The Power of Connections: Interpersonal Networks and Agency in the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman Europe. Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises "Das osmanische Europa"

The Power of Connections: Interpersonal Networks and Agency in the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman Europe. Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises "Das osmanische Europa"

Organizer
Seminar für Neuere Geschichte, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; Zentrum für Islamische Theologie, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; Abteilung für Orient- und Islamwissenschaft, Eberhard Karls Universitä Tübingen; Historisches Institut, Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen; Organisiert von Ayşegül Argıt (Heidelberg), Prof. Dr. Lejla Demiri (Tübingen) und Dr. Tobias Graf (Tübingen/Heidelberg); in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Arbeitskreis "Das osmanische Europa"
Venue
Theologicum, Liebermeister Straße 12, 72076 Tübingen, Seminrraum 12 (2. Stock, Zimmer 223)
Location
Tübingen
Country
Germany
From - Until
27.09.2017 - 28.09.2017
By
Ayşegül Argıt, Lejla Demiri, Tobias Graf

Whether on a local, a regional, an imperial, or a global level, interpersonal networks provide the crucial social infrastructure for human activity across the board, from ostensibly lonely academic studies to dinner parties, from travel to conquest. Like the physical infrastructure provided by roads and ports, the postal system and telegraph lines, water pipes and electric wires, this social infrastructure enables, shapes, and sustains certain forms of human behaviour. Like physical infrastructure, the existence of social infrastructure was the result of conscious efforts as much as serendipity. Moreover, in their very nature, interpersonal networks were dynamic, changing over time as individual members reoriented themselves or passed away and as the social, political, economic, and legal frameworks transformed. Such shifts in turn affected the formation of webs of contact as well as the respective patterns of, and options for, action.

The 2017 Annual Conference of the Working Group "Ottoman Europe" brings together scholars working on the Ottoman Empire and Ottoman Europe from the fourteenth to the twentieth century to reflect on the ways in which interpersonal networks enabled, constrained, and shaped the actions of individual as well as group actors and how the creation and maintenance of such networks itself became the object of agency. The papers cover a wide variety of themes, including, but not limited to, Ottoman political, cultural, and social history, diplomacy and 'international' relations, violence, economic history and commerce, as well as the history of literary production, scholarship, and theology. Contributors will examine individual actors, social groups, as well as associations and institutions such as families, guilds, and state agencies.

The organizers kindly ask that those wishing to attend register with Dr. Tobias Graf (tobias-peter.graf@uni-tuebingen.de).

Programm

WEDNESDAY, 27 SEPTEMBER 2017

14:30–15:00
Registration

15:00–15:15
Welcome and introduction

15:15–16:15
PANEL 1: SCHOLARLY NETWORKS

Chair: Lejla Demiri (Tübingen)

M. Sait Özervarlı (Istanbul), Study Circles, Scholar Invitations, and Text Competitions: Building Scholarly Networks in the Early Ottoman Period

Asim Zubčević (Sarajevo), Books and Their Owners in Ottoman Sarajevo, 1762–1828

16:30–17:30
PANEL 2: NETWORKS IN PURSUANCE OF RELIGION AND ETHICS

Chair: Erdal Toprakyaran (Tübingen)

Ines Aščerić-Todd (Edinburgh), Sufis, Artisans and Traders: Ottoman Guilds as Economic, Social and Spiritual Networks

Fatih Ermiş (Tübingen), The Construction of Ottoman Ethics: From the Nicomachean Ethics to Akhlaq-i Alai

17:45–18:45 PANEL 3: POLITICAL MOBILIZATION

Chair: Denise Klein (Mainz)

Ayşegül Argıt (Heidelberg), Press, Politics, and Mobilization in Istanbul, 1908–1914

Johann Büssow (Tübingen), Social and Political Networks in Late Ottoman Gaza

THURSDAY, 28 SEPTEMBER 2017

9:30–11:00
PANEL 4: BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE

Chair: Katja Patzel-Mattern (Heidelberg, to be confirmed)

Tobias Graf (Tübingen), Reconstructing Intelligence Networks: The Example of Austrian-Habsburg Intelligence in Istanbul, c. 1575–1583

Nikolas Pissis (Berlin), The Greek Spies of Muscovy in the Ottoman Empire, 1640–1660

Andreas Helmedach (Berlin/Bochum), Between Venice and the Ottoman Empire: Networks of Violence in Dalmatia

11:15–12:45
PANEL 5: COMMERCE AND TRADE

Chair: Ayşegül Argıt (Heidelberg)

Evelyn Korsch (Venice/Erfurt), Global Networks and Multi-Layered Agency of an Armenian Merchant Banker Family

Gülay Tulasoğlu (Ankara), The Katipzade Family between Trade and Politics

Anna Vlachopoulou (Munich), Networking as a Business Strategy in the "Long 19th Century"

14:30–15:30
PANEL 6: CONNECTING THE LOCALITIES AND THE IMPERIAL CENTRE

Chair: Stefan Rohdewald (Gießen)

Uroš Dakić (Belgrade), Sokollu Mehmed Pasha's Kinship Network in the Serbian Orthodox Church

Henning Sievert (Berne/Heidelberg), Brokerage in the Well-Connected Domains

15:45–16:45
PANEL 7: THE OTTOMAN’S EMPIRE'S TRIBUTARIES

Chair: Philip Hahn (Tübingen)

Daniel Ursprung (Zurich), Christians Acting as Ottomans: Wallachia's Seventeenth-Century Elites as Agents of Ottomanization

Konrad Petrovszky (Vienna), When Networks Fail: The Case of the Phanariot Iordaki Stavraki

17:00–17:45
CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
Chair and commentary: Renate Dürr (Tübingen)

18:00–19:00
Organizational meeting of the Working Group "Ottoman Europe" (Arbeitskreis "Das osmanische Europa", http://www.osmanisches-europa.de)

Contact (announcement)

Tobias Graf
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
Seminar für Neuere Geschichte
Wilhelmstraße 36
72074 Tübingen

E-Mail: tobias-peter.graf@uni-tuebingen.de

http://www.osmanisches-europa.de/treffen/naechste-treffen.html