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Identity in the Ottoman Prison Surveys of 1912 and 1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2009

Kent F. Schull*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Memphis, Memphis, Tenn.; e-mail: kfschull@memphis.edu

Extract

Population surveys and census records, in addition to providing valuable human statistical information, have enormous potential to act as luminary tools for identity construction and conceptualization. How governmental agencies identify a population can also provide insights into a regime's motives, rationale, and ideology. The tables presented here are taken from the annual prison survey conducted by the Ottoman Prison Administration from 1912 to 1918 and shed light on the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) or CUP's conceptualizations of difference. CUP was the main ruling organization in the Ottoman Empire during this period.

Type
Quick Studies
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

NOTES

1 For a comprehensive discussion of these prison surveys, see Kent F. Schull, “Tutuklu Sayımı: Jön Türklerin Sistematik Bir Şekilde Hapishane İstatistikleri Toplama Çalışmaları ve Bunların 1911--1918 Hapishane Reformu Üzerine Etkileri” (Counting the Incarcerated: Young Turk Attempts to Systematically Collect Prison Statistics and Their Effects on Prison Reform, 1911–1918), in Osmanli'da Asayiş, Suç ve Ceza: 18.–20. Yüzyillar (Crime, Punishment, and Social Control in the Ottoman Empire: 18th–20th Centuries), ed. Noémi Lévy and Alexandre Toumarkine (Istanbul: Tarih Vakfı, Yurt Yayınları, 2007), 212–38, and “Penal Institutions, Nation-State Construction, and Modernity in the Late Ottoman Empire, 1908–19” (PhD diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2007), chap. 2 and 4.

2 For examples of the complete form, see BOA, DHMBHPSM 3/5 and DHMBHPS 150/3/1–2.

3 Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1995), 148–49Google Scholar.

4 See the definition of millet in Şemseddin Sami's Turkish dictionary (Kamus-i Türki), first published in 1899.