Labelling the Ottoman Empire as ‘Turkey’ in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893

Abstract

Through an examination of government, media, and commercial sources published during the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, this article demonstrates the co-existence of three dominant ideological movements that helped create a unified social identity for the Ottoman Empire against threats of nationalism and imperialism from the Great Western Powers, in specific, the United States, during the late nineteenth century. The three ideologies that found a representation at the World’s Fair were: Ottomanism, Islamism, and Turkism. Firsthand accounts of the Ottoman Empire through these three ideologies reveal American and Western nations’ political and cultural power and influence over the Ottoman Empire, which was made possible through the external labelling of the Ottoman Empire as ‘Turkey’, and its people as ‘Turkish’, as well as through the representation of the Ottoman Empire as a ‘Muslim state’. This article will also examine how American Orientalism was perpetuated at the fair, through juxtaposing the United States’ modern and democratic institutions visually and textually with the Ottoman Empire’s conservative and authoritarian ones.