Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire. By Nazan Maksudyan. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 232. $39.95 (hardcover).

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewsOrphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire. By Nazan Maksudyan. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014. Pp. xviii + 232. $39.95 (hardcover).Cihangir GundogduCihangir GundogduIstanbul Bilgi University Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreIn the nineteenth century, the modernizing reforms pursued by the Ottoman state had important repercussions on the lives of disenfranchised groups such as the unemployed, beggars, vagrants, the mentally ill, orphans, and criminals. Whereas in the early periods members of these groups, in the absence of organized, empire-wide care, were left to the benevolence of the greater public and communal help, in the modern era, with the establishment of modern institutions such as prisons, orphanages, and insane asylums, they increasingly came to be seen as a public nuisance and a threat to public order and security. Modern disciplinary institutions were seen as a panacea both to reform the conditions of these disenfranchised groups and to exclude them from public spaces. In the late Ottoman Empire, the members of these groups were gradually segregated from the public and confined in modern institutions, where they could be reformed in accordance with the requirements of modern scientific developments, formulated in the official documents as terakkiyât-ı fennîye (“scientific advances”).The present study by Nazan Maksudyan explores the history of one of these subaltern groups, namely, the destitute children and orphans of the late Ottoman Empire. It focuses on the various facets and experiences of late Ottoman childhood at the levels of shelter, the home, school, and international orphanages. Maksudyan explains how childhood and the issue of orphans were intertwined with and related to domestic and foreign political, economic, and social processes, such as industrial capitalism, urbanization, and international rivalries. Unlike the conventional histories, which often focus on the experiences of the ruling classes and neglect the agency and experiences of their subjects, the present book identifies the children as “legitimate historical actors who triggered, if not contributed to, the emergence of a new, modern social order” (p. 161). It argues that “children need to be viewed as capable of social action” and that the voices of children in general, and of orphaned children in particular, “can be treated as newly discovered sources and belated testimonies for writing nuanced and alternative history of the late Ottoman era” (p. 4). Having thus identified an unexploited source awaiting further exploration, the book underlines the potential of the voices and experiences of children to “open new horizons on many significant processes of the late Ottoman period, such as urbanization, industrialization, nationalism, and state formation” (p. 8).In an attempt to give voice to the experiences of children and their agency in the late Ottoman context, the book explores the topic in four chapters, which correspond to the private and public, domestic and international levels. Chapter 1 analyzes the repercussions of emerging forms of Ottoman governance and questions of identity construction, and their repercussions for abandoned children. According to Maksudyan, in the period under investigation, unprotected children and foundlings “became actors in political rivalries regarding demographic politics, the politics of conversion, and nationalism” (p. 20). She identifies the establishment of new foundling institutions as part of the Ottoman state’s effort to raise future citizens and project a modern image (p. 21). The research, however, demonstrates that the transition from conventional family care to modern foundling asylums did not produce the intended result of decent living conditions for destitute children, but meant, on the contrary, deprivation, mortality, and suffering. In the family environment, Maksudyan argues, children had “access to sufficient nutrients, and [were] the object of real affection, without having to compete with other infants waiting for the same sort of attention” (p. 37). The present research shows that in a period of nearly two decades (1903–1921), 70 percent of all children accepted into the foundling asylum died (p. 40).In contrast to the first chapter, where state agency and its motivations were identified within the space of newly created foundling asylums, the following chapter adopts a bottom-up perspective, giving voice to the experiences of foster daughters known as besleme. It further discusses the practice of child fostering, the intermediaries involved in it, and, more importantly, the foster daughters’ means and methods of resisting sexual abuse and exploitation. The increase in child fostering in the late Ottoman Empire, according to Maksudyan, related to the shrinking of the slave market and Ottoman elites’ “negative stance toward slavery” (p. 67). She further argues that disengagement from slavery on moral grounds encouraged the Ottoman elites to replace it with “free forms of service and patronage, such as raising freeborn young girls in the household” (p. 67). Foster children in chapter 2 appear as active agents who could resist mistreatment in the form of sexual abuse and financial exploitation by the heads of their households. In identifying the agency of foster children and giving voice to their experiences, the book utilizes mainly court records and petitions available at the Prime Ministry Ottoman Archives (BOA). The experiences of beslemes revealed in these documents show that they developed certain mechanisms of resistance to sexual abuse, oppression, and unpaid labor by either escaping, marrying prosperous men, committing suicide, or applying to the justice of the court.The last two chapters explore the impacts of global processes and actors, such as industrial capitalism, urbanization and missionary work, on the lives of destitute children and orphans in late Ottoman society. Chapter 3, in particular, investigates the repercussions of urbanization and how the children “became targets and actors of the politics of urbanity in the second half of the nineteenth century” (p. 78). The focus here is on the new educational institutions called ıslahhaneler (“vocational state orphanages”), which were intended by Ottoman official authorities and elites to elevate the conditions and improve the discipline of Ottoman orphans (p. 80). In addition to the above-mentioned functions, these orphanages, which came to total more than thirty in the years between 1862 and 1899, were intended, Maksudyan argues, to “reform” and “sterilize” the public space “by removing unattended children and youth from the streets,” and “turning idle and wandering children into skilled and productive laborers” (p. 81). She claims that what was expected from these orphanages was not education, self-development, or reform, but “to contribute to the security, well-being, and most of all reform of the urban space by facilitating the isolation of destitute children” (p. 89), and more importantly, to inculcate an ethic of hard work and industriousness. According to Maksudyan, these institutions were also “instrumental in strengthening the ties between the center and the provinces and in disseminating Ottomanist ideals among local communities” (p. 113).The last chapter investigates the internationalization of the problem of Armenian orphans in the context of the rivalry between Protestant and Catholic missionary communities, the Sublime Porte and the Armenian Patriarchate. This chapter particularly focuses on the period following the 1894–1896 Armenian massacres in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire, which created thousands of orphans over whom the Ottoman state and the missionaries fought for legitimacy, power, and prestige (p. 118). Following a brief history of missionary work and the peculiarities of various missionary groups, this chapter’s main emphasis is on post-1896 orphan-relief work, tackling the question of how the orphans were turned into objects of power and legitimacy in the rivalry between missionary groups—particularly Protestant missionaries and Ottoman authorities—in an area where the massacres “created an atmosphere of heightened vision for conversion” (p. 124). The book claims that “orphan care was considered to be crucial for furthering operations in conversion” by Protestant missionary workers (p. 133), which in turn alarmed Ottoman authorities, who identified the orphanages as “centers of missionary mischief ” (p. 139). In spite of several official orders and decrees, Maksudyan argues that the Ottoman state failed to implement counter-measures to curb their power and operation in the provinces, such as opening equivalent institutions. The book also shows that although the Armenian community resisted foreign involvement by devising its own modern forms of charity, “the Patriarchate was only partially successful in ‘saving’ the orphans from Protestant hands” (p. 132).Works focusing on the experiences and agency of the subaltern classes in the late Ottoman context are scant. The experiences of these classes, as targets of the Ottoman modernizing project, are important in understanding the extent of the reforms, which aimed at wholesale social transformation. The present study of Ottoman destitute children and orphans, which attempts to provide an alternative reading of their experiences by contextualizing them in the wider picture of social, political, and economic transformations in the late nineteenth century, contributes to the literature on Ottoman modernization. In spite of the paucity of firsthand accounts by members of the discussed classes, by adopting a careful “archaeological” investigation of Ottoman official documents and correspondence, it portrays the unfolding of modern reforms in the realm of Ottoman childhood. Moreover, unlike conventional narratives of Ottoman modernization, which exclusively portray it from a progressive and reformist viewpoint, the present study adopts a critical perspective, showing how these reforms, while on the one hand aimed at rehabilitating the conditions of the destitute, also aimed to exclude them from urban space, discipline them, inculcate in them a new work ethic, and turn them into productive subjects.In attempting to bring forth the agency of the children as actors capable of triggering social change, the book—apart from chapter 2, which elucidates the experiences of beslemes based on a close reading of court cases—does not consider the voices of other subaltern children, such as destitute children at state vocational schools or Armenian orphans in missionary orphanages. Giving voice to their experiences would, I think, further contribute to the researcher’s main argument about how modern reforms were experienced, internalized, or resisted at other levels of Ottoman society. Lacking the experiences of other subjected children, the book mainly offers a history of late Ottoman childhood as experienced at public and private levels. Nevertheless, the current proliferation of studies that approach the Ottoman modernization project of the nineteenth century by examining the experiences of its subject populations is a welcome development. This approach is important and valuable in understanding the reform’s official and intellectual dimensions, as well as the intentions of those who implemented it. By exploring the case of childhood in the late Ottoman Empire, the present study contributes to this scholarly literature by showing the extent of these reforms. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Near Eastern Studies Volume 76, Number 1April 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/690656 © 2017 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse a book review in this section, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.