The Berlin Historical Review

The Berlin Historical Review Vol.02/No.01 (2016)

1

The Berlin

Historical Review

∞

The open-access History Journal

ISSN 2196-6125 Volume II • Issue 01 • Special Issue • February 2016


2

The Berlin Historical Review The open-access History Journal

Volume 02/No.01 (2016) Published by Julia Kompe

Berlin, 2016

ISSN 2196-6125

Founding Editor & Editor-in-Chief

Julia Kompe Humboldt Universität zu Berlin & King’s College London Editors

Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford Simon Smith King’s College London Ashley Palmer King’s College London Tavinder Mangat King’s College London

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;

detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de .

All articles published by and in the Berlin Historical Review are licensed under a Creative

Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Click here for more information: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en

Cover photo credit: Latheesh Mahendran, Revo remixa esfarto, 13 May 2015, accessible at:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:R1_RealRevolution.jpeg#filelinks

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en


3

Contents

Editorial Welcome 04 Book Review: Denver Brunsman and David J. Silverman, editors. The American Revolution Reader Adam Simmons 06 Anti-Indian Radicalism during the Era of the American Revolution: Comments

and Reflections upon a Different Type of Revolution in the Early American

West, 1774-1795

Darren R. Reid 11 The Turkish Revolution and State Formation From Below Niall Finn 29 Open Call for Submissions 48 Open Access & Copyright Policy 49


4

Editorial Welcome On behalf of the editorial board, we would like to welcome you to the second special

issue of the Berlin Historical Review and wish you all a happy new year!

As you might have already seen on our website, 2015 has been a year of change for

the Berlin Historical Review. Our editorial board underwent some fundamental

restructuring throughout the past months, and we would first like to use this

opportunity to thank the departing editorial board members David Coates and Sam

Walton for their service. With great pleasure, we would also like to announce the

arrival of the Berlin Historical Review’s three new editorial board members: Ashley

Palmer, Simon Smith and Tavinder Mangat!

Ashley Palmer has undertaken his Bachelor’s degree in History at King’s College at the

University of Cambridge, followed by the completion of the MRes programme in

History at King's College London. He is specialised in modern history and his research

interests focus on 20th Century British & European History, Cold War Studies, Human

Rights and the History of Political Thought. Simon Smith has completed his

undergraduate degree in History & Politics at Newcastle University, followed by a

Master’s degree in World History & Cultures at King's College London. He is currently

interning at the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre (BICOM) and his

specialisations include the History of International Relations, British Foreign Policy and

20th Century Imperialism. The third new member of our editorial board, Tavinder

Mangat, has joined the Berlin Historical Review after completing a Bachelor’s degree

in History at Brunel University, as well as a Master’s degree in World History & Cultures

at King's College London. She is especially interested in South Asian colonial and post-

colonial history, British colonial policy and Post-colonial heritage.

This second special issue of the Berlin Historical Review enjoys a focus on the theme of

revolution. Firstly, Adam Simmons reviews The American Revolution Reader, a

collection of essays edited by Denver Brunsman and David J. Silverman which draws

together work on a range of aspects of the American Revolution and which combines

established scholarship with newer research.

We are delighted that this issue also features an article by Dr. Darren Reid which

likewise looks at America during the revolutionary period. Shifting his attention away

from the events of the War of Independence, Darren Reid’s article considers the


5

relationship between European settlers and Native American communities in the

Trans-Appalachian country, arguing that the period saw an equally revolutionary

change in this relationship – one that was to have a lasting impact on the development

of the United States.

Last but not least, Niall Finn takes a new look at the establishment of the Turkish state

in the 1920s. Applying Gramscian theory and E.P. Thompson’s historical methodology,

he produces a history from below of the period, paying particular attention to the

hitherto neglected roles of the Turkish working class and women’s movements in

forging the new nation from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.

As usual, we hope that you will enjoy reading this second special issue of the Berlin

Historical Review and we look forward to receiving your comments and feedback. We

also welcome potential contributions for future issues at any time. Please do not

hesitate to get in touch with us: [email protected]

Best wishes,

Ashley Palmer & Julia Kompe

Editor Editor-in-Chief

mailto:[email protected]


6

Book Review

Denver Brunsman and David J. Silverman, editors. The American

Revolution Reader. New York and London: Routledge, 2014. Pp.

460. Paperback $59.95/£42.99. ISBN: 9780415537575.

Adam Simmons

PhD History, Lancaster University

The American Revolution Reader is a collection of leading essays which uses classical

themes to discuss recent scholarship of the American Revolution. Its breadth of scope

makes it ideal for any student of the history of the birth of the United States. The

Reader consists of 21 essays by eminent historians approaching six central themes,

though this framework is liberal enough that essays are not entirely confined to their

designated theme. The first two essays are comparative, discussing the imperial

context by Ned C. Landsman and Eliga H. Gould. They set the scene of the Revolution

within the climate of the late eighteenth-century; the debate over home and imperial

rule. As a product of the climate the Revolution created an imperial crisis for the British

Empire, which is discussed in four thematic essays by T. H. Breen, John M. Murrin,

Woody Holton and Robert G. Parkinson. This crisis revealed the limits of the British

Empire over reaching and its inability to maximise its transnational resources. The

greatest enemy of the British army during the Revolution was distance. Distance

undermined the power of the Empire and under the heading of ‘War and the Home

Front,’ the Reader collects four essays by John Shy, Michael A. McDonnell, Mary Beth

Norton and Wayne E. Lee, with a focus on military, class and gender. The British army

appeared to fail to control the sentiment targeted towards it and remained alienated

from the American population throughout the Revolution. It would be wrong,

however, to suggest that the American victory provided a smooth transition to a new

nation. The importance of the theme of ‘Constitutionalism and Nation-Building,’ the

central result of the Revolution, is reflected in the five essays by Gary B. Nash, Gordon

S. Wood, Frank Lambert, Saul Cornell and Alan Taylor, the most of any one theme.

Adam Simmons The Berlin Historical Review

7

These essays present the struggle that the newly independent Colonies faced in

creating their new nation with the numerous factions that existed across the political

landscape. Independence almost destroyed the fledgling America before it even had a

chance to establish itself. Four essays by Ira Berlin, Colin G. Calloway, Rosemarie Zagarri

and Aaron S. Fogleman debate the social impact of the Revolution amongst slaves,

Native Americans, women and immigrants respectively. It can be easy to forget the

impact of the Revolution on the disenfranchised. However, understanding the social

impact of the Revolution helps to lay the foundations for the drastic changes in

American society that followed after 1782: it proved that the norm could be

challenged. The social impact of the Revolution flows into the final section of the book,

which considers the legacies of the Revolution and comprises two essays by Maya

Jasanoff and Gordon S. Wood. Although there are many legacies of the Revolution,

these articles discuss the legacies of George Washington and of those who supported

the British Empire from within the victorious Colonies; not all Americans were

triumphant in the victory.

While this book does not present any new scholarship – all of the essays have

been previously published elsewhere – the Reader invaluably houses all these

important essays in a single body of text, ideal for the student consumer. The essays

are also presented in such a way as to stimulate thought regarding each individual

piece: the editors, before each essay, include a single page that summarises the key

concepts of the article and also asks questions for the reader to consider, in order to

provoke thought and encourage further study.

The range of themes covered in this volume brings together several perspectives

of the revolution and in doing so presents the different thematic layers in a way that

students can begin to grasp. The essays range in publication date from 1976 to 2008,

and so provide an insight into the changing historiography of the period as much as

they argue their own specific points. It is too easy to look at a narrow aspect of history

without considering the wider context of the event within its environment. This has led

the revolution in recent scholarship to, as Maya Jasanoff writes, “correct bluntly

patriotic portrayals of American independence” (p. 416).

The conclusions to be drawn from The American Revolution Reader are many and

varied in scope. The first section raises the debate of whether the Revolution was

enacted by the “provincial competence and confidence” of the colonies, as Landsman

argues (p. 18), or whether, as Gould suggests, it was the product of an overbearing

colonial government. Were the colonists driven self-motivated revolutionaries or was


8

the Revolution the result of imperial provocation? The second section also discusses

this question of autonomy. Murrin builds on Gould in what he calls the “Countercyclical

Revolution”. Gould follows the idea that the Revolution was a countercyclical event

because “it ran against the prevailing integrative tendencies of the century” (p. 78). In

other words, the Revolution stands out as a special event as it stopped a century of

British imperial dominance. Moreover, Parkinson’s almost simplistic approach reminds

us of the simple, yet insightful, fact of the writing up of the twenty-seven grievances of

the Declaration of Independence which remained the official reasons for the

Declaration of Independence. However, were these grievances those of every colonist,

let alone every man, or were they only those of the wealthy elite whose power and

influence was undermined by the overbearing British Colonial Empire? Politics, though,

is contrasted with trade in the articles by Breen and Holton. Breen’s self-sufficiency

argument suggests the colonists had broken away from any dependency to Britain as

they learnt to sustain themselves in the wake of increased taxes in the previous

years. In contrast, trade, to Holton, was not a matter of dependency but, rather, the

Revolution was supported by the Southern colonies in particular as protection from

the overbearing state previously outlined by Gould. He argues that the slave trade

provoked the Southern colonies into action, as they were worried Britain’s increasing

anti-slavery stance would damage its economy and that slaves could cause unrest if

they latched onto this British message.

Other conclusions to be drawn are predominantly social. Three sections are

devoted to social questions and analysis and particularly the notion of alienation. How

did different portions of society react and become affected by the Revolution? Shy

suggests that British alienation of the populace allowed the revolutionaries to win the

hearts of the colonists. This alienation was present throughout the three social classes

present in the colonies defined by McDonnell as gentlemen, the “middle” and the

“lower” sort. Lee argues that it was the turnover of the militia that undermined any

hope for a virtuous war and so the alienated classes, along with British tactics,

destroyed hope for reconciliation. In contrast, Nash disagrees and argues that the fact

that the independence of the colonies took five years to implement shows that the

Revolution did not aim to produce a new social order. Taylor believes that the common

people of the Revolution actually lost out in the aftermath. He argues that frontier

expansion led to more elections and lobbying and that the rich and influential rose

further into prominence rather than the militias of the common folk who fought

throughout the war. Wood’s notion of “disinterestedness” led to, what Cornell

labelled, a “legacy of plebeian populism” (pp. 296-7). Some wanted the new nation to

Adam Simmons The Berlin Historical Review

9

be built upon a politics of moral initiative above a politics of personal self-interest.

Politics was for the masses, not the few.

Another important conclusion to be drawn from the essays concerns the impact

of the revolution upon different minorities. Berlin discusses the “maturation of Afro-

American culture” (p. 324), an interesting outlook considering the earlier article by

Holton. Calloway brings forth the impact of the Revolution on Native Americans who,

as he argues, had a relatively good entwined existence before post-Independence

expansion. The impact on women is dealt with by both Norton and Zagarri. Norton

argues using the notion of motherhood that female colonists had strong family ties to

Britain and often felt helpless in their situation within an international family feud.

Zagarri, on the other hand, portrays women as having a more central role in the new

republic, but although female equality was acknowledged, there was a sense of fear of

opening the flood gates in politics by enlarging the franchise. Liberty was not for

all. The idea of liberty is also questioned by Lambert and Fogleman. Lambert poses the

question of the “free religious market”. Was it designed to protect the freedom of

religion or to protect the unity of the new republic from internal religious divisions?

Fogleman’s questioning of the idea of liberty is formed in relation to immigration. He

contrasts the fact that the proportion of free immigrants within the population rose

from a quarter to two thirds after independence with the fact that the Revolution

disrupted trade, particularly the slave trade. Were the increasing numbers of

immigrants actually seeking liberty? The ending articles on legacy are a fitting end to

the collection. The underlying theme throughout the Reader is the overall legacy of

each individual set of arguments for the historiography of the Revolutionary period.

Despite the many good attributes of this volume, there are no essays on

increasingly important aspects of the history of the American Revolution. For example,

it does not explicitly discuss the global context of the Revolution between the spheres

of Britain and France and within their prolonged continental conflicts between the

Seven Years War and the War of 1812. Another excluded theme is the role of Islam on

the continent, particularly amongst American slaves, rather than placing Americans

within a purely Christian world: Given the freedom of religion that the constitution

would later promise, this is a noteworthy omission. A comprehensive collection of

themes and arguments concerning the American Revolution, however, is impossible to

achieve in a single work of under 500 pages so these exclusions hardly diminish the

value of those essays presented. The editors, in many ways, achieve their stated goal

to “represent current interpretations of timeless issues and new trends in scholarship

over the past generation” (p. ix), but many essays, though discussing timeless issues,

do still portray an arguably rather traditional view of the Revolution which may not


10

fulfil the more inquisitive reader. If there is one true flaw of this book it would be that

only one of the contributors is based outside of the USA; Michael A. McDonnell at the

University of Sydney. This has inevitably resulted in a rather nationalistic history,

particularly evident in the final essay, Gordon S. Wood’s ‘The Greatness of George

Washington’. The “Great Man” school of history is reductionist and Washington was as

equally lucky as he was “great”. In particular, his military leadership was as much down

to the inept ability of the British Empire to take advantage of victories than his own

personal character. For example, he was sighted at the aftermath of the Battle of Long

Island where the British army could have plausibly destroyed the Continental

Army. The Reader would further benefit students if they read it alongside F. D. Cogliano

and K. E. Phimister (eds.), Revolutionary America 1763-1815, A Sourcebook, published

by Routledge in 2011. The book itself would also benefit from the inclusion of a source

bibliography of the period such as critical editions of the Federalist and Anti-Federalist

Papers and the personal writings of eminent Revolutionary figures and those who

fought during it, particularly the sources published by the Library of America that are

not available in the Revolutionary American Sourcebook. Nonetheless, despite the

book’s minor flaws, it remains an invaluable single corpus of important essays to

accompany aspiring students of the American Revolution. The breadth of the themes

covered in this volume means it should be read by all students but could also be of

equal use to scholars, in having these influential essays published together in a single

work.


11

Anti-Indian Radicalism during the Era of the American Revolution:

Comments and Reflections upon a Different Type of Revolution in

the Early American West, 1774-1795

Dr. Darren R. Reid

Lecturer in History, Coventry University

Abstract: West of the Appalachian Mountains a distinct sectional revolution occurred in the

last quarter of the eighteenth century which was rooted not in the better understood events

surrounding the American Revolution but in the evolving nature of European American and

Native American interactions in the region. From the outbreak of Dunmore’s War in 1774

until the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the Trans-Appalachian country was mired

in a generation defining conflict which served to radicalise western anti-Indian views. Though

staunchly anti-Indian attitudes had existed prior to the 1770s - and had certainly found violent

expression - the twenty year war for the Trans-Appalachian country normalised such views,

bringing them from the cultural fringe to the societal centre. Among the European Americans

who poured into the Trans-Appalachian region, the ardent resistance they met, in part

facilitated by further fundamental changes in Indian country, served to foundationally alter

their perception of the Indians by severely deepening anti-Indian resentment and making

racial acrimony a widespread part of their emergent frontier culture. The common and long

lasting experience of violence in the Trans-Appalachian west, particularly in areas such as

Kentucky, encouraged the region’s growing European American population to self-identify as

victims; their conceptualisation of the Indians had to account for that particular sense of

community. In a period of twenty years, stalwart anti-Indian attitudes were normalised by

the experience of war, a revolution in perception which helped to separate the cultures of

east and west in the early United States.

Keywords: American Revolution, anti-Indian radicalism, Trans-Appalachian country,

American frontier, Kentucky

Setting aside the question of whether or not the American Revolution was as radical as

Gordon Wood famously argued, at least two fundamental changes occurred west of

Darren R. Reid The Berlin Historical Review

12

the Appalachian Mountains in the last quarter of the eighteenth century that had little

to do with the political revolution in the east.1 Stephen Aron, in his study of the

Kentucky frontier, touched upon one such revolutionary shift which, from the

perspective of its participants, was significantly more radical in nature than those

events concerning the thirteen colonies. The transformation of the Shawnee and

Cherokee from long term enemies into staunch allies was, as Aron correctly

highlighted, a seismic shift that turned relations in Indian country upon their head.2 It

completely changed the aboriginal map of the American interior, transforming

Kentucky, once a buffer zone between those antagonistic tribes, into a symbol of

cooperation and mutual support. It became the centre of a new relationship which was

built around a common identity that was defined in opposition to the European

Americans who were increasingly encroaching upon their lands.3 That was not,

however, the limit of the fundamental changes which were occurring in the Trans-

Appalachian country.

By resisting European American settlement as effectively and as determinedly

as they did, the Shawnee, Cherokee, and their numerous allies set off a conceptual

revolution among their enemies. Faced with one of the bloodiest and most prolonged

frontier wars in North American history, European Americans in the Trans-Appalachian

country discarded the nuance of past world views in order to adopt a hard, racialised

construct of the region’s Indian population. Prior to the 1770s, a meaningful middle

ground, as Richard White paradigmatically put it, existed between European

Americans and Native Americans.4 The war for the Trans-Appalachian country,

1 For a very brief overview of the interpretive dissonance concerning the revolution see Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 1993); Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Enlarged Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); Gary B. Nash, The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (New York: Penguin Books, 2005); John Ferling, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Staughton Lynd and David Waldstreicher, “Reflections on Economic Interpretation, Slavery, the People Put of Doors, and Top Down versus Bottom Up”, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 68 (2011): 649-656; Michael A. McDonnell, “Men Out of Time: Confronting History and Myth”, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 68 (2011): 644-648; and Alfred F. Young, Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 2006), pp. 215-261. 2 Stephen Aron, How the West was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Stephen Aron (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1999), pp. 37-38. 3 For Kentucky as buffer between the Shawnee and Cherokee see James Mooney, “The Old Cherokee Country [Map]” and “The Cherokee and their Neighbours [Map]” in James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee: Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (Government Printing Office: Washington, 1902), pp. 15, 23. 4 For theoretical spaces of interaction and cooperation between European and Native Americans see Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and its Peoples, 1724-1774 (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); and James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999).


13

however, destroyed that theoretical space; middle ground became battle ground.

Anti-Indian prejudices had certainly existed before the 1770s but events during and

after that decade turned what had been a divisive and inconsistent philosophy into a

widely held, deeply pejorative belief which appeared, to those cultures that had

developed in the west, to be a self-evident truth. Before the 1770s, there were cultures

which accommodated Indian haters; after that period, however, there was, in the west,

a culture which promoted and even demanded Indian hatred. To put that another way,

and to borrow a theoretical framing device from Ira Berlin, there were cultures with

Indian hatred and there were Indian hating cultures.5 Whatever can be said about the

American Revolution, the changes occurring between the Appalachian Mountains and

the Mississippi River in the late eighteenth century were radical indeed.

The shift in world views that was occurring in the west was rooted in a crisis

brought about by a clash of evolving ideas and a rapidly changing set of external

circumstances. In the backcountry, European American views of the Indians had

suffered during the Seven Years War, becoming increasingly negative as a result of that

conflict.6 From 1774 until 1795, however, European American inhabitants of the Trans-

Appalachian country were confronted by two decades of almost unbroken, deeply

violent, and intensely bitter conflict – their pre-existing negative bias, exposed to those

conditions, was transformed into a negative certainty. Historians who have examined

the re-framing of the Indians into a racial group have failed to settle upon a consensus

as to when that event occurred, identifying eras as divergent as the late seventeenth

and late eighteenth centuries as the moment of that transformation. Of these it is

Patrick Griffin’s argument, that the period of the American Revolution marked the

greatest change, which bears the most weight.7 Griffin identified that era as a type of

theoretical ‘frontier’ – following the Frederick Jackson Turner model – in American

5 Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998), pp. 8-14. 6 See Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754- 1767 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003), pp. 3-4; and Stephen Brumwell, White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial America (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2004); for a broader discussion of the Seven Years War as a key turning point in American history see Lawrence Henry Gipson, “The American Revolution as Aftermath of the Great War for the Empire, 1754-1763”, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 65, No.1 (Mar 1950): pp. 86-104. 7 See Alder T. Vaughan, The Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 13-33; Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), pp. 173-225; John Grenier, First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 11- 12; Jane T. Merritt, At the Cross Roads: Indians and Empires, 1700-1763 (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), pp. 285-295; and Patrick Griffin American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and the Revolutionary Frontier (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), pp. 12-14.


14

history, a watershed; but it was more than a national shift in anti-Indian

consciousness.8

It was a turning point mired in the specific experience of the region in which it

occurred. It was a conceptual revolution which marked a philosophical splintering of

western and eastern world views that would not be reconciled until western anti-

Indian views found national acceptance in the context of the Indian wars of the mid-

late nineteenth century. In 1832 and 1833, Black Hawk, the leader of this period’s

epilogistic war, would be celebrated as an ennobled sensation in the east; in the west,

he would be antithetically burned in effigy.9 The ideological break which was reflected

in that contrast was rooted in the Trans-Appalachian country’s anti-Indian revolution.

Twenty years of psychological warfare, sieges, and wilderness domination failed to

drive European Americans out of that country, but it did succeed in fundamentally

souring western perspectives of the Indians and, as a result, drew a conceptual line

down the spine of the Appalachians.10 Unlike in the east, where writers such as James

Fenimore Cooper could comfortably romanticise and ennoble the Indians, European

Americans in the west experienced almost an entire generation of warfare and, as a

result, came to self-identify as victims of the Indians. It was through that lens that they

constructed their particular understanding of the peoples against whom they were

fighting.11

Since the first regular settlement was founded in Kentucky in 1775, warfare with

a spectrum of tribes, including the Shawnee, Cherokee, Mingo, Miami, Wyandot, and

Delaware, had been a constant and defining feature of the region. By 1783

approximately seven percent of Kentucky’s population had been killed in combat with

Native Americans – to put that number into perspective, the thirteen rebelling colonies

had lost just one percent of their population during the Revolutionary War.12 Such a

high casualty rate hints at the broad impact violence had upon the region and, in

8 Griffin, American Leviathan, p. 15. 9 Kerry A. Trask, Black Hawk: The Battle for the American Heart (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2007), pp.301-302. 10 Griffin identifies the era of the American Revolution as a turning point but that period is too restrictive. The total duration of the war during this period, which extended long past the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, must be accounted in any analysis of this period. The continuation of the war for the Trans- Appalachian country beyond 1782 allowed the region to be exposed to the violence of wilderness warfare for another thirteen years, a period which, even considered in isolation, eclipsed the exposure of the Seven Years War in terms of its capacity to spread the experience of warfare and underline any sense of self- identified victimisation. Griffin, American Leviathan, p. 15. 11 For an example romanticised literary Indians in the east see James Fenimore Cooper, The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (New York: W.A. Townshead & Company, 1859). 12 John Mack Faragher, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992), p. 144.


15

particular, the ordeal faced by those who survived. Bodies – and there were many –

were routinely mutilated; women and men had watched as their spouses were brought

down by tomahawk and musket ball; entire communities were besieged and assaulted,

enduring, as a collective, military actions designed to drive them back east; and for

those not directly involved a vibrant and long lived oral culture ensured that they were

exposed to many of the macabre details. Therein lay the root of the western revolution

in anti-Indian thought. Bodies, real and imagined, the latter just as potent as the

former, piled up on the frontier and, as a result, world views shifted in order to

accommodate that reality. When Simon Kenton narrowly escaped being burned alive,

he reflected the potential of past violence to change future expectations and

aspirations: ‘I felt determined to avenge myself of the wrongs that had been inflicted

on me. I joined myself to the garrison and went with almost every expedition that was

sent out [against the Indians]... whenever there was a party going out, I was ready to

go with them’.13 Through prolonged exposure to one of the bloodiest frontier wars in

US history, anti-Indian thought and action was thoroughly normalised; moderation

gave way to radicalisation.

Violence during this period was more than an incidental detail. It was a process,

an experience, the importance of which was captured in the surviving record of the

region’s fundamental oral culture. Through recorded oral testimony, which gave a

voice to those typically denied a detailed or meaningful presence in the historic record,

memories of horror and revulsion were captured and revealed to be common, a key

part of the Trans-Appalachian experience.14 When the recorded oral collection of

Presbyterian minister John Shane is analysed, it demonstrates an almost overwhelming

obsession with the memory of the war. In spite of Shane’s attempt to record a tradition

which would have served as the basis for a history of the Presbyterian Church in

Kentucky and Southern Ohio, he found that virtually all of those with whom he spoke

dwelt disproportionately upon the conflict with the Indians.15 The unguided nature of

the accounts which Shane recorded gave his subjects freedom, but almost all roads

seemed to lead back to the Indians and their means of making war. In the resultant

collection, which comprised more than three hundred separate interviews, 75 per cent

13 Jonathan Alder and Larry L. Nelson, eds., A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians (Arkon: University of Arkon Press, 2002), pp. 174-175. 14 For a discussion on the critical opportunities and limits of the Shane collection see Elizabeth A. Perkins, Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 7-39. 15 For Shane’s oral record as the basis of an attempt to write a history of Presbyterianism in Kentucky and southern Ohio see Perkins, Border Life, p. 9 and Unknown Author, “Early Indiana Presbyterianism excerpt [excerpt – pages removed from original source]”, John D. Shane Papers 63M289, University of Kentucky Archives.


16

of all the individuals mentioned were actively engaged in, or victims of, the war.16

When Shane spoke with an early settler named John Wilson, for instance, he gained

no insight into the evolution of the church, but obtained instead a potent glimpse into

the human cost of the fighting. Recalling the day when the body of one of his fellows,

recently killed by the Indians, was returned to his wife, Wilson reported to Shane that

the newly widowed woman had ‘examine[d] all the wounds of her husband... very

carefully, fondly, at first without a tear [and] the[n] suddenly gave way to her grief.’17

In another account, Shane was vicariously exposed to Sally Wilcox’s terror on the day

she had witnessed the pursuit of her husband by a band of Indian raiders: ‘Run, Daniel,

Run!’ she had ‘hallooed to him as hard as she could.’18 In another such account, Shane

was again exposed by proxy to the emotional turmoil caused by spouses who

disappeared. When John Hayden apparently vanished, Shane was told that his wife

‘looked like she would go distracted’ from worry.19

In another of Shane’s recollections, typical in its candour and its subject matter,

his interviewee, William Niblick, described the day he, as a child, had witnessed the

recovery of John Wymore’s body –sans scalp– from the wilderness. ‘[I was] hanging

on to my mother’s apron,’ he would later recall, ‘and heard the women crying...I saw

them bring Wymore in [on] a sheet that was all bloody; he [had been left by the

Indians] hanging on a pole.’20 When George Fearis spoke about the early settlement

of the country, memories of horror and distress were not far away. One of the

incidents he described concerned the day he and a friend had ‘saw the hog at

something’. Investigating the odd sight, Fearis’s companion discovered that the pig

had in fact been feasting upon the remains of one of his –recently de-scalped– children.

According to Fearis, the child’s father ‘gathered what of it he could, and took it along

and buried it.’21 Such incidents made deep impressions. When Shane interviewed Mr.

Spence, a comparative latecomer to the Kentucky country who arrived in the 1790s,

his short account of his brother’s death contained several telling details. Though the

incident was, in the broader context of the war, fairly unremarkable – his brother

16 A survey of Shane’s interviews was turned into a database of 11,179 individual European American settlers. Not included were individuals who fell out with the date (1774-1795) or geographic (Kentucky, western Virginia, and southern Ohio) ranges of this survey. Of the 11,179 records created, 6,148, 55 per cent, were classified as being directly involved in combat through participation in a confrontation with the Indians, suffering an attack, experiencing a siege, or being reported as dead, etc. A further 2,236, 20 per cent, were described as joining an anti-Indian militia parties but were not recorded as engaging the Indians directly. Database compiled from John D. Shane ‘Interviews’ located in the Draper Manuscripts 11CC, 12CC, 13CC, 16CC, 17CC. 17 John D. Shane, “Interview with Captain John Wilson”, Draper Manuscripts 17CC6-25. 18 John D. Shane, “Interview with an Unnamed Subject”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC177. 19 John D. Shane, “Interview with a Unnamed Person in Cincinnati”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC279-283. 20 John D. Shane, “Interview with William Niblick”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC84-85. 21 John D. Shane, “Interview with George Fearis”, Draper Manuscripts 13CC238-244.


17

stepped out of his house and was shot – to Spence it was worthy of deep and long

lasting investigation and reflection. Because of the tracks discovered near his brother’s

home, Spence had deduced that three Indians had been involved in his death, one of

whom had ‘stood off at a distance and held a horse’; according to Spence, such an

animal had been stolen ‘from a young man about 2 miles in’, suggesting that his

brother’s death was one part in a longer chain of events. The actual death had been,

according to Spence’s investigation, a sudden and close range affair: ‘He was not more

than 10 steps from the Indians when they shot him.’ To underline the episode’s

personal importance, he then added that ‘I have measured it many a time.’22 The

recorded oral testimony of the region reflected the visceral nature of the war, the ways

in which it intersected with daily life and routine, and the depth of the memories it

helped to forge as well as causative links between experiences of violence and later

actions and attitudes.

When, in 1777, Hugh McGary had found the Indian who had killed his stepson,

he was moved not only to take the life of the perpetrator but to carry out a morbid

form of post-mortem retribution. Rather than scalping the Indian, or committing some

other act of hasty mutilation, McGary had instead set about the lengthy and gory task

of butchering, slicing, dicing, and ultimately feeding the body to the dogs at the

township in which he lived.23 When John Wymore was killed, the men of his settlement

had set out in pursuit of his killer; they had found an Indian, upon whom they presumed

guilt, severed his head, and ‘cut up’ the remains ‘for the dogs’.24 In 1782 a band of

European Americans, from a settlement which had recently survived an Indian attack,

discovered two Indian bodies in the nearby wilderness. With the first body sunk to the

bottom of a pond, and thus inaccessible, they instead turned upon the second, a young

man around ‘17 or 18’ years of age they discovered in a thicket, wrapped carefully in a

blanket. The body, which they brought back to their settlement, elicited the sympathy

from many of the town’s women who commented upon its ‘fine [and] tender hands

and feet’. Many of them then ‘begged that he might be buried’ but, unmoved, the men

of the township laid the corpse out in a public space where it ‘made a greater smell

than a hundred horses’ as it was graphically consumed by the town’s livestock. As one

of the settlement’s inhabitants would later recall, ‘I saw my sow in his belly more than

a dozen times.’25 Sympathy was not alien on the increasingly violent frontier, but it

was overpowered by those who were determined to extract revenge, symbolic or

otherwise, from their enemy.

22 John D. Shane, “Interview with ------ Spence”, Draper Manuscripts 13CC198-199. 23 John D. Shane, “Interview with Jacob Stevens”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC135. 24 John D. Shane, “Interview with ----- Wymore”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC128-132. 25 John D. Shane, “Interview with Mrs. Arnold”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC241-245.


18

The experience of war changed people. In 1783, for example, the Davis family

of Fisher’s Station was attacked by an Indian raiding party who killed the family

patriarch and kidnapped the four children present. Mrs. Davis, who had ‘gone out in

the night to bring in some clothes’ was, by virtue of her location, saved from either

death or captivity but, from her vantage point, witnessed the death of her husband.

Davis was, at that moment, caught by indecision, pressured between her desire to go

to her family and her fear that a similar fate to her husband’s awaited her. According

to one of her acquaintances, ‘There she stood in agony, saying “I must go in”, and then

her heart would fail her, and she would turn back, and then go again.’ The pressure

and distress of that moment was not soon in passing: ‘After this tragedy her

countenance put on a change, and she got all her sleep alone in the daytime. She

would be up and walk the room all night.’26 Peter Silver has argued that the Indians of

this period were perceived to have acted in a ‘terroristic’ manner, fostering a sense of

fear that preceded and, in some cases, negated the need for their actual presence.27

Certainly, they were effective at spreading anxiety, and not always through the direct

use of violence. On one occasion they ‘came along and stole all of John Smith’s bed

clothes’ and, on another, ‘threw a couple of frogs’ into an unattended pan of boiling

sugar, subtle acts of psychological warfare that told their intended victims they were,

at all times, in danger.28 Fear was a weapon that the Indians wielded expertly; when

Tom Berry’s family received word that an Indian raiding party might be in the vicinity

they reportedly ‘began to cry as if the Indians were at the door.’29 In spite of the panic

they instilled, however, the Indians were unable to shift, through threat or terror, those

who had come to claim their country. By deliberately using non-direct violence, or

psychological tactics, the Indians had theoretically reduced the need to use direct

(physical) violence but their imaginary sword was double edged. It did inspire some

European Americans to abandon the west, but the allure of apparently free land was

strong and many of their victims stayed regardless, responding to threat, fear, and

suffering through other means.30

26 John D. Shane, “Interview with Sarah Graham”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC45-53. 27 Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbours: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2008), pp. 41-42. 28 John D. Shane, “Interview with Benjamin Stites”, Draper Manuscripts 13CC56-57. For a broader discussion on the role played by psychological warfare in this conflict see Darren R. Reid, “Soldiers of Settlement: Violence and Psychological Warfare on the Kentucky Frontier, 1775-1783” Eras, Vol. 10 (2008): http://arts.monash.edu.au/publications/eras/edition-10/reid-article.pdf. 29 John D. Shane, “Interview with Nathaniel Hart”, Draper Manuscripts 17CC209-213. 30 For fear as a reason to leave the west see “Journal of William Calk, 1775”, Calk Family Collection 2005M14, Box 7, Folder 96, Kentucky Historical Society and John D. Shane, “Interview with Benjamin Allen”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC67-69.


19

By the 1780s, anti-Indian sentiment in the west was, generally, serving to unite

rather than divide communities. In 1764 the march of the Paxton Boys, a vigilante

group determined to avenge themselves on the local – peaceful – Indian community,

had highlighted how divisive anti-Indian radicalism could be, even in the aftermath of

the Seven Years War. In spite of their willingness to tar all Indians with the same

proverbial brush they encountered a not insignificant amount of resistance from many

of their peers.31 That was not the case in 1780 when, in the wake of a successful

incursion by a multi-tribal Indian force, between eight hundred and one thousand

Kentuckians, approximately eighty percent of the adult male population of the country,

gathered to march upon the northern tribes. Even those who had remained behind

had done so with an air of martial responsibility, to ‘protect the settlements,’ whilst

those unable to take part directly in the operation – women and children – also played

a role as they ‘scraped up corn...and made bread’ and prepared other necessary

provisions.32 Prior to 1780, the community of early Kentucky had been united in

defence, enduring numerous sieges and assaults during the country’s first half-decade

of European American settlement but, by the turn of the next decade, their unity was

such that they were now willing to proactively seek, though not necessarily accomplish,

a reckoning.33 Following five years of continuous raids and assaults, retribution, the

death of Indians, was, by 1780, seen as their ‘only hope’.34 In 1782, following a second

successful mass strike by the northern tribes, one thousand Kentuckians again

gathered to make war upon the Indians whilst, in 1786, following another four years

of conflict and violent intercourse, another comparable campaign was launched.35 On

that latter expedition Hugh McGary, the same man who had diced up the body of his

step-son’s killer and fed the remains to his dogs, murdered an elderly Shawnee chief

31 For examples of works dealing with the Paxton Boys see Kevin Kenny, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s Holy Experiment (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); James Kirby Martin, “The Return of the Paxton Boys and the Historical State of the Pennsylvania Frontier”, Pennsylvania History, Vol. 38 (1971): 117-133 and Brooke Hindle, “The March of the Paxton Boys”, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 3 (1946): 462-486. 32 John D. Shane, “Interview with Ephriam Sandusky”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC141-145 and John Bradford, “Notes on Kentucky” in Thomas D. Clark, ed., The Voice of the Frontier: John Bradford’s Notes on Kentucky (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993), p. 37. See also William Hayden English, Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778-1783 and Life of General George Rogers Clark (Indianapolis: The Bowell-Merrill Company, 1896): Volume Two, pp. 697-733 and Lowell Hayes Harrison, George Rogers Clark and the War in the West (1976; reprint, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), pp. 69-76. 33 The principle exception to the rule of defensive collection action in Kentucky prior to 1780 was George R. Clark’s march against the British in Illinois but the fear of Indian raids served to limit participation in that campaign rather than encourage it. European American settlers were unwilling to march north when, so doing, they would leave their homes vulnerable to further raids. For Clark’s march on Illinois see “Letter from George R. Clark to Colonel George Mason, November 19th, 1779”, Microfilm B/C 593m, Filson Historical Society, pp. 1-6 and John D. Shane, “Interview with Josiah Collins”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC68. 34 Bradford, “Notes on Kentucky”, p. 37. 35 John D. Shane, “Interview with Isaac Clinkenbeard”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC3 and Larry L. Nelson A Man of Distinction Among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country Frontier, 1754-1799 (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999), p. 127.


20

who had surrendered peacefully to the invaders, burying a tomahawk in his head as he

cried ‘d—n you, I’ll show you Blue Licks play.’36 The ‘Blue Licks’ in question was the site

of a disastrous defeat the Kentuckians had suffered four years earlier. As there was no

credible reason for McGary to suspect that the elderly man before him had had

anything to do with the defeat at the Blue Licks (he had not), it seems that McGary’s

desire to extract revenge by killing practically any Indian had diminished not at all over

the course of almost half a decade.37

Faced with military defeats, ongoing assaults, and the mutilated remains of

those they held dear, European Americans responded to the war by dehumanising and

homogenising their enemy. In 1782, when colonel William Crawford was executed in

retaliation for the Gnadenhutten massacre – in which over ninety pacifist Indians were

systematically butchered at a Moravian mission town – Hugh Henry Brackenridge

quickly arranged for the publication of two captivity narratives which described, in lurid

detail, the failed expedition that had led to Crawford’s death.38 One of those accounts,

by Dr. John Knight, provided a particularly grim and macabre description of Crawford’s

torture and – eventual – execution, dwelling upon the colonel’s slow roasting as a

means to ‘induce our government to take some effectual steps to chastise and

suppress’ the Indians.39 In that publication the massacre of over ninety pacifist Indians

at the Moravian mission town of Gnadenhutten, the necessary context of that episode,

was ignored. Instead, the pamphlet used the language of atrocity to create an image

of victimisation, emphasising the brutality of the Indians whilst painting a deeply

misleading portrayal of European American innocence. In Knight’s narrative, the

wilderness came alive with hidden, unseen threats which snatched the unsuspecting

away: ‘The old man lagged behind...While we were preparing to reprimand him for

making a noise, I heard an Indian halloo...After this we did not hear the man call again,

neither did he ever come up to us anymore.’40 It is the scene of Crawford’s execution,

however, where the greatest care was made to assassinate the collective character of

the Indians: ‘When we went to the fire the Col. was stripped naked, ordered to sit down

36 John D. Shane, “Interview with Isaac Clinkenbeard”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC3. 37 For a broader discussion on McGary’s actions see Faragher, Daniel Boone, p. 254. 38 For Gnadenhutten see Harper, “Looking the Other Way: The Gnadenhutten Massacre and the Contextual Interpretation of Violence”, pp. 621-643 and Leonard Sadosky, “Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre: The Contest for Power in the Public World of the Revolutionary Pennsylvania Frontier” in David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson, eds., The Sixty Years War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814 (East Lansing: University of Michigan Press, 2001); for the Brackenridge’s publication see R.W.G Vail, Voice of the Old Frontier (1949, reprint; New York: Octagon Books, 1970), p. 44. 39 “A Letter from Hugh Henry Brackenrige to “The Public”, August 3rd, 1782” in Hugh Henry Brackenrige, ed., Indian Atrocities: Narratives of the Perils and Sufferings of Dr. Knight and John Slover, Among the Indians, During the Revolutionary War, with Short Memoirs of Colonel Crawford and John Slover (Cincinnati: U. P. James, 1867), pp. 5-6. 40 John Knight, “The Narrative of Dr. Knight” in Brackenrige, ed., Indian Atrocities, p. 16.


21

by the fire and then they beat him with sticks and their fists...The Indian men then took

up their guns and shot powder into the Colonel’s body, from his feet as far up as his

neck...Three of four Indians by turns would take up, individually, [a] burning piece of

wood and apply it to his naked body, already burnt black with powder...Some of the

squaws took broad boards, upon which they would carry a quantity of burning coals

and hot embers and throw on him, so that in a short time he had nothing but coals of

fire and hot ashes to walk on.’41

Such sensational language was certainly evocative, simultaneously capturing

and informing, the shape of the west’s emerging hatred of the Indians.42 Brackenridge

was identifying the Indians as a broad group who could be collectively characterised by

violence and brutality, in effect articulating a framework of cruelty as a framework of

understanding. By virtue of omission, Brackenridge’s publication implied the opposite

was true of European Americans. In contrast, Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the

State of Virginia, articulated an interpretation of the Indians that was wholly

incompatible with Brackenridge’s, assigning to them the same potential for good and

evil as his own ethnic peers.43 Such an interpretation was diametrically opposed to

Brackenridge’s and, as a result, Jefferson drew a theoretical line not only between the

pair, but between himself and the denizens of the west. Jefferson recognised plurality

in the Indians, not just tribally, but on a fundamental and individual level; Brackenridge,

on the other hand, ignored nuance in favour broad stereotypes supported by a

particular and prejudiced interpretation of the evidence available. Writing in 1792 in

an open letter which was printed prominently in the Kentucky Gazette he stated, rather

bluntly, that ‘men who are unacquainted with the savages are like young women who

have read romances, and have an improper idea of the Indian character in one case as

the female mind has of real life in the other.’44 In other words, the experience of the

west had taught European Americans living in that country to think about the Indians

41 Knight, “The Narrative of Dr. Knight”, p. 23. 42 That being said, there is evidence which suggests the later popularity of those narratives in locations deeply affected by the violence though it seems unlikely that pamphlet was the specific cause of further anti-Indian sentiment. Rather, if the document played a role it was likely that it provided confirmation bias, seemingly demonstrating the truth of assumptions and ideas already widely held by the community. For the popularity of Knight’s account see Daniel Trabue, “The Narrative of Daniel Trabue: Memorandum Made by me D Trabue in the Year 1827 of a Jurnal of Events from Memory and Tradition [sic]” in Chester Raymond Young, ed., Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1981, Reprinted 2004), pp. 142-143 and John D. Shane, “Interview with Captain Marcus Richardson”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC126-127. 43 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia: A New Edition, Prepared by the Author (Richmond: J.W Randolph, 1853), pp. 63-69. 44 “Farther and Concluding Thought on the Indian War by H. H. Brackenrige of Pittsburgh”, Kentucky Gazette (Bradford), May 19th, 1792, p. 1.


22

in a way that was alien to those who were separated from them by distance and, as

Brackenridge characterised it, the naivety of circumstance.

After the fighting had come to an end in the mid-1790s, the prejudices of war

continued to inform the attitudes of peace. One month after the climactic battle which

crippled the northern Indian war effort, European Americans in Cincinnati started a

race riot, demonstrating in the process that even friendly, allied tribes were perceived

through a lens that had been shaped by conflict.45 It mattered little that the Choctaws,

whom they targeted, were known allies of the American cause.46 Nor did it matter

that they had served as scouts for General Anthony Wayne, and thus helped to bring

about the final victory that had ended the war. What mattered to those who started

the riot was the ethnicity of their prey and, most importantly, the characteristics they

associated with it. When one of the rioters asked the local proprietor who had allowed

the Choctaw to drink in his establishment ‘is this the kind of Company you keep,’ he

was not asking a question; he was making a statement.47 The Cincinnati rioters were

expressing a sentiment, a blanket and pejorative bigotry that had become common

and, though not universal, was now widely accepted throughout much of the west,

particularly south of the Ohio River where the fighting had gone on longest. When, in

1811, Indiana Governor William Henry Harrison required an army to attack the pan-

Indian movement that was coalescing around two Shawnee brothers at Prophetstown

he was able to rely upon the support of Kentuckians whose staunch anti-Indian world

view, alongside their willingness to kill Indians, had remained firmly intact.48 During

the subsequent War of 1812, Kentuckians and other westerners once again found

ample opportunity to fight their old enemies whilst the actual fighting, and the losses

they suffered, served to replenish the anti-Indian cultural coffers of the region.49 When

Black Hawk led an armed resistance in northern Illinois in 1832 it should perhaps come

as no surprise that, in response to the five hundred warriors he was able to mobilise,

Illinois raised a volunteer army nine thousand strong. When Black Hawk, recognising

45 “Letter from Secretary Sargent to Captain Pierce, September 8th, 1794” and “Secretary Sargent to Judge McMillan, September 8th, 1794” in William Henry Smith, ed., The St. Clair Papers: The Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair, Soldier of the Revolutionary War; President of the Congress; and Governor of the Northwest Territory with his Correspondence and Other Papers, Volume II (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke and Company, 1882), pp. 327-328. 46 Kentucky Gazette (Bradford), April 27th, 1793, p. 3. 47 “Testimony of N.R. Hopkins, September 18th, 1794”, Arthur St. Clair Papers, Roll 4, Folder 7 MIC 96 Series 10, Ohio Historical Society. 48 Robert M. Owen, Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American Indian Policy (Normal: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), pp. 214-215. 49 Elias Darnall, A Journal, Containing an Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships, Sufferings, Battles, Defeat, and Captivity, of those Heroic Kentucky Volunteers and Regulars, Commanded by General Winchester, in the Years 1812-1813. Also, Two Narratives by Men that were Wounded in the Battles on the River Raisin, and Taken Captive by the Indians (Paris: Joel R. Lyle, 1813).


23

the futility of his position, had attempted to surrender to the militia on May 14th, the

party he dispatched bearing the white flag was fired upon and forced to retreat.50 As

one Illinoisan put it, his fellows acted with a ‘cowardly vindictiveness.’51 Illinois’ largest

donor of immigrants was Kentucky.52

War is not necessarily a radicalising force, it does not have to erode moderation

or push it to the fringe. In the Trans-Appalachian country, however, the war with the

Indians did just that. Because of their determination to preserve their territorial

integrity, and their willingness to leverage direct and indirect violence to further their

cause, the Indians exposed a generation of frontier settlers to one of the most intense

and long lasting backcountry wars in North American history. That situation created a

type of cultural momentum in the region that transformed the breadth and depth of

anti-Indian sentiment in the west, attaching it not just to abstract ideas of savagery but

a specific narrative of self-realised victimisation and the selective identification of

wartime atrocities. That narrative was rooted in the region where it came into being;

it was fundamentally western and, because of that, it helped to draw a theoretical line

along the Appalachian Mountains which served to separate, on that key issue, east

from west, backcountry from front country. In the west the American Revolution

occurred after its own fashion, but so too did another concurrent – parallel but

separate – layer of social revolution. The transformed way in which western Americans

conceptualised the Indians was not a complete break with what had gone before

(neither was the American Revolution) but it was a radical shift that marked not only a

vast increase of the breadth of anti-Indian sentiment but an ideological divergence

from the east. Where warfare with the Indians was an abstract notion, it was a distant

affair that could be romanticised and forgiven. In the west, where memories were

fresh and experience broad, Indian hatred was widely accepted, a celebrated part of

the region’s culture well into the nineteenth century.

50 Patrick J. Jung, The Black Hawk War of 1832 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007), pp. 87-89 and James E. Davis, Frontier Illinois (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press, 1998), pp. 193-198. 51 Elijah Kilbourn, “Kilbourn’s Narrative: A Reminiscence of Black Hawk” in Black Hawk, Antoine LeClair, trans., and J.B. Patterson, ed., Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nations, Various Wars in which he has been Engaged, and his Account of the Cause and General History of the Black Hawk War of 1832, his Surrender and Travel through the United States. Dictated by Himself. Also Life, Death and Burial of the Old Chief, together with A History of the Black Hawk War and Also Life, Death and Burial of the Old Chief, Together with a History of the Black Hawk War, by J. B. Patterson, Oquawka, 1882 (Rock Island: J.B. Patterson, 1882), pp. 162-164. 52 Davis Frontier, Illinois, pp. 122-123. For a broader commentary on the dispersal of Kentucky’s frontier population throughout the region see Aron, American Confluence, pp. 112-113.


24

Bibliography

Primary Sources Alder, Jonathan and Nelson, Larry L. (ed.), A History of Jonathan Alder: His Captivity and Life with the Indians, (Arkon: University of Arkon Press, 2002).

Brackenridge, Hugh Henry, “Farther and Concluding Thought on the Indian War by H. H.

Brackenridge of Pittsburgh”, Kentucky Gazette (Bradford), May 19th, 1792.

Brackenridge, Hugh Henry, Indian Atrocities: Narratives of the Perils and Sufferings of Dr.

Knight and John Slover, Among the Indians, During the Revolutionary War, with Short Memoirs

of Colonel Crawford and John Slover, (Cincinnati: U. P. James, 1867).

Bradford, John, “Notes on Kentucky” in Thomas D. Clark (ed.), The Voice of the Frontier: John

Bradford’s Notes on Kentucky, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993).

Darnall, Elias, A Journal, Containing an Accurate and Interesting Account of the Hardships,

Sufferings, Battles, Defeat, and Captivity, of those Heroic Kentucky Volunteers and Regulars,

Commanded by General Winchester, in the Years 1812-1813. Also, Two Narratives by Men

that were Wounded in the Battles on the River Raisin, and Taken Captive by the Indians (Paris:

Joel R. Lyle, 1813).

“Journal of William Calk, 1775”, Calk Family Collection 2005M14, Box 7, Folder 96, Kentucky

Historical Society

Hindle, Brooke, “The March of the Paxton Boys”, The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 3

(1946): 462-486.

Jefferson, Thomas, Notes on the State of Virginia: A New Edition, Prepared by the Author

(Richmond: J.W Randolph, 1853).

Kenny, Kevin, Peaceable Kingdom Lost: The Paxton Boys and the Destruction of William Penn’s

Holy Experiment (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Kentucky Gazette (Bradford), April 27th, 1793.

“Letter from George R. Clark to Colonel George Mason, November 19th, 1779”, Microfilm B/C

593m, Filson Historical Society.


25

“Letter from Secretary Sargent to Captain Pierce, September 8th, 1794” and “Secretary Sargent

to Judge McMillan, September 8th, 1794” in William Henry Smith (ed.), The St. Clair Papers:

The Life and Public Services of Arthur St. Clair, Soldier of the Revolutionary War; President of

the Congress; and Governor of the Northwest Territory with his Correspondence and Other

Papers, Volume II (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke and Company, 1882).

Mooney, James, Myths of the Cherokee: Extract from the Nineteenth Annual Report of the

Bureau of American Ethnology (Government Printing Office: Washington, 1902).

Trabue, Daniel, “The Narrative of Daniel Trabue: Memorandum Made by me D Trabue in the

Year 1827 of a Jurnal of Events from Memory and Tradition [sic]” in Chester Raymond Young

(ed.) Westward into Kentucky: The Narrative of Daniel Trabue (Lexington: University of

Kentucky Press, 1981, Reprinted 2004).

Kilbourn, Elijah, “Kilbourn’s Narrative: A Reminiscence of Black Hawk” in Black Hawk, Antoine

LeClair (trans.) and J.B. Patterson (ed.), Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak or Black

Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nations, Various Wars in which he has been Engaged,

and his Account of the Cause and General History of the Black Hawk War of 1832, his Surrender

and Travel through the United States. Dictated by Himself. Also Life, Death and Burial of the

Old Chief, together with A History of the Black Hawk War and Also Life, Death and Burial of the

Old Chief, Together with a History of the Black Hawk War, by J. B. Patterson, Oquawka, 1882

(Rock Island: J.B. Patterson, 1882).

Shane, John D., “Interview with Benjamin Stites”, Draper Manuscripts 13CC56-57.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Benjamin Allen”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC67-69.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Captain John Wilson”, Draper Manuscripts 17CC6-25

Shane, John D., “Interview with Captain Marcus Richardson”, Draper Manuscripts

12CC126-127.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Ephriam Sandusky”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC141-145.

Shane, John D., “Interview with George Fearis”, Draper Manuscripts 13CC238-244.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Isaac Clinkenbeard”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC1-4.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Jacob Stevens”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC135.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Josiah Collins”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC68.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Mrs. Arnold”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC241-245.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Nathaniel Hart”, Draper Manuscripts 17CC209-213.

Shane, John D., “Interview with Sarah Graham”, Draper Manuscripts 12CC45-53.

Shane, John D., “Interview with ------ Spence”, Draper Manuscripts 13CC198-199.

Shane, John D., “Interview with an Unnamed Subject”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC177.

Shane, John D., “Interview with an Unnamed Person in Cincinnati”, Draper Manuscripts

11CC279-283.

Shane, John D., “Interview with William Niblick”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC84-85.


26

Shane, John D.,”Interview with ----- Wymore”, Draper Manuscripts 11CC128-132.

“Testimony of N.R. Hopkins, September 18th, 1794”, Arthur St. Clair Papers, Roll 4, Folder 7

MIC 96 Series 10, Ohio Historical Society.

Unknown Author, “Early Indiana Presbyterianism excerpt [excerpt – pages removed from

original source]”, John D. Shane Papers 63M289, University of Kentucky Archives.

Secondary Sources

Aron, Stephen, How the West was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to

Stephen Aron (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1999).

Bailyn, Bernard, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Enlarged Edition

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992).

Berlin, Ira, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

(Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998).

Brumwell, Stephen, White Devil: A True Story of War, Savagery, and Vengeance in Colonial

America (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2004).

Cooper, James Fenimore The Last of the Mohicans: A Narrative of 1757 (New York: W.A.

Townshead & Company, 1859)

Davis, James E., Frontier Illinois (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indian University Press, 1998).

English, William Hayden, Conquest of the Country Northwest of the River Ohio, 1778-1783 and

Life of General George Rogers Clark (Indianapolis: The Bowell-Merrill Company, 1896), Vol.02.

Faragher, John Mack, Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (New York:

Henry Holt and Company, 1992).

Ferling, John, A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003).

Gipson, Lawrence Henry, “The American Revolution as Aftermath of the Great War for the

Empire, 1754-1763”, Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 65 (1950): 86-104.


27

Grenier, John, First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier (Cambridge and New

York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

Griffin, Patrick, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and the Revolutionary Frontier (New

York: Hill and Wang, 2007).

Harrison, Lowell Hayes, George Rogers Clark and the War in the West (1976; reprint,

Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001).

Harper, Rob, “Looking the Other Way: The Gnadenhutten Massacre and the Contextual

Interpretation of Violence”, William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 64 (2007): 621-644.

Jung, Patrick J., The Black Hawk War of 1832 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).

Lepore, Jill, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New

York: Vintage Books, 1999).

Lynd, Staughton and Waldstreicher, David, “Reflections on Economic Interpretation, Slavery,

the People Put of Doors, and Top Down versus Bottom Up”, The William and Mary Quarterly,

Vol. 68 (2011): 649-656.

Martin, James Kirby, “The Return of the Paxton Boys and the Historical State of the

Pennsylvania Frontier”, Pennsylvania History, Vol. 38 (1971): 117-133.

McConnell, Michael N., A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and its Peoples, 1724-1774

(Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1992).

McDonnell, Michael A., “Men Out of Time: Confronting History and Myth” The William and

Mary Quarterly, Vol. 68 (2011): 644-648.

Merrell, James H., Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New

York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999).

Merritt, Jane T., At the Cross Roads: Indians and Empires, 1700-1763 (Chapel Hill and London:

University of North Carolina Press, 2003).

Nash, Gary B., The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the

Struggle to Create America (New York: Penguin Books, 2005).

Nelson, Larry L., A Man of Distinction Among Them: Alexander McKee and the Ohio Country

Frontier, 1754-1799, (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1999).


28

Own, Robert M., Mr. Jefferson’s Hammer: William Henry Harrison and the Origins of American

Indian Policy (Normal: University of Oklahoma Press, 2007).

Perkins, Elizabeth A., Border Life: Experience and Memory in the Revolutionary Ohio Valley

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

Reid, Darren R., “Soldiers of Settlement: Violence and Psychological Warfare on the Kentucky

Frontier, 1775-1783”, Eras, Vol. 10 (2008),

http://arts.monash.edu.au/publications/eras/edition-10/reid-article.pdf.

Sadosky, Leonard, “Rethinking the Gnadenhutten Massacre: The Contest for Power in the

Public World of the Revolutionary Pennsylvania Frontier” in David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L.

Nelson (eds.), The Sixty Years War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814 (East Lansing: University of

Michigan Press, 2001).

Silver, Peter, Our Savage Neighbours: How Indian War Transformed Early America (New York:

W.W. Norton and Company, 2008).

Trask, Kerry A., Black Hawk: The Battle for the American Heart (New York: Henry Holt and

Company, 2007).

White, Richard, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region,

1650-1815 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Ward, Matthew C., Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years War in Virginia and

Pennsylvania, 1754-1767 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003).

Vail, R.W.G Vail, Voice of the Old Frontier (1949, reprint; New York: Octagon Books, 1970).

Vaughan, Alder T., The Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience (Oxford

and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Wood, Gordon S., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Random House,

1993).

Young, Alfred F., Liberty Tree: Ordinary People and the American Revolution (New York: New

York University Press, 2006).

The Berlin Historical Review Vol.02/No.01 (2016

29

The Turkish Revolution and State Formation From Below

Niall Finn

German-Turkish Social Sciences M.A., Middle East Technical University (Ankara, Turkey) &

Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Berlin, Germany)

Abstract: The history of Turkish state formation has focused almost exclusively on the role of

the founding elite. Against the narrowness of this approach, there is a need to widen the

scope of analysis both historically and theoretically. This article aims to contribute to this

process by focusing on the role played by social movements in Turkish state formation. To do

so it combines Antonio Gramsci’s theory of “passive revolution” with the “history from below”

approach pioneered by E.P. Thompson. This article does not dispute that the Turkish Republic

was a modernising project led by an emerging elite, but rather, following Gramsci's model,

argues that such a project necessarily had to gain the hegemony of groups in wider society.

In order to explain the concrete nature of this process, it follows Thompson in tracing the

development and experience of different social groups and how they actively related to the

elite who led the formation of the new state. The article therefore argues that the process of

state formation must be understood over a much longer timeframe and looks at the

experience of two key social groups; the organised working class and the women’s movement

in the late Ottoman and early Republican periods. „It shows how these groups were actively

won over to the project of state formation by inclusion of some of their interests, and

simultaneously, the oppression of their independent movements.

Keywords: Turkey, State Formation, Passive Revolution, History From Below, Kemalism

Introduction

In 1936 Mustafa Kemal, war hero and first president of the Republic, was given the

name “Ataturk” or “Father of the Turks” in recognition of the seminal role he had

played in the formation of the Turkish state. Symbolically, this cemented the view that

Turkish state formation was an internal process driven by a small elite or simply by

Ataturk himself. Viewed in this manner, the new state was represented as a

completely new entity - a clean break from the failed Ottoman Empire that preceded

Niall Finn Vol.02/No.01 (2016)

30

it. This interpretation came to dominate the historiography of the early Turkish

Republic.

Recently this overly simplistic narrative has begun to be challenged: scholars

(mainly from outside of Turkey) have focused on the links between the Ottoman

Empire and the new Republic.1 While this work has done much to inspire a

reassessment of the period, the focus has remained on the role of the elite. This is in

part due to the fact that the historical records of the period are limited to high politics

such as speeches of the National Assembly, and therefore research has naturally

tended to focus on elites.2 Tentative steps have been made to move to a wider scope

of investigation. In 1998 Gavin Brockett called for a social history of the Ataturk Era

and offered some useful initial research.3 While an important grounding, it was by its

own admission limited in its scope. There was little link to the legacy of the Ottoman

Empire or a theoretical analysis of the formation of the new Turkish State.

A more sophisticated attempt has been made by Ceylan Tokluoglu and Alan Hunt

who explicitly try and explore “state formation from below”.4 They make excellent

work in pointing out the importance of social movements in the process of state

formation. However their analysis of these movements is flawed, since these

movements are seen only in relation to opposing the growth of the state, which for

the authors constitutes the “spread of civilisation”.5 Resistant social groups are

“essentially reactionary".6 Their assumptions therefore mirror the traditional Kemalist

narratives of state formation in which Turkey had to be modernised by force at the

will of an elite. Theirs is a history from below, without the element that made such an

approach such a rich source of research. That is history from below without analysing

social movements to be actors in their own right, worth analysis for the way they

exercise historical agency.

The aim of this essay is therefore to attempt to point to examples that I believe

demonstrate a true history of Turkish state formation from below. To do this I will

combine Gramscian theory of state formation with E.P. Thompson’s historical method

in studying social movements. This will provide a theoretical framework in which it is

1 Erik J. Zurcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building, (New York, I.B. Tauris, 2010). 2 Gavin D. Brockett, 'Collective action and the Turkish Revolution', Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 34, Issue No. 4 (London, Routledge, 1998), p.44. 3 Ibid. 4 Ceylan Tokluoglu and Alan Hunt, “State formation from below: the Turkish case”, The Social Science Journal, Vol. 39, Issue no. 4, (Portland, Elsevier, 2002), p.p. 617–624. 5 Ibid., p.618. 6 Ibid., p.620.


31

possible to both include the legacy of the Ottoman Empire in Turkish State formation

and show the contribution to the process made by social movements from below.

Gramsci and State Formation: Passive Revolution and Hegemony

Central to my argument is Gramsci’s theory of passive revolution. Building on Leon

Trotsky’s theory of “uneven and combined development”, Gramsci argued that the

spread of capitalism forced other countries to modernise or they would be dominated

by economically superior nations.7 The nation state was therefore an attempt to

respond to the onset of capitalist modernity. Thus the theory of passive revolution

describes “the transitions to capitalism forged through the emergence of the modern

nation state”.8 This required a new political order and “the inclusion of new classes

within the hegemony of a political order without an expansion of mass-producer

control over politics”.9 Therefore a passive revolution represents the dual process of

state formation in response to the pressure of the spread of capitalism and the

resulting construction of a new political order in the form of a nation state.

This approach is radically different from the deterministic view of modernization

and state formation as the unstoppable march to civilisation. In Gramsci’s view the

process is dependent on “the particular configuration of social, cultural and political

state forms within class struggles over transitions to modernity” – the process remains

specific to historical circumstance, thereby allowing different social actors to play a

concrete role in the outcome of the process.10

Therefore while it is essentially an elite project, the form or success of state

formation is by no means predetermined. It relies on an elite winning the hegemony

of wider groups in society. Building on the term first developed by Vladimir Lenin,

hegemony is the process by which one class (or a group within one class) takes the

leading role in society and involves a combination of both coercion and consent.11

Hegemony is therefore an interlinked process whereby a social group dominates

society. As leadership implies, this is done through both the suppression of alternative

views as well as winning support of other social groups. As Gramsci himself describes

it: “hegemony presupposes that account be taken of the interests and the tendencies

7 Adam David Morton, “Waiting for Gramsci: State Formation, Passive Revolution and the International”, Millennium - Journal of International Studies, Vol. 35, Issue No. 3, (London: Sage, 2007), p.610. 8 Ibid., p.610. 9 Ibid., p.609. 10 Morton, “Waiting for Gramsci: State Formation, Passive Revolution and the International”, (2007), p.605. 11 Peter Thomas, The Gramscian Moment, (Boston: Brill, 2009), p.188.


32

of the groups over which hegemony is to be exercised, and that a certain compromise

equilibrium should be formed[...] [but] such a compromise cannot touch the

essential[...] nucleus of economic activity“.12 Hegemony is therefore the process by

which subaltern social groups come to identify their interests with the leading group

of society; both through the leading group integrating the other groups interests into

their framework (without changing the basis of this framework) and suppressing

opposition.

Hegemony and State Formation From Below

Hegemony is an active and continual process that is never completely dominant.

People's material conditions highlight contradictions between the dominant view and

reality creating space for historical agency.13 Therefore in explaining state formation

as passive revolution involving construction of a new hegemony, it is necessary to

understand the position of different social groups in relation to this new hegemonic

project. The central question of state formation then becomes how and why different

social groups were constituted into what Gramsci calls a “historic bloc”. It is therefore

essential to build a comprehensive picture of the social movements that were present

in the Turkish context during state formation. It is only after understanding their

position in society in relation to the leading social groups that we will be able to fully

understand the process of passive revolution and the construction of a new

hegemony.

Therefore this article will use the methodology developed by E.P. Thompson in

his classic work The Making of The English Working Class.14 Thompson developed the

importance of focusing on the lived experiences of lower social groups.15 Crucially he

understood that a social group’s position of power in society was not mechanically

determined but dependent on their relationship with other social classes.16 The

approach thus represents an ideal method of historical investigation into how

hegemony is constructed.

12 Peter Lang, The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life, (San Francisco: San Francisco State University Press, 2006), p.30. 13 John Fiske, “British Cultural Studies and Television” in Robert Clyde Allen, ed. Channels of Discourse, Reassembled Television and Contemporary Criticism, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), p.291. 14 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, (London: Penguin Books, 2002). 15 F. K. Donnelly, “Ideology and Early English Working-Class History: Edward Thompson and His Critics”, Social History, Vol. 1, Issue No. 4, (London: Routledge, 1976), p.221. 16 Ibid., p.220.


33

History of State Formation

If state formation is understood primarily as a response to capitalist modernity, its

origins can be traced back further than simply the establishment of the Turkish

Republic in 1923. In many ways state formation can be seen as early as 1839 and the

introduction of the Tanzimat reforms of the Ottoman state. In response to European

pressure various changes were introduced to modernise the bureaucracy, provincial

administration, taxation, education and communication network on a European

model.17 This process was intensified in 1908 with the coming to power of the

Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), who were explicit about wanting to

reproduce European capitalism.18

At the end of the First World War the Ottoman Empire collapsed, Istanbul and

Izmir were occupied and plans were drawn up to divide the rest of the Empire between

the victorious powers. In response a Turkish National Movement was set up to defend

the territorial integrity of Anatolia. This movement fought a successful military

campaign against occupying forces and founded the Republic of Turkey. Within Turkish

historiography there is a tendency to see a clean break between the Ottoman Era and

the new Turkish Republic.19 However, in many respects there is strong continuity. The

leaders of this new nationalist movement were almost without exception former

members of the CUP, including Mustafa Kemal.20 Although it would be a mistake to

simply conflate the two movements, their attitude to the social movements of the era

displayed remarkable continuity, including the motivation to build a new capitalist

state.21

Hence this study looks at state formation over a much longer period than

traditional literature has assigned to this process. All other studies in the past have

chosen to focus on the era before or after the foundation of the Republic. This essay

argues that much of the groundwork for constructing the new nation state took place

much earlier than 1923. An emerging nationalist movement began to win the support

of the relatively powerful workers and the women’s movement, which played and

important role in the late Ottoman period. This was not an inevitable process and can

17 Erik J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History, (New York: Diane Publishing Company, 2004), p.56. 18 Feroz Ahmad, “The Development of Working Class Consciousness in Turkey” in Zachary Lockman, ed. Workers and Working Classes in the Modern Middle East, (New York: New York State University Press, 1994), pp. 133-164. 19 Zurcher, The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building, (2010), p.124. 20 Ibid., p.143. 21 Ibid., p.150.


34

only be explained by examining the position of these social movements within Turkish

society.

The Workers’ Movement

The history of workers and the Turkish Republic are inextricably linked. As the

Ottoman Empire struggled to adapt to the increasing pressure brought about by the

expansion of capitalism at its western borders, it was workers who were not only at

the centre of these changes but also often in the best position to resist them. They

were particularly influential in the period before and after the Young Turk Revolution

in 1908, which was a crucial moment in the emergence of the Turkish state. This meant

that their hegemonisation was crucial to the successful process of state formation.

The social and political implications of what constitutes the “working class” or

even simply “workers” is one of the most disputed topics in social history.22 The

category becomes even more complex when we consider historical moments before

the relative homogeneity brought to workforces by large scale industrialisation. This

especially applies to countries like Turkey, which as part of the economic periphery

experienced particularly uneven industrialisation. This resulted in a multiplicity of

different experiences with often no clear distinction between wage earners and other

forms of labour.23

This was a particular feature of the Anatolian region that would form the geographical

basis of the new Turkish state. Anatolian exports as a share of the Empire’s whole

actually fell from 35 per cent to 29 per cent between 1840 and 1914, i.e. in the final

era of the Ottoman Empire. Thus the region remained more dominated by agriculture

than other parts of the Empire, with 80 per cent to 85 per cent of all exports (by value)

coming from the agricultural sector.24 This trend continued into the early Republic;

between the years 1923 and 1929 the growth in agriculture was twice that of

industry.25

22 Marcel van der Linden, “Labour History as the History of Multitudes”, Labour / Le Travail, Vol. 52, (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press , 2003), pp.235-243. 23 Özgür Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938“, Mittelungdblatt des Instituts für soziale Bewegungen, Heft 33, 2005, pp.123-136. 24 Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908, (New York: New York University Press, 1983), p.8. 25 Özgür Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005), pp.123-136.


35

The diversity of labour occupations makes discussion of a common Turkish labour

history difficult. It is therefore not surprising that the limited attention given to the

history of workers in Turkey has been dominated by the focus on the easily identifiable

workers, those who were organised and in urban areas.26 This is problematic given

that it does not take into account the role of unorganised workers and those who

existed in the economy outside of factory production. Whilst they may have lacked

membership of class based organisations, such as trade unions, this did not, preclude

these workers from struggling against their employers or the state.27 The

historiography concerning these workers is rather lacking, however it will not be

possible to solve this particular issue within the confines of this essay. While it is

important to acknowledge the role of such workers, this does not detract from the

role played by organised workers in state formation which this essay will primarily

focus on.

Workers’ relationship with the Ottoman state

The pioneering research of historian Donald Quataert shows us the importance of the

organised workers‘ movements at the end of the 19th century. His work illustrates the

way that economic expansion from the West changed the social conditions in the

Ottoman Empire and how this process was resisted by social groups. It mainly involves

detailed case studies of the experiences of different groups of Ottoman workers and

their interactions with the state.28

Quataert’s work helps us trace the long history of antagonism between the state

and workers in the Ottoman Empire. Like most other preindustrial societies,

production was divided by a guild system which meant that those involved in

manufacturing could not be talked about as a single group. In the 17th century there

were 260,000 artisans in Istanbul who were organised into 1,109 different “ensaf”

guilds. Alongside these existed an array of other kinds of workers from skilled

journeymen to unskilled casual labourers.29 Their influence was bolstered by strong

26 Donald Quataert, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire”, In Touraj Atabaki, ed., The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran, (London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2007), p.20. 27 Donald Quataert, “Epilogue” in Touraj Atabaki and Gavin D Brockett, ed., Ottoman and Republican Turkish Labour History, (Cambridge: University Cambridge Press, 2009), p.190. 28 See Donald Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908, (1983); Quataert, “Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, 1839- 1950”, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Quataert, Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: the Zonguldak Coalfield, 1822-1920, (New York: Berghahn Press, 2006). 29 Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p.16.


36

links with the armed Janissaries, who effectively acted as the protectors of urban

interests against the Sultan and the state. However they were defeated as part of the

Ottoman State attempts at European style modernisation.30 No longer protected by

the influence of the Janissaries, the traditional “ensafs” began to be undermined by

cheap European imports and were therefore almost completely wiped out by 1908.31

Some artisan based production continued to exist alongside and even supplemented

the factory based production that had begun to emerge in 1830 but their influence

was limited.32

Trade unions and syndicates to represent the interest of waged labourers began

to emerge in the larger cities of Anatolia as early as 1889.33 These would found the

basis for the Ottoman Empire’s strongest workers' movement until Turkey's workers'

movement in the 1960s. Recognising their power the CUP - many of whom would form

the basis of the leadership of the new Turkish state - actively sought to win them to

their political programme and encouraged the involvement of workers politics.

Motivated in part by the high food prices and job losses that scarred the Ottoman

Empire in the early years of the 20th century, workers played a key role in political

campaigns against Sultan Abdulhamid II.34

After the CUP took power in a coup in 1908 this workers' movement became

increasingly emboldened. In the five months after the removal of Sultan Abdulhamid

II, there were an unprecedented 111 strikes involving as many as 100,000 workers.35

Vitally important industries such as the biggest coal mines of the Middle East and much

of the rail network were shut down.36 In its precarious position, the new government

was forced to accept at least partial wage increases in every case reversing the

general decline in real wages in the period.37

The CUP’s response to the wave of strikes presents a clear example of hegemony

in using both integration and coercion, thereby laying the foundation for the

hegemonic project of the Turkish Republic. The CUP attempted to integrate the

workers into their movement and at least appeared open to their demands. Crucial to

30 Quataert, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire”, (2007), p.23. 31 Ibid., p.20. 32 Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, (2001), p.16. 33 Quataert, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire”, (2007), p.22. 34 Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, (2001), pp.77-79. 35 Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, (2001), p.78. 36 Quataert, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire”, (2007), p.27. 37 Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, (2001), p.78; Quataert, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire”, (2007), pp.26-27.


37

this process was that almost all of the large industrial companies in the Ottoman

Empire were owned by foreign capital.38 The Young Turks were therefore able to

position themselves as attempting to protect the interests of domestic workers. This

was a classic case of hegemony: while accepting pay increases as a way of building

consent the state also introduced anti-strike laws and forcibly ended strikes when

necessary.39

Other factors worked in their favour. The suffering of the Muslim population

after the accession of Bosnia and Herzegovina helped prompt a powerful boycott

movement. This movement took a strongly nationalist and increasingly Muslim form.

As Y. Dogan Çetinkaya argues, the boycott movement “mobilised and organised

Muslims within the framework of rising Turkish nationalism and turned it from an

abstract idea into a social reality".40 Quataert agrees: “The annexation of Bosnia and

Herzegovina in 1908 was crucial for the success of the Young Turks. It allowed the

massive social unrest to be channelled into nationalism”. In this sense he argues the

1908 revolution was something of an “1848 moment” in the way that a powerful

movement for social change was diffused.41

Workers played a powerful role in this period and their hegemonisation into the

emerging nationalist movement was a crucial part of the formation of the new state.

However, this process can only be explained by the social context, which meant that

the CUP was able to actively win the support of workers. This was done by capitalising

on disaffection with the old regime and foreign companies, as well as suppressing

independent workers movements.

Workers and the Republic

Several aspects of the experience of workers in the post-war era worked in favour of

the construction of the new hegemonic project. The redrawing of the map in the post-

Ottoman era meant that most of the qualified workers were left outside of Turkey.

Between 1913 and 1923, thanks to emigration and population transfers, Turkey lost a

further 4 million people who were disproportionately working age men.

38 Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908, (1983), p.148. 39 Quataert, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire”, (2007), p.26. 40 Y. Dogan Çetinkaya, “The social origins of Turkish nationalism: The anti-Greek movement in the Ottoman Empire” in Lyberatos Andreas, ed. Social transformation and mass mobilisation in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean cities, (Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2013), pp. 229-244. 41 Quataert, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire, 1881-1908, (1983), p.154.


38

As we have seen the Muslim workers (who made up the vast majority of those

who remained) had already been integrated into Turkish nationalism as an important

social base. While other important groups, such as Greek workers, were among those

lost to emigration. Unsurprisingly this integration was reinforced by the experience of

war and especially that of occupation. In the face of an aggressive occupying force,

workers sided with the nationalists, engaging in actions like a wave of strikes against

the occupation centred on the strategically important transport sector.42

However, at this point workers had not been completely won over by the

nationalists. At May Day rallies in the occupied cities of Istanbul and Izmir in 1920 and

1921, workers shouted slogans hailing both the CUP leader Enver Pasha as well as

Lenin. In Mersin, workers protested against French ships anchored in their harbour

using slogans “Long live May Day, down with imperialism”.43 Workers clearly retained

an element of political independence. This worried the new regime; especially as

organised workers became more and more self-confident, often taking a lead in

nationalist protests. As a result the most powerful groups, like the Istanbul Union of

International Workers, were closed down and some of its leaders arrested.44

The position of the elite of the new state was difficult; they recognised the

centrality of workers to any move towards capitalist modernisation. However, thanks

to the wave of radicalism since the 1908 revolution, workers were also increasingly

aware of their important position in the new society. Take for example the lines from

a poem called “In Praise of May the First” written in 1923: “Oh Worker... Humanity has

achieved happiness thanks to you: But for you humanity would not have reached these

heights. Cut and cast the yoke of slavery from your neck!”45

The new nationalist regime responded in much the same way as the CUP.

Strategically important groups like the Eregli Miners (who worked at one of the Middle

East's biggest sources of coal) were offered the guarantee of an eight hour day and

social security as proof of the new government’s sympathy towards workers.46

Symbolically, workers groups were invited to take part in the Izmir Economic Congress.

This gathering was initiated to develop the economic policies of the new Turkish State.

The fact that workers groups were invited to take part in this debate is politically

significant as it has been widely regarded as recognition of the important role of

42 Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005). p.131. 43 Ahmad, “The Development of Working Class Consciousness in Turkey”, (1994), p.136. 44 Ibid., p.136. 45 Ibid., p.136. 46 Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005), p.131.


39

workers in society.47 However the government used it as an opportunity to

hegemonise the workers' movement rather than seriously involve them in decision

making. The conference was dominated by groups like the New Turkish National Trade

Organisation who were hostile to any restrictions on free enterprise.48 The

government appointed the worker delegates who became, according to the words of

a merchant delegate, “nothing more than a puppet organisation of the merchants”.49

Again this process of political integration was not completely successful but it was

combined with policies that aimed to prevent workers from organising independently.

Some independent workers‘ groups, led by the socialist organisation Aydinlik,

successfully launched a propaganda campaign for more radical proposals. This led to

the Congress adopting many of the workers‘ demands, including an eight hour working

day and the establishment of the 1st May as “Workers Day”.50 However, these

proposals were never implemented. The first May Day after the conference (which

was also the first one of the new Republic) saw strikes from Tobacco workers in

Istanbul and a march to the General Assembly in Ankara.51 Their demands were the

same as those made at the Congress. This time, however, the government responded

with a crackdown. Arrests were made, organisations were closed down and

publications were banned.52 May Day was not openly organised by workers again until

1976.53

Resistance to these measures took the form of the foundation of the Workers’

Advancement Society which organised 14 unions and represented 30,000 members.

Although tame, it continued to campaign against anti-strike laws until it was closed

down in 1928.54 The 1926 Law for the Maintenance of Order in effect banned all

political opposition, including all unions and seriously curtailed the workers‘

movement until it was repealed in 1946.55 In this era urban wages fell overall by as

much as 30 per cent, which sparked some continued resistance. Recent research has

uncovered much more social unrest than was previously known. It now seems that

47 Ahmad, “The Development of Working Class Consciousness in Turkey”, (1994), p.136; Gökmen, ”The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005), p.132. 48 Ozay Mehmet, “Turkey in Crisis: Some Contradictions in the Kemalist Development Strategy”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 15, Issue No.1, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp.47- 66. 49 Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005), p.132. 50 Ibid., p.132. 51 Ahmad, “The Development of Working Class Consciousness in Turkey”, (1994), p.136. 52 Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (2001), p.85. 53 Ahmad, “The Development of Working Class Consciousness in Turkey”, (1994), p.137. 54 Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005), p.133. 55 Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (2001), p.86.


40

there were at least 97 strikes between 1923 and 1938. To put this in context, it was

previously understood that there were only 43 strikes from 1923 all the way up to

1960.56

The Women’s Movement

Turkey is often distinguished amongst other Muslim nations with regard to the

position of women in its society. Traditionally, the credit for this is given to Mustafa

Kemal Ataturk for granting women's rights and reforms as part of embracing western

ideals and rejecting the Islamic legacy of the Ottoman Caliphate.57 This narrative is

doubly problematic. First, the emphasis on the paternal role of Ataturk obscures the

role of women themselves in shaping their position in the new Turkish state. Second,

this paternal narrative is reinforced by the emphasis on the “western” nature of these

reforms which precludes Ottoman and/or Muslim women from being able to

independently assert their own interests, implying that instead they must be

enlightened by an external force. In reality women played an active role in shaping

their own destiny. They did not play a passive role in state formation but actively had

to be won over to the project or were defeated opposing it.

There is a limited amount of work dedicated to the women’s movements of the

era, and as with male workers groups,58 the literature that does exist focuses

disproportionately on the women who were organised and in urban areas. While

there were other kinds of women who similarly played a role in the formation of the

state, this essay will concentrate on women in urban areas, whose stories have been

documented.

Women in the Ottoman Era

The women’s movement in the Ottoman Empire goes back to the 1870s. Benefitting

from the Tanzimat reforms which brought the first wave of modernization women

wrote books and journals, initiated associations, protests and took part in public

debates.59 The first women’s magazine Terakki-i Muhadderat was published in 1869.

This marked the beginning of a growing trend that saw 40 women’s journals published

between 1869 and 1927.60 These publications are even more notable for the fact that

56 Gökmen, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938”, (2005), p.134 57 Deniz Kandiyoti, “End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism and Women in Turkey” in Reina Lewis and Sara Mills, ed. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, (London: Routledge, 2003), p.263. 58 Kandiyoti, “End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism and Women in Turkey”, p.282. 59 Sirin Tekeli, “The Turkish Womens Movement: A Short History of Success”, (2010), p.119 http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/14/qm14_pdf/19.pdf, (Date accessed: 22/10/2015). 60 Nadje S. Al-Ali, “The Women’s Movement in Egypt, with selected references to Turkey”, United Nations


41

their content points to an “emerging feminist consciousness”.61 In these writings

women articulated “a range of demands relating to education, employment, marriage

and dress code”.62

A conservative Islamic backlash marked the period after 1878. This came to an

end with the 1908 revolution and the CUP sought to capture aspects of the women’s

movement and mobilise women within their programme of capitalist development.

Universities were opened to women in 1914 and special classes were offered to

encourage women to become involved in business.63

Women continued to make significant contributions to the ideological debates in

the era after the 1908 revolution. An English woman who was in the state at the time

declared the new regime to be a “Turkish Feminist Government!”64 The period saw

independent women’s groups grow as part of the flourishing civil society. A wide range

of opinions were represented in a variety of organisations, from cultural and charitable

societies to openly feminist groups. The most radical action was taken in 1913 when

women organised a sit-in against a company that had discriminated against hiring

Muslim women.65

Women and the Republic

The strength of women’s groups in relation to the state increased with the onset of

the First World War. Women’s labour was needed to replace the men who had been

mobilized to fight. Women therefore took up crucial roles in all aspects of the

economy, from manufacturing textiles and ammunition to working in banks and

hospitals.66 The end of the war and the division of the Ottoman Empire meant that the

new Turkish territory lost many of the minorities who had made up the bulk of its

entrepreneurs and merchants. With the experience they had gained from professional

training during the war, it was mainly middle class women who filled the gaps. This

was encouraged by the new state as it sought to bolster the emergent nation’s

Research Institute for Social Development, April 1, 2002, p.20, http://www.unrisd.org./80256B3C005BB128/%28httpHomepages%29/$first?OpenDocument, (Date accessed: 22/10/2015). 61 Ibid., p.20. 62 Ibid., p.20. 63 Kandiyoti, “End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism and Women in Turkey”, (2003), p.270. 64 Ibid., p.269. 65 Al-Ali, “The Women’s Movement in Egypt, with selected references to Turkey”, (2002), p.26. 66 Valentine M. Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East, (London: Lynne Rienner, 2003), p.92.


42

bourgeoisie.67 In this way some women gained significant power and influence. Having

been already partially won over to the CUP project, many women played a significant

role in the movement against the occupation that followed the end of the war. There

were 16 women’s organisations amongst the 50 groups involved in the struggle for

“national liberation” and they emerged in all parts of the country.68

Given the relatively assertive history of the women’s movement prior to the

establishment of the Turkish state, it is not surprising that the new Kemalist elite

sought to hegemonise such a social force. In many ways this process ran parallel to the

domination of the working class. It built on the foundation set down by the CUP and

combined both the integration of some women’s demands into Kemalism while at the

same time denying space for alternatives. It therefore treated women’s issues in much

the same way it responded to class conflict.69

Mustafa Kemal himself began the process by lionising the role played by

Anatolian women in the nationalist struggle, often using it as a pretext to justify his

reformist measures in regards to women.70 These reforms have been heralded as so

radical and comprehensive that White has termed them “State Feminism”.71 Such a

reading sheds much light on the way the women's movement was integrated into the

hegemony of the new state. In the words of White: “the state-led promotion of

women’s equality in the public sphere, monopolized women’s activism and shaped it

as a tool of the state’s modernizing project”.72 Legal reforms gave women equal status

in divorce, outlawed polygamy and extended mothers' rights over children.73 These

changes especially benefitted educated and middle class women and the new ideal

woman in the mind of the Republican elites was a “bourgeois urban woman”.74 Thus

the women who had been most active in the women’s movement benefitted most

from the new social order.

Some authors are sceptical about how much these reforms actually constituted

“feminism”, arguing that the reforms aimed to change the form of domination rather

67 Jenny B. White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”, NWSA Journal, Vol. 15, Issue No. 3, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), p.153. 68 Al-Ali, “The Women’s Movement in Egypt, with selected references to Turkey”, (2002), p.26. 69 Zehra F. Arat, “Turkish Women and the Turkish Reconstruction of Tradition” in Shiva Balaghi and Fatma Müge Göçek, ed. Reconstructing Gender in Middle East: Tradition, Identity, and Power, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), p.59. 70 Moghadam, Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle East, (2003), p.92. 71 White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”, (2003), p.147. 72 Ibid., p.155. 73 Al-Ali, 2002, p.279. 74 White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”, (2003), p.147.


43

than to end it.75 This is a valid criticism and it is important to understand that these

reforms were not made in the interest of women so much as to gain the support of

women without challenging the fundamental Kemalist project of capitalist

modernization. Therefore the reforms that were offered were inextricably linked with

the move towards western capitalism. For example, “[s]chools added to their

curriculum the new Fordist “science” of home economics that taught women modern

child rearing, household techniques, principles of hygiene, and Western fashion”.76

Combined with the reforms to the penal code and public life, such a project could be

presented as benefitting women.

The other part of this process was that any attempts to move outside of this

monopoly were blocked, making it difficult to form any alternative to the reforms.

When women attempted to form their own political party, Mustafa Kemal stepped in

personally to stop them.77 In 1936 the Turkish Women’s Federation organised a

feminist conference in Turkey, which amongst other things issued a condemnation of

the rising Nazi movement. Worried about its politicisation the government closed the

Federation arguing that women had reached equality within the Republic.78 One of the

most striking examples of both integration and domination was that while women

were given the vote in 1930, they were unable to work for the state by joining the civil

service or public administration.79 It would not be until the 1980s that women’s

movements world be able to successfully challenge this project.80

Conclusions

This essay has aimed to show the way in which social movements played an active role

in the process of state formation. Tracing the history of the workers' and women’s

movements back into the Ottoman Empire is crucial to understanding the part they

played in this process. Social movements played an influential role from the very

beginning of capitalist modernisation and rather than passive objects of reform,

workers and women’s groups were agents of their own history. This historical agency

necessitated them being won over to the new hegemonic project that constituted the

creation of the new state. State formation necessarily involved the integration of some

of their aspirations, so that capitalist modernity could be seen to represent their

75 Arat, “Turkish Women and the Turkish Reconstruction of Tradition”, (2013), p.58. 76 White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”, (2003), p.154. 77 Arat, “Turkish Women and the Turkish Reconstruction of Tradition”, (2013), p.66. 78 White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”, (2003), p.155. 79 Arat, “Turkish Women and the Turkish Reconstruction of Tradition”, (2013), p.66. 80 White, “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”, (2003), p.155.


44

interests. They therefore had an active role in shaping the process that went beyond

resisting reforms. In this way their role cannot be conceptualised as either a passive or

reactionary response to social change. Rather it was the emerging state that played a

reactionary role, suppressing both the workers‘ and women’s movements when they

attempted to develop independent action or ideas that moved beyond the dominant

view of society.

This theoretical approach is made concrete by analysing the social movements

themselves. While somewhat neglected, a social history of the era does much to

enlighten the actual process of state formation. By showing the position of these social

movements and how they related to other groups in society it is easier to understand

social movements as historical actors. An understanding of the position of workers

under foreign owned companies at the end of the Ottoman Empire, for example,

reveals their support for the CUP to be an active choice, rather than passive

compliance.

Given its short nature this essay is only able to sketch a rough outline of this

process and how it affected these two specific social groups. However, preliminary

results show that understanding Turkish state formation as a passive revolution and

new hegemonic project may well provide a productive framework for future research.


45

Bibliography

Primary Sources Ahmad, Feroz, “The Development of Working Class Consciousness in Turkey” in Zachary Lockman, ed. Workers and Working Classes in the Modern Middle East, (New York: New York State University Press, 1994), pp. 133-164.

Secondary Sources Books Arat, Zehra F., “Turkish Women and the Turkish Reconstruction of Tradition” in Shiva Balaghi and Fatma Müge Göçek, ed. Reconstructing Gender in Middle East: Tradition, Identity, and Power, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), pp. 59-83.

Beinin, Joel, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2001).

Çetinkaya, Y. Dogan, “The social origins of Turkish nationalism: The anti-Greek movement in

the Ottoman Empire” in Lyberatos Andreas, ed. Social transformation and mass mobilisation

in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean cities, (Heraklion: Crete University Press, 2013),

pp. 229-244.

Fiske, John, “British Cultural Studies and Television' in Robert Clyde Allen, ed. Channels of

Discourse, Reassembled Television and Contemporary Criticism, (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 1992), pp. 284-326.

Kandiyoti, Deniz, “End of Empire: Islam, Nationalism and Women in Turkey” in Reina Lewis

and Sara Mills, ed. Feminist Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, (London: Routledge, 2003), pp.

263-284.

Lang, Peter, The Hegemony of Common Sense: Wisdom and Mystification in Everyday Life,

(San Francisco: San Francisco State University Press, 2006).

Moghadam, Valentine M., Modernizing Women: Gender and Social Change in the Middle

East', (London: Lynne Rienner, 2003).

Qautaert, Donald, “Ottoman Workers and the State 1826-1904” in Zachary Lockman,

ed., Workers and the Working Classes in the Middle East, (New York: State University of New

York Press, 1994) pp. 21-40.


46

Quataert, Donald, “Epilogue” in Touraj Atabaki and Gavin D Brockett, ed. Ottoman and

Republican Turkish Labour History, (Cambridge: University Cambridge Press, 2009), pp. 189-

193.

Quataert, Donald, Miners and the State in the Ottoman Empire: the Zonguldak Coalfield,

1822-1920 (New York: Berghahn Press, 2006).

Quataert, Donald, Social Disintegration and Popular Resistance in the Ottoman Empire,

1881-1908, (New York: New York University Press, 1983).

Quataert, Donald, “Workers and the State During the Late Ottoman Empire” in Touraj

Atabaki, ed., The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey

and Iran, (London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, 2007), pp. 17-30.

Quataert, Donald, Workers and the Working Class in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish

Republic, 1839-1950, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Thomas, Peter, The Gramscian Moment, (Boston: Brill, 2009).

Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class, (London: Penguin Books, 2002).

Zurcher, Erik J., The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building, (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2010).

Zurcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History, (New York: Diane Publishing Company, 2004).

Journal Articles

Brockett, Gavin D., “Collective action and the Turkish Revolution”, Middle Eastern Studies

Vol. 34, Issue No. 4, (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 44-66.

Donnelly, F. K., “Ideology and Early English Working-Class History: Edward Thompson and

His Critics”, Social History, Vol. 1, Issue No. 4, (London: Routledge, 1976), pp. 219-238.

Gökmen, Özgür, “The State of Labour in Turkey, 1919-1938“, Mittelungdblatt des Instituts

für soziale Bewegungen, Heft 33, 2005, pp.123-136.

Linden, Marcel van der, “Labour History as the History of Multitudes”, Labour/Le Travail,

Vol. 52, (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press , 2003), pp. 235-243.

Mehmet, Ozay, “Turkey in Crisis: Some Contradictions in the Kemalist Development

Strategy”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 15, Issue No. 1, (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1983) pp. 47-66.

Morton, Adam David, “Waiting for Gramsci: State Formation, Passive Revolution and the

International”, Millennium - Journal of International Studies, Vol. 35, Issue No. 3, (London:

Sage, 2007), p.p. 597-622.


47

Narin, Thomas, “The Modern Janus”, New Left Review, Vol. 1, Issue No. 94, (London: New

Left Review, 1975), pp. 3-29.

Tokluoglu, Ceylan, and Hunt, Alan, “State formation from below: the Turkish case”, The

Social Science Journal, Vol. 39, Issue No.4, (Portland: Elsevier, 2002), pp. 617–624.

White, Jenny B., “State Feminism, Modernization, and the Turkish Republican Woman”,

NWSA Journal, Vol. 15, Issue No. 3, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp.

145-159.

Online Articles

Al-Ali, Nadje S., “The Women’s Movement in Egypt, with selected references to Turkey”,

United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, April 1, 2002,

http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/search/9969203536F64607C1256C08004BB14

0?OpenDocument, (Date accessed: 22/10/2015).

Tekeli, Sirin, “The Turkish Womens Movement: A Short History of Success”, (2010), pp.119-

123, http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/14/qm14_pdf/19.pdf, (Date accessed:

22/10.2015).


48

Open Call for Submissions

We are always looking for new contributions and welcome articles, book

reviews, review essays, source analyses and academic commentaries.

The Berlin Historical Review embraces all fields of history and accepts submissions on any historical topic.

The preferred language is English, however, other languages might be accepted as long as the editorial board is contacted in advance.

Please send your submission, including an English abstract, your full name, course name and institution to: [email protected]

For further details, please consult our author and formatting guidelines (http://berhistoricalreview.wix.com/berhistoricalreview#!author-guidelines/c1ela).

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Any comments or

feedback on the journal or any of the articles will also be gratefully received.

We look forward to your contributions!

Best wishes,

Julia Kompe, Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa, Tavinder Mangat, Ashley Palmer and

Simon Smith

The Berlin Historical Review Editorial Board

Do not forget to sign up to our Newsletter to stay informed and up to date about the latest information and news. You can also find the Berlin Historical Review on

Facebook, Twitter and WordPress:

http://berhistoricalreview.wix.com/berhistoricalreview#!subscribe/cybl http://www.facebook.com/TheBerlinHistoricalReview

https://twitter.com/BerHistRev https://berlinhistoricalreview.wordpress.com/

http://berhistoricalreview.wix.com/berhistoricalreview#!subscribe/cybl

http://www.facebook.com/TheBerlinHistoricalReview

https://twitter.com/BerHistRev

https://berlinhistoricalreview.wordpress.com/

http://berhistoricalreview.wix.com/berhistoricalreview#!subscribe/cybl

http://www.facebook.com/TheBerlinHistoricalReview

https://twitter.com/BerHistRev

https://berlinhistoricalreview.wordpress.com/


49

Open Access & Copyright Policy

All articles published by and in the Berlin Historical Review are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Click here for more

information: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en

- You must not use any of the articles or issues published by the Berlin Historical Review for commercial purposes! - You must not alter, transform or build upon the material published in the Berlin Historical Review! - You must not present any of the work published in the Berlin Historical Review as your own!

- You may download, reuse, reprint, transmit, share, distribute and/or copy or quote the articles and issues published in and by the Berlin Historical Review, so long as the original authors and the Berlin Historical Review are cited, the use is noncommercial, and the work is unaltered. - You may refer to material published in the journal as long as you reference & footnote quotes and ideas properly and accurately.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en

The Berlin Historical Review

Documents

Transcript of The Berlin Historical Review