War, Peace, and Diplomacy on the Russo-Ottoman Borderlands, 1860–1920

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

For the late Ottoman Empire, no relationship with the European Great Powers was more contentious than those with its northern neighbor, imperial Russia. During the course of the nineteenth century no fewer than four major wars broke out between the two empires, with the final confrontation between the two during the First World War proving fatal for both the centuries-old Ottoman and Romanov dynasties. Diplomacy, trade, commerce, and personal interactions between peoples in both empires, however, proved as salient in defining late Russo-Ottoman relations as war, insurgency, population expulsion, and refugee crises.

The panel examines the different forms that Russo-Ottoman foreign relations took during times of both war and peace, during imperial heyday and twilight. First, panelists look at how different regimes formed during wartime and violent territorial conquest shaped the lives of the peoples who came under occupation and military rule. Second, they explore how state and non-state actors often worked together to define foreign policy objectives in both empires. The panelists make a number of conceptual interventions. By situating their research at the intersection where Great Power diplomacy, transimperial and transnational politics met, they highlight continuity and the common practices shared by these two imperial regimes. They demonstrate, furthermore, how certain actors stepped in to fill power vacuums in the wake of imperial collapse. Offering new ways of thinking on diplomacy and how states manage and regulate tension, this panel will be of interest to scholars of foreign relations, nationalism, finance, security studies, and refugee studies.

Sub Unit

• History: 1900-1945

Chair

• Robert Paul Geraci, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Papers

• On the Margins of Empire: Refugee Mobilities and Military Intelligence on the Russo-Ottoman Borderlands, 1850-1880 - Alika Alanovna Zangieva, Princeton U

• Wages of Empire: Armenian Transnational Finance, Banking, and Diplomacy, 1913-1914 - Armen Manuk-Khaloyan, Georgetown U

• Imperial Russian Academics and the Trabzon Orthodox Greek Community during Russian Occupation, 1916-1917 - Fatma Esen, Georgetown U

• Envisioning Post-Imperial Futures: Armenia between Anatolia and the Caucasus, 1918-1925 - Diana Yayloyan, Georgetown U

Discussant

• Jo Laycock, U of Manchester (UK)