Ottoman Balkans in this period, see I. Blumi (2011) Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800–1912 (New York; Basingstoke: Palgrave); İ. K. Yosmaoglu (2013) Blood Ties: Religion, Violence and the Politics of Nationhood in Ottoman Macedonia, 1878–1908 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).
32.
W. E. Gladstone (1876) Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London: John Murray); Idem (1877) Lessons in Massacre; Or, the Conduct of the Turkish Government in and about Bulgaria since May, 1876 (London: John Murray). The scholarship on the subject is vast. See, among others, T. Sahara (2011) ‘Two Different Images: Bulgarian and English Sources on the Batak Massacre’, in M. H. Yavuz and P. Sluglett (eds.) War and Diplomacy: The Russo–Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), 479–510; and S. Prévost (2013) ‘W. T. Stead and the Eastern Question (1875–1911); Or, How to Rouse England and Why?’, 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 16(1), http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/index.php/19/article/view/654/898.
33.
D. Gürpinar (2012) ‘The Rise and Fall of Turcophilism in Nineteenth-Century British Discourses: Visions of the Turk, “Young” and “Old”’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 39, 346–371.
34.
J. Laycock (2009) Imagining Armenia: Orientalism, Ambiguity and Intervention (Manchester: Manchester University Press); D. Rodogno (2012) Against Massacre: Humanitarian Intervention in The Ottoman Empire 1815-1914, (Princeton: Princeton University Press); J. Perkins (2015) ‘The Congo of Europe: The Balkans and Empire in Early Twentieth-Century British Political Culture’, The Historical Journal, 58, 565–587; A. Heraclides (2012) ‘Humanitarian Intervention in the 19th Century: The Heyday of a Controversial Concept’, Global Society, 26, 215–240.
35.
C. E. Farah (1995) ‘Reassessing Sultan Abdülhamid II’s Islamic policy’, Archivum Ottomanicum, 14, 191–212; B. W. Andaya (1977) ‘From Rüm to Tokyo: The Search for Anticolonial Allies by the Rulers of Riau, 1899–1914’, Indonesia, 24, 123–156; Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia; A. Özcan (1997) Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877–1924 (Leiden: Brill).
36.
‘Sympathy with the Turkish government extends throughout the whole Mussulman world’, including ‘the millions of British subjects who confess the [Islamic] faith […] That alone ought to induce humane and pious persons amongst us, who are moved to engage in the denunciation of Turkish atrocities, not to indulge in language which may even seem to convey that there is nothing they would relish so clearly as active measures of coercion directed against the Sovereign, who is widely regarded as the earthly head of Islam’. Times, 28 November 1905. For more context and analysis, see Chap. 7.
37.
U. Makdisi (2002) ‘Ottoman Orientalism’, The American Historical Review, 107, 768–796.
38.
N. Sohrabi (2002) ‘Global Waves, Local Actors: What the Young Turks Knew about Other Revolutions and Why It Mattered’, Comparative Studies in Society & History, 44, 45–79; N. Sohrabi (2011) Revolution and Constitutionalism in the Ottoman Empire and Iran (New York: Cambridge University Press).
39.
A. Gorman (2013) ‘Radical Internationalists on the Nile and across the Mediterranean’, in A. Lymperatos (ed.) Social Transformation and Mass Mobilisation In the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Cities, 1900–1923 (Heraklion: Crete University Press), 307–21; I. Khuri-Makdisi (2010) The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press). An earlier generation of labor historians pioneered the field, however. The late Donald Quataert, for instance, already considered the exchange of ideas between Western workers (with experience in trade union action) and locals employed in foreign-owned companies in his 1983 classic Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881–1908: Reactions to European Economic Penetration (New York: New York University Press).
40.
The ARF’s message in question, addressed to the ‘representatives of the Powers, signatories of the Treaty of Berlin’, did not refer to the attempt in explicit terms. For the full text of the note, see Resseler and Suykerbuyk, Dynamiet voor de Sultan, pp. 73–74.
41.
J. Hanssen (2011) ‘“Malhamé–Malfamé”: Levantine Elites and Transimperial Networks on the Eve of the Young Turk Revolution’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 43, 25–48: ‘Many thought the bomb was planted by Zionists because of Abdülhamit II’s refusal to sell Palestinian land; others believed that Bulgarian revolutionaries were behind it’. See also Chap. 7.
42.
Alfonso XIII (r. 1886–1931) notoriously survived at least ten assassination attempts throughout his long reign.
43.
For a highly readable, well-documented narrative history of European anarchism before the Great War, see A. Butterworth (2011) The World That Never Was: A True Story of Dreamers, Schemers, Anarchists and Secret Agents (London: Vintage).
44.
Consider, for instance, that after an anarchist gunman killed Umberto I of Italy in the summer of 1900, draconian ‘security’ measures were implemented in Istanbul and access to the selamlık was heavily restricted. See the reports of the Belgian plenipotentiary to the Ottoman Empire on 5 and 21 August 1900, Archief van Buitenlandse Zaken, Brussels [hereafter ABZ], Political Correspondence ‘Turkey’ (new series), vol. 3.
45.
F. Georgeon (1997) ‘Le sultan caché. Réclusion du souverain et mise en scène du pouvoir à l’époque de Abdülhamid II (1876–1909)’, Turcica, 29, 93–124. For a portrait of Abdülhamid’s personality and character, see F. A. K. Yasamee (1996) Ottoman Diplomacy: Abdülhamid II and the Great Powers, 1878–1888 (Istanbul: The Isis Press), pp. 19–29.
46.
R. B. Jensen (2013) The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878–1934 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 306; İ. Yılmaz (2015) ‘Anti-Anarchism and Security Perceptions during the Hamidian Era’, Zapruder World, 1.
47.
See Chapter 3.
48.
M. Ş. Hanioğlu (1995) The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 130–132.
49.
Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition, p. 164; M. Ş. Hanioğlu (2001) Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 57–58.
50.
Women played key roles in the plot, and two females were part of the execution commando in Istanbul. The long neglected role of women, and more broadly gender in revolutionary struggles, has recently attracted more scholarly interest, see, for instance, A. Hillyar and J. McDermid (2000) Revolutionary Women in Russia, 1870–1917: A Study in Collective Biography (Manchester: Manchester University Press).
51.
D. Bloxham (2007) ‘Terrorism and Imperial Decline: The Ottoman-Armenian Case’ European Review of History, 14, 301–324. The notion of ‘waves of terrorism’ was introduced by D. C. Rapoport (2004) ‘The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism’, in A. K. Cronin and J. M. Ludes (eds.) Attacking Terrorism: Elements of a Grand Strategy (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press), 46–73. As Rapoport emphasizes, thinking in ‘waves’ has the advantage of looking at the phenomenon of political violence from an international perspective. On the history of terrorism, see the seminal studies by W. Laqueur, especially (2001) A History of Terrorism (New Brunswick; London: Transaction).
52.
H. Laurens (2010) ‘Le terrorisme comme personnage historique’, in H. Laurens and M. Delmas-Marty (eds.) Terrorismes. Histoire et droit (Paris: CNRS Editions), 9–66. See also, in the same volume, H. Bozarslan, ‘De l’action révolutionnaire aux “bandes” au pouvoir. Les comitadjilik ottomans au tournant du XXe siècle’, 67–88.
53.
On these attacks, see Yılmaz, ‘Anti-Anarchism and Security Perceptions’.
54.
For a recent and critical review of the field of ‘Terrorism Studies’ and the many challenges it is faced with, see A. Roberts (2015) ‘Terrorism Research: Past, Present, and Future’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 38, 62–74.
55.
Throughout modern history (and until today) repressive states often employ(ed) these labels to their political opponents in attempts to delegitimize their struggles and reinforce their own hegemonic position. It should be noted too, that the ‘terrorism’ label often deflected (deflects) attention from instances of massive state violence, or ‘state terrorism’, against (its own or foreign) ‘subversive’ civilians.
56.
See, for instance, W. F. Sughart II (2006) ‘An Analytical History of Terrorism, 1945–2000’, Public Choice, 128, 7–39. However, C. Wight states that ‘this extreme form of subjectivism is unacceptable’. See his article: (2009) ‘Theorising Terrorism: The State, Structure and History’, International Relations, 23, 99–106.
57.
Wight, ‘Theorising Terrorism’.
58.
Z. Lockman (2010) Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 227.
59.
On the history of regicide, see T. Verschaffel (2000) Koningsmoorden (Leuven: Leuven University Press); F. L. Ford (1985) Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press); G. Minois (1997) Le couteau et le poison. L’assassinat politique en Europe (1400–1800) (Paris: Fayard); D. G. Courtney (1993) King’s Cross: A Story of Regicide (Kingston, Ont.: Quarry Press); M. Eisner (2011) ‘Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600–1800’, British Journal of Criminology, 51, 556–577. For a very brief historical overview, as well as some reflections on the contemporary relevance of the ideas on tyrannicide, see J. d’Asprement (2010) Tyrannicide in International Law, in C. Tomuschat, E. Lagrange and S. Oeter (eds.), The Right to Life (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff), 287–314. The justification of tyrannicide seems to have been more or less absent in Sunni political thought before Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966). See D. Orbach (2012) ‘Tyrannicide in Radical Islam: The Case of Sayyid Qutb and Abd al-Salam Faraj’, Middle Eastern Studies, 48, 961–972.
60.
Between 1859 and 1878, at least five attempts to dethrone and/or kill the reigning sultan were thwarted. F. Riedler (2010) Opposition and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire: Conspiracies and Political Cultures (London: Routledge); G. Piterberg (2003) An Ottoman Tragedy: History and Historiography at Play (Berkeley: University of California Press); B. Onaran (2013) Détrôner le sultan. Deux conjurations à l’époque des réformes ottomanes, Kuleli (1859) et Meslek (1867) (Paris: Peeters); N. Vatin and G. Veinstein (2003) Le Sérail ébranlé. Essai sur les morts, dépositions et avènements des sultans ottomans, XIVe–XIXe siècle (Paris: Fayard).
61.
The ARF manifest sent to the Great Power ambassadors the day after the attack starts as follows: ‘The crimes of the Tyrant, unpunished for too long, still cry for vengeance and the Armenian revolutionaries, faced with the black despair of their people, have no other choice in their means [of action]’. Original quotation: ‘Les crimes du Tyran, trop longtemps impunis, crient toujours vengeance et les révolutionnaires arméniens, devant le suprême désespoir de leur peuple, n’ont point d’embarras dans le choix des moyens’. Resseler and Suykerbuyk, Dynamiet voor de Sultan, p. 73.
62.
On the significance of ‘terror’ within the history of terrorism, see B. Bowden and M. T. Davis (2008) Terror: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism (St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press).
63.
J. Merriman (2009) The Dynamite Club: How a Bombing in Fin-de-Siècle Paris Ignited the Age of Modern Terror (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt); S. K. Morrissey (2012) ‘The “Apparel of Innocence”: Toward a Moral Economy of Terrorism in Late Imperial Russia’, The Journal of Modern History, 84, 607–642.
64.
H. F. Woods (1924) Spunyarn from the Strands of a Sailor’s Life Afloat and Ashore: Forty-Seven Years under the Ensigns of Great Britain and Turkey (London: Hutchinson), vol. 2, pp. 234–235.
65.
M. Fridlund (2011) ‘Buckets, Bollards and Bombs: Towards Subject Histories of Technologies and Terrors’, History and Technology, 27, pp. 391–416. See on this point also the description of technological innovations and their social impact in Merriman, The Dynamite Club.
66.
Moumdjian, ‘From Millet-i Sadıka to Millet-i Asiya’, pp. 332–333.
67.
L’Echo de Paris, 28 August 1905.
68.
Letter to Grace Ellison, March 1907, from Nice, in G. Ellison (ed.) (2005/1913) A Turkish Woman’s European Impressions, by Zeyneb Hanoum (Heroine of Pierre Loti’s Novel ‘Les Désenchantées’) (London: Gorgias Press), pp. 141–142. She was the daughter of Nuri Bey, secretary-general of the Foreign Ministry. For further context, see A. Quella-Villéger (2011) Évadées du harem. Affaire d’État et féminisme à Constantinople (1906) (Brussels: André Versaille).
69.
L’Echo de Paris, 2 October 1905.
70.
A. Braithwaite (2013) ‘The Logic of Public Fear in Terrorism and Counter-terrorism’, Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, 28, 95–101.
71.
For a historical overview of state responses to anarchist violence, see Jensen, The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism.
72.
R. B. Jensen (2009) ‘The International Campaign Against Anarchist Terrorism, 1880–1930 s’, Terrorism & Political Violence, 21, p. 89.
73.
Jensen, ‘The International Campaign Against Anarchist Terrorism’.
74.
See Chap. 4.
75.
On domestic censorship and press policies, see İ. K. Yosmaoğlu (2003) ‘Chasing the Printed Word: Press Censorship in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1913’, Turkish Studies Association Journal 27 (1–2), 15–50; E. Boyar (2006) ‘The Press and the Palace: The Two-way Relationship Between Abdülhamid II and the Press, 1876–1908’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 69 (3), 417–432.
76.
Tahdis-i Nimet-i Rabb-i İzzet’ (Relation of a Blessing of God Almighty), Servet-i Fünun. Tevcihat ve Havadis Kısmı. Supplément politique, 744 (24 Cemaziyülevvel 1323/14 July 1321/27 July 1905).
77.
‘Tahdis-i Nimet-i Rabb-i İzzet’.
78.
Report of the French chargé d’affaires in Istanbul to Pichon, 26 October 1905, Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve (Paris), ‘Correspondence politique et commercially, Turquie’, nr. 177.
79.
Hanssen, ‘Levantine Elites and Transimperial Networks’, p. 38. See e.g. Times, 7 November 1905. See also Chap. 4 for more details.
80.
(1321/1905) Temmuz’un Sekizinci Cuma Günü Selamlık Mevki-i Âlisinde İcra Kılınan İştial-i Cinaî Hakkında Ba İrade-i Seniye-i Hazret-i Hilafetpenahi Teşekkül Eden Komisyon-i Mahsus Tarafından İcra Kılınan Tahkikatın Fezlekesidir (Istanbul). For the abridged French translation, see: (1905) Enquête sur l’attentat commis dans la journée du 21 juillet à l’issue de la cérémonie du Sélamlik. Travaux de la Commission Spéciale (Istanbul: F. Loeffler). A modern Turkish version of the report was published rather recently: R. Gündoğdu (ed.) (2007) Sultan İkinci Abdülhamid Han’a Yapılan Suikastin Tahkikat Raporu (Istanbul: Çamlıca Basım Yayın).
81.
Bloxham, ‘Terrorism and Imperial Decline’. See also D. Bloxham (2005) The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
82.
Enquête sur l’attentat, pp. 61, 70, 89, 95–96, 119.
83.
E. Eldem (2015) ‘L’écrivain engagé et le bureaucrate zélé. La prise de la Banque ottomane et les “événements” de 1896 selon Victor Bérard et Hüseyin Nazım Pacha’, in S. Basch (ed.), Portraits de Victor Bérard (Athens: École française d’Athènes), p. 224.
84.
Times, 7 November 1905.
85.
See, for example, the letter of Joris to his wife Anna Nellens, 20 March 1907, in Resseler and Suykerbuyk, Dynamiet voor de Sultan, pp. 125–145. This is also confirmed by Moumdjian, ‘From Millet-i Sadıka to Millet-i Asiya’, pp. 232–233, 350n172.
86.
Letter to his wife, 20 March 1907, in Resseler and Suykerbuyk, Dynamiet voor de Sultan, p. 125.
87.
Ibid.
88.
Times, 7 November 1905.
89.
See his report, dated 3 December 1905, ABZ, Political files [hereafter PF], 4417/12, vol. 1.
90.
Incarcerated activists elsewhere deployed similar tactics to represent themselves as ‘political prisoners’; see P. Kenney (2012) ‘“I Felt a Kind of Pleasure in Seeing Them Treat Us Brutally”: The Emergence of the Political Prisoner, 1865–1910’, Comparative Studies in Society & History, 54, 863–889.
91.
Undated letter, in Resseler and Suykerbuyk, Dynamiet voor de Sultan, pp. 127–145.
92.
Edinburgh Evening News, 14 December 1905.
93.
In total 32 people were charged, but most of them had fled the country.
94.
According to the Belgian plenipotentiary in Istanbul many only later understood all the implications of their actions and had been ignorant about the true aims of the complot. Report of 5 December 1905, ABZ, PF 4417/12, vol. 1.
95.
On the relationship between liberalism and Orientalism, see particularly some feminist studies: M. Yeğenoğlu (1998) Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press); J. Zonana (1993) ‘The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of “Jane Eyre”’, Signs, 18, 592–617. On the rise of anti-Muslim sentiments among the European far right, see F. Bravo López (2013) ‘The Genocidal Islamophobia of a Late Nineteenth-Century French Anti-Semite: D. Kimon and The Pathology of Islam’, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 25, 101–116.
96.
For Britain, see Gürpinar, ‘The Rise and Fall of Turcophilism’.

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University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Houssine Alloul
Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
Edhem Eldem
University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Henk de Smaele

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Houssine Alloul
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Department of History, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Houssine Alloul
Department of History, Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey
Edhem Eldem
Department of History, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
Henk de Smaele

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Alloul, H., Eldem, E., de Smaele, H. (2018). Introduction. In: Alloul, H., Eldem, E., de Smaele, H. (eds) To Kill a Sultan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48932-6_1

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48932-6_1
Published: 08 November 2017
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