At Tozsuz Evrak, we have one rule: follow the Ottomans, whether they are villagers or sultans, chameleons or furniture, inside the well-protected domains or out. Which is to say that we're interested in the diversity of the Ottoman everyday. In a previous post we talked about Brazil's Ottoman subjects and today we return to that side of the world to explore issues of imperial citizenship among the Ottoman citizens of Haiti and New York in the early 1900s.
This document is a letter from A.M. Shakra and David N. Hederz, secretary and president, respectively, of the United Syrian Society of New York to the Ottoman Minister of Foreign Affairs in Istanbul from 13 February, 1912. Yet the Syrian Society of New York was not in contact with Istanbul to complain about the rat opossum problem in Brooklyn. Instead, they were concerned with Haiti, and more specifically the Haitian government's actions toward their Ottoman comrades.
In 1903, the Haitian government passed a law banning Ottoman subjects from engaging in trade. As the Ottomans lacked diplomatic representation in Port-au-Prince, the French embassy looked after the Ottoman interests. According to the United Syrian Society, "the persecution, if we are permitted to call it so, stopped for a time, but the animosity of a certain Haitian faction remained hidden, ready to appear at the first occasion." And, indeed, about two months before the letter was written, the Haitian government had given all Ottoman subjects six months to sell their property and get out of the country. "Such an order," in the words of the letter, "is equal to a confiscation of property because these poor men who have relations of all sorts in this country, of goods and of debts, how are they able to liquidate their affairs in such a short time without ruining themselves?"
In addition to providing insight into the insecure nature of migrant communities, the letter also underscores notions of imperial citizenship and international norms of commerce at the same time. Although the United Syrian Society was located in New York, the events in Haiti moved the group to act since it had "at heart the interests of all the Ottomans in these countries." In calling for justice, these imperial citizens invoked notions of propriety rooted in state form, characterizing the Haitian laws as "an outrage and a violation of the rights of nations." Their closing words brought together both the imperial linkages between Ottoman citizens all around the world and a notion of international propriety (together with the acute sense that the Ottomans were being left out of these privileges) when they exhorted the Minister of Foreign Affairs to use "all the means in his power to protect our brothers in Haiti and to persuade the government of this Republic [Haiti] to treat them [the Ottoman traders] like the subjects of other civilized nations."
Some scholars have presented nationalism as the kiss of death for the Ottoman Empire. And while nationalist movements certainly played a part in many of the Empire's territorial losses (not to mention the territorial gains of other empires) over the nineteenth century, as this document shows, conceptions of imperial citizenship and a global order contingent on nations could also coexist and perhaps even reinforce one another, a point which is made much more thoroughly here. This dynamic is perhaps even more clear when we reflect on the fact that the United Syrian Society was lodging a claim on behalf of fellow Ottomans in French no less. The founding date of this group, too, 1908, is likely significant, as this was the year when the Ottoman Constitution was restored and, for many far-away Ottomans, it again felt good to be imperial.
 |  |
Get the full-sized images here: ( 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 )
BOA, HR-SYS 76:1 (13 Feb 1912)
No comments:
Post a Comment