Turkey and Russia After Empire | Onur İşçi

133.    New Friends or Old Foes?

The Russo-Ottoman rivalry was one of the defining dramas of the European political stage for centuries. When both of these empires gave way to new states following the First World War, a new period of Soviet-Turkish relations began. In this episode, Onur İşçi follows ups and downs of this relationship over the past century through a discussion of the interplay between domestic and foreign politics in Turkey.


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Onur İşçi is a recent graduate of the doctoral program at Georgetown University's Department of History, where he currently teaches the Cold War in the Middle East (see academia.edu)
Nicholas Danfoth is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University studying the history of modern Turkey (see academia.edu)
Chris Gratien is a doctroal candidate at Georgetown University studying the history of the modern Middle East (see academia.edu)

Citation: "After the Empires: Turkey and Russia in the Twentieth Century," Onur İşçi, Nicholas Danforth, and Chris Gratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 133 (December 7, 2013) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2013/12/turkish-soviet-relations.html.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Selim Deringil, Turkish Foreign Policy During the Second World War: An ‘Active’ Neutrality (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

Dzhamil Gasanly, SSSR – Turtsiya: Ot neytraliteta k holodnoy voyne (Moscow: TP, 2008).

Frank G. Weber, The Evasive Neutral: Germany, Britain and the Quest for a Turkish Alliance in the Second World War (New York: University of Missouri Press, 1979).

Nicholas Tamkin, Britain, Turkey and the Soviet Union, 1940-1945 (Palgrave: New York, 2009).

S. Belinkov and I. Vasil'ev, O Turetskom "Neitralitete" vo vremia Vtoroi Mirovoi Voiny (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1952).

Türkkaya Ataöv, Turkish Foreign Policy, 1939-1945 (Ankara: SBF, 1965).

P.P. Moiseev, "SSSR i Turtsiia v gody Vtoroi Mirovoi Voiny (1939-1945)," in E.M.

Zhukov, et. al., SSSR i Turtsiia, 1917-1979 (Moscow: Nauka, 1981).

Iuri N. Rozal'ev, K Istorii Sovetsko-Turetskikh otnoshenii (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1958).

Alchemy in the Ottoman World | Tuna Artun

132.    Ottoman Science in Question

Alchemy has traditionally been understood as a pseudoscience or protoscience that eventually gave way to modern chemistry. Less often have the writings of alchemists been studied on their own terms. Yet, given the endurance and prolific nature of the alchemical traditions and the involvement of important figures of "modern science" such as Isaac Newton in the field of alchemy, a teleological understanding of the transition from alchemy to chemistry seems inadequate for discussing how science was practiced in the past. This may be particularly true for the Ottoman context, where a longstanding tradition of alchemy becomes subsumed under a larger narrative of the triumph of Western science during the nineteenth century. In this podcast, Tuna Artun explores the world of alchemy and discusses its transformation during the Ottoman period.


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Tuna Artun is Assistant Professor of History at Rutgers University (see academia.edu) 
Nir Shafir is a doctoral candidate at UCLA studying Ottoman intellectual history (see academia.edu)


Citation: "Alchemy and the Ottoman World," Tuna Artun, Nir Shafir, and Chris Gratien, Ottoman History Podcast, No. 132 (December 1, 2013) http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2013/12/alchemy-ottoman-empire.html.

HISTORY OF SCIENCE SERIES

History of Science, Ottoman and Otherwise | Nir Shafir
The Enlightenment and the Ottoman World | Harun Küçük

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adıvar, Abdülhak Adnan. La science chez les Turcs ottomans. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1939.

Corbin, Henri. Alchimie comme art hieratique. Paris: L'Herne, 1986.

Hill, Donald R. "The literature of Arabic alchemy" in Religion, Learning and Science in the 'Abbasid Period, ed. M.J.L. Young, J.D. Latham, and R.B. Serjeant (Cambridge: Camridge University Press, 1990), pp. 328-43.

Lory, Pierre. Alchimie et mystique en terre d’Islam. Paris: Verdier, 1989.

Nummedal, Tara. Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire. Chicago: Chicago UP, 2007.

Nomanul Haq. Syed, Names, Natures and Things: The Alchemist Jabir ibn Hayyan and his Kitab al-Ahjar. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994.

The Frontiers of the First World War: Historiographical Developments and Trajectories

131.     The World and World War I

Part One: While World War I was once studied mainly as a military conflict between European powers, the historiography of the war has since expanded to explore its truly global context that extended beyond the battlefield. Partly drawing on the proceedings of “The World During the First World War” symposium (sponsored by Volkswagen Foundation) held in Hanover, Germany Fall 2013 and interviews with some of the participants, this podcast seeks to identify new trends in the study of the World War I period at large and define potential trajectories for researchers focusing on the Ottoman experience. 

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Featuring Interviews with:

Stig Förster
Ravi Ahuja
Stefan Rinke
Stefan Reichmuth
Toyin Falola 
Xu Guoqi
Michael Provence
Nazan Maksudyan
Yiğit Akın
Santanu Das
Jennifer Jenkins
Ellinor Morack
Franciszka Roy 

Part two of our podcast explores further areas of potential scholarship on the First World War. Graham Cornwell offers an overview major aspects of the war as experienced in North Africa, and Graham Pitts highlights the value of environmental history approaches through a discussion of Ottoman Lebanon.


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Chris Gratien is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the social environmental history of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East (academia.edu)
Kate Dannies is a doctoral student at Georgetown University researching the history of the modern Middle East
Graham Cornwell is a doctoral student at Georgetown University researching the social and cultural history of the North Africa
Graham Pitts is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University researching the environmental history of Lebanon (see academia.edu)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Program for "The World During the First World War" Symposium

North Africa during WWI

Driss Maghraoui. "'Nos Goumiers Berbères': the ambiguities of colonial representations in French military novels." JNAS 7.3 (2002): 79-100.

----------. "The 'grand guerre sainte': Moroccan colonial troops and workers in the First World War." JNAS 9.1 (2004): 1-21.

Moshe Gershovich. French Military Rule in Morocco: Colonialism and Its Consequences. New York: Routledge, 1999.

Richard Fogarty. Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914-1918. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

Environment in Lebanon

Ajay, Nicholas. “Mount Lebanon and the Wilyah of Beirut, 1914-1918: The War Years” (Ph.D. diss, Georgetown University, 1973).

Offer, Avner. The First World War: an agrarian interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Schilcher, Linda. "Famine in Syria, 1915-1918" in Problems of the Middle East in Historical Perspective: Essays in Honour of Albert Hourani, eds. John P. Spagnolo and Albert Hourani (Reading: Ithaca Press, 1996).

Tanielian, Melanie. “A War for Famine: Everyday Life in Wartime Beirut and Mount Lebanon:1914-1918" (Ph.D. diss, Berkeley, 2012).

These "French soldiers" on the Western front are in fact Tirailleurs, troops from France's colonies in Africa, specifically Senegal and the Maghreb. (Source: Bain News Service, 1914)

Giving wine to Algerian troops (Source: Library of Congress)