RT Article
T1 Tracing the Nationalisation of Millet in the Late Ottoman Period: A Conceptual History Approach
JF Die Welt des Islams
VO 62
IS 3/4
SP 360
OP 388
A1 Dreßler, Markus
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1823928986
AB During its last century, the Ottoman Empire faced strong contestation of its political order, which had undergone radical changes that are generally discussed in relation to modernisation. Against this background, key social and political concepts in Ottoman Turkish shed old meanings and acquired new ones. This article examines the trajectory of the term millet in this period as a case study. Drawing on political and lexicographic texts from the Tanzimat era and afterwards, the article discusses the semantic shifts through which millet, traditionally closely related to din/religion, acquired connotations of a political community, not the least proto-national ones. This led to a polysemy that remained relatively stable until the end of the Ottoman era, when the political meaning of the term millet as “nation” gained dominance. This secularisation of the term reached its peak in the early Turkish republic, although the older, religious connotations of the term were never totally forgotten and are still evoked in conservative religious discourse.
K1 Millet
K1 Turkey
K1 Ottoman Empire
K1 Ziya Gökalp
K1 Young Ottomans
K1 Secularization
K1 Religion
K1 Conceptual History
DO 10.1163/15700607-62030006