A Prosopography Study About German Experts Who Participated in the Reform and Modernization Processes of the Ottoman Empire Between 1789-1918
The subject of the planned project which is funded by the DFG Walter Benjamin Programme will be a comparative and relational-historical assessment of the biographies of German experts involved in the modernization and reform processes of the Ottoman Empire from 1789 to 1918, the analysis of the social networks with which they dealt during their tenures, and the mapping of the places and institutions in which they worked. In the lighting of this subject, it is aimed to use the data to be obtained from the following three analysis levels:
At the first level of analysis, the modernization and reform studies carried out by German experts employed in the modernization process in the Ottoman Empire between 1789 and 1918 will be discussed by the prosopographic method in which biographical data of a group are systematically created and analysed. The main objective of this level of analysis is to obtain biographical information of all German experts working within the Ottoman Empire, regardless of civilian-military distinction, taking into account the periods and branches in which they worked, and to close the research gap in this regard.
At the second level of analysis, questions will be formulated to determine the status of German experts. These questions will be designed to determine the personal situations, duties, corporate relations and interactions of German experts and a "German network of experts" will be created. This configured data will be analysed using the social network method according to the prepared questions. The purpose of using the social network method is to make sense of the biographies of German experts, to help explain the reform activities in the institutions in which they work, to define the social reality of the period, to analyse the nature and degree of social structure and the degree of movements within it. The information to be supported by infographics and social network analysis schemes to be obtained from these analyses will be used both in prosopographic content and in two directions on the webpage to be created
The cities and institutions where German experts working on reforming the vast Ottoman lands will be embodied on the interactive map using the mapping method at the third analysis level of the project. For the mapping study, the prosopographic database prepared at the first analysis level will be integrated into the open-source geographic information system software QGIS and embodied by adding the distribution of the German experts in the Ottoman land, the timeline and the visual material obtained on the basis of city, task, tenure and institution.
The research output has the potential to be a reference point for academic and cultural research in different disciplines at the local and global level, mainly to address recent Ottoman History and Ottoman-German relations.
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Last update: Mar 04, 2023