Ottoman Reformer, Foreign Expert, Political Commentator: Andreas David Mordtmann as Contributor to and Critic of Late Ottoman Modernization

Tobias Völker

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Ottoman Reformer, Foreign Expert, Political Commentator: Andreas David Mordtmann as Contributor to and Critic of Late Ottoman Modernization

In: Transforming Southeast Europe During the Long 19th Century

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Tobias Völker

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 67–91

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.30965/9783657760022_004

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Abstract

The German orientalist Andreas David Mordtmann lived in Istanbul from 1846 until his death in 1879 and was a first-hand witness and after 1860 active contributor to the late Ottoman engagement with Western frames of modernization during the Tanzimat period. This chapter traces Mordtmann’s involvement in two central spheres in which reform concepts were being shaped and contested: legislation and the press. The first part of the article deals with his employment, between 1860 and 1871, as judge and legal expert at the mixed commercial court (Ticâret Maḥkemesi) where he was appointed to several reform commissions drafting new legislation, and where he was increasingly drawn into the factional struggles of the imperial elites. The second part of the article explores the politics Mordtmann pursued as editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based newspaper Phare du Bosphore in 1872–3. Through an analysis of the stance he took as a journalist in two of the most heated debates of those years – the problem of the Bulgarian Exarchate and the agenda of the Young Ottoman movement – the article contributes to recent studies on the agents and the ideological composition of the emerging late Ottoman press scene while at the same time presenting Mordtmann as an informative case study of the role some (Western) Europeans played in the shaping of imperial reform and in public debates about the objectives and nature of late-Ottoman modernization.

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Transforming Southeast Europe During the Long 19th Century

Persons and Personalities as Agents of Modernization in the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Space

Series: Balkan Studies Library, Volume: 35

Cover Transforming Southeast Europe During the Long 19th Century

E-Book ISBN:: 9783657760022

Publisher:: Brill | Schöningh

Print Publication Date:: 06 Jun 2024

Subjects
- Slavic and Eurasian Studies
  - History

Front Matter

Part I Introduction

Part II Foreign Agents of Institutional Modernization in the Ottoman and the Post-Ottoman Urban Centres

Part III Agents of Social and Cultural Modernization: Tradition, Modernity, and Nation-Building in Imperial and Post-Imperial Context

Part IV Agents of Economic and Technological Modernization in the Ottoman Periphery

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Ottoman Reformer, Foreign Expert, Political Commentator: Andreas David Mordtmann as Contributor to and Critic of Late Ottoman Modernization

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Transforming Southeast Europe During the Long 19th Century

Persons and Personalities as Agents of Modernization in the Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Space

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