Another empire

Abstract

This essay offers a broad perspective on Ottoman science in its imperial context. The essay proceeds from a recognition that the nature of Ottoman imperialism varied over time as well as space. The essay argues that the transformation of the early Ottoman polity into an empire both supported and was informed by the emergence of Ottoman “sciences of worldmaking,” including the astral sciences and cartography. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the reworking of imperial–provincial relations meant that Ottoman science took shape first and foremost in its specific urban or regional settings. From the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth, efforts to maintain the empire placed increasing emphasis on new sciences. While these efforts often aimed to amass power in the imperial “centre”—and, in many ways, succeeded—the result was just as much a remaking of the “centre” from its many rivals and peripheries. In the context of an increasingly contested print culture, the intimate connection between science and late Ottoman imperialism also gave rise to an “objectification” of science as a distinct form of cultural authority—a development that resonated deeply in the twentieth-century Turkish Republic.