Fugitivity and Carceral Humanitarianism in the Ottoman Mediterranean, c. 1876-1916
type: CreativeWork
description: This thesis explores the evolution of Ottoman humanitarianism as a legal, moral, and political enterprise. It is a critical inquiry into the rhetoric of humanity: how it shapes law and the jurisdiction thereof. Building on the settlement of immigrants – *Muhajirs* – in the Ottoman Mediterranean between c. 1876 and 1916, I demonstrate how the provision of humanitarian refuge was a legal instrument of state- and empire-making. In doing so, I ask the following questions: How did an immigrant enter political society? How did humanitarian norms and practices police the boundaries and the margins of political society, and to what end? How did humanitarian and contractual notions of political society interact in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries? How has contractarianism shaped the modern humanitarian enterprise? I contend that the imperial humanitarianisms of the nineteenth century advanced the ‘standard of civilisation’ as the organising principle of contractual society, as this humanitarian maxim generated new kinds of gendered, classed, and racial exclusions. This research draws upon a socio-legal archive of fugitives – exiles, asylees, the stateless – comprising memoirs, petitions, consular archives, governmental correspondence, and legal texts and opinions. It unfolds in three sections, focusing on the legal constructions of the refugee settlement or *mesken*, the settler household, or *mahrem*, and the settler-citizen, or *muvatın*. In each section, I centre fugitive histories attesting to the aporias of the Ottoman humanitarian enterprise. I discuss how the material contradictions of Ottoman humanitarianism precipitated and sustained the gendered, classed, and racial conflicts within the settlement, the household, and the body politic. I then follow these conflicts, as they unfolded between the *Settler* and the *Native*, the *Master* and the *Slave*, and the *Citizen* and the *Enemy*, respectively. The first part of the thesis, ‘*Mesken*’, …
abstract: This thesis explores the evolution of Ottoman humanitarianism as a legal, moral, and political enterprise. It is a critical inquiry into the rhetoric of humanity: how it shapes law and the jurisdiction thereof. Building on the settlement of immigrants – *Muhajirs* – in the Ottoman Mediterranean between c. 1876 and 1916, I demonstrate how the provision of humanitarian refuge was a legal instrument of state- and empire-making. In doing so, I ask the following questions: How did an immigrant enter political society? How did humanitarian norms and practices police the boundaries and the margins of political society, and to what end? How did humanitarian and contractual notions of political society interact in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries? How has contractarianism shaped the modern humanitarian enterprise? I contend that the imperial humanitarianisms of the nineteenth century advanced the ‘standard of civilisation’ as the organising principle of contractual society, as this humanitarian maxim generated new kinds of gendered, classed, and racial exclusions. This research draws upon a socio-legal archive of fugitives – exiles, asylees, the stateless – comprising memoirs, petitions, consular archives, governmental correspondence, and legal texts and opinions. It unfolds in three sections, focusing on the legal constructions of the refugee settlement or *mesken*, the settler household, or *mahrem*, and the settler-citizen, or *muvatın*. In each section, I centre fugitive histories attesting to the aporias of the Ottoman humanitarian enterprise. I discuss how the material contradictions of Ottoman humanitarianism precipitated and sustained the gendered, classed, and racial conflicts within the settlement, the household, and the body politic. I then follow these conflicts, as they unfolded between the *Settler* and the *Native*, the *Master* and the *Slave*, and the *Citizen* and the *Enemy*, respectively. The first part of the thesis, ‘*Mesken*’, …
author: Polat, Hatice Ayse
language: eng
keywords: Fugitivity, Humanitarianism, Legal History, Migration, Ottoman History, Race
license: https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/4ffadc15-f2a7-4bf2-b30e-4f5b3d9004cd/download
license: https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/
date published: 2024-07-31
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:07Z
provider: Cambridge University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Cambridge

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.17863/CAM.105707