Abstract

This essay proposes a revisionist historiography of Late Ottoman foreign relations and (para)diplomacy and examines previously overlooked forms, venues, geographies, and levels of Ottoman engagements with the international. The article first draws out a historical sketch of Ottoman diplomatic practices and demonstrates how the empire participated in, and influenced the ways in which the (Western, colonial) ‘diplomatic system’ developed throughout the long nineteenth century. It then offers a critical reading of the rich, but uneven historiography of Ottoman foreign affairs, long caught up in ‘modernisationist’ and ‘westernisation’ paradigms. We elucidate the relation of this body of scholarship to some of its precursors in older, pre-1923 strands of literature that centred on the pervasive trope of the ‘Eastern question’ and mystified Ottoman agency. We overturn the main teleological and Eurocentric axioms of this literature by giving voice to some of its contemporary Ottoman critics. Turning to comparative history and postcolonial critiques of IR, we juxtapose the Ottoman Empire with other often ignored ‘peripheral’ polities in Latin America to suggest new pathways for writing more inclusive kinds of international history that do not conform to conventional hierarchizations of the world between a European centre and its supposed global peripheries.

摘要

这篇文章提出了奥斯曼晚期外交关系和（准）外交的修正主义史学，并考察了以前被忽视的奥斯曼帝国与国际交往的形式、地点、地域和水平。文章首先勾勒出奥斯曼帝国外交实践的历史概况，并展示了帝国如何参与并影响了整个 19 世纪（西方、殖民地）“外交体系”的发展方式。然后，它提供了对长期陷入“现代化”和“西化”范式的奥斯曼外交史丰富但参差不齐的批判性解读。我们阐明了这一学术体系与其一些较早的先驱者之间的关系，1923 年之前的文学作品以普遍存在的“东方问题”比喻为中心，并使奥斯曼机构感到迷惑不解。我们通过发表一些当代奥斯曼帝国评论家的意见来推翻这些文献的主要目的论和欧洲中心主义公理。转向对国际关系的比较历史和后殖民批评，我们将奥斯曼帝国与拉丁美洲其他经常被忽视的“外围”政体并列在一起，以提出新的途径来编写更具包容性的国际历史，这些历史不符合传统的世界等级划分。欧洲中心及其所谓的全球外围。