
Before the Nation
Muslim-Christian Coexistence and its Destruction in Late-Ottoman Anatolia
Nicholas Doumanis(Author)
Oxford University Press
1st Edition
Published on 22. November 2012
Book
Hardback
246 pages
978-0-19-954704-3 (ISBN)
Description
It is common for survivors of ethnic cleansing and even genocide to speak nostalgically about earlier times of intercommunal harmony and brotherhood. After being driven from their Anatolian homelands, Greek Orthodox refugees insisted that they 'lived well with the Turks', and yearned for the days when they worked and drank coffee together, participated in each other's festivals, and even prayed to the same saints. Historians have never showed serious regard to these memories, given the refugees had fled from horrific 'ethnic' violence that appeared to reflect deep-seated and pre-existing animosities. Refugee nostalgia seemed pure fantasy; perhaps contrived to lessen the pain and humiliations of displacement.
Before the Nation argues that there is more than a grain of truth to these nostalgic traditions. It points to the fact that intercommunality, a mode of everyday living based on the accommodation of cultural difference, was a normal and stabilizing feature of multi-ethnic societies. Refugee memory and other ethnographic sources provide ample illustration of the beliefs and practices associated with intercommunal living, which local Muslims and Christian communities likened to a common moral environment.
Drawing largely from an oral archive containing interviews with over 5000 refugees, Nicholas Doumanis examines the mentalities, cosmologies, and value systems as they relate to cultures of coexistence. He furthermore rejects the commonplace assumption that the empire was destroyed by intercommunal hatreds. Doumanis emphasizes the role of state-perpetrated political violence which aimed to create ethnically homogenous spaces, and which went some way in transforming these Anatolians into Greeks and Turks.
Before the Nation argues that there is more than a grain of truth to these nostalgic traditions. It points to the fact that intercommunality, a mode of everyday living based on the accommodation of cultural difference, was a normal and stabilizing feature of multi-ethnic societies. Refugee memory and other ethnographic sources provide ample illustration of the beliefs and practices associated with intercommunal living, which local Muslims and Christian communities likened to a common moral environment.
Drawing largely from an oral archive containing interviews with over 5000 refugees, Nicholas Doumanis examines the mentalities, cosmologies, and value systems as they relate to cultures of coexistence. He furthermore rejects the commonplace assumption that the empire was destroyed by intercommunal hatreds. Doumanis emphasizes the role of state-perpetrated political violence which aimed to create ethnically homogenous spaces, and which went some way in transforming these Anatolians into Greeks and Turks.
Reviews / Votes
As a compelling reconstruction of a vanished time and place this book is sure to appeal to anyone interested in the history of intercommunal relations in the Ottoman Empire. * George Vassiadis, History Today * ...a fluent and theoretically informed book that brings to life how Christian and Muslim lived together just before they entered the valley of death. * Dimitris Livanios, English Historical Review * eloquently, historiographically and critically ... [a] remarkable book. * Meltem Toksoez, Mediterranean Historical Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Social Scientists and historians generally interested in communal relations and everyday life; historians of Greece, Turkey, and the Mediterranean
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 18 mm
Weight
537 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-954704-3 (9780199547043)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Nicholas Doumanis
Before the Nation
Muslim-Christian Coexistence and its Destruction in Late-Ottoman Anatolia
E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
OUP eBook
€42.49
Available for download

Nicholas Doumanis
Before the Nation
Muslim-Christian Coexistence and its Destruction in Late-Ottoman Anatolia
E-Book
11/2012
1st Edition
OUP Oxford
€88.39
Available for download
Person
Nicholas Doumanis teaches world history at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. His first book, Myth and Memory in the Mediterranean (1997) won the Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History. He has written extensively on the history of Mediterranean Europe, social memory, and migration.
Content
Introduction ; 1. Curse of Babel ; 2. Ottoman belle epoque ; 3. People of God I ; 4. People of God II ; 5. Catastrophes ; Epilogue ; Bibliography