Crisis and Transformation of an Old Regime: Circulation of Ideologies and Institutions between Russian and Ottoman Empires, 1768-1774

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This project aims to study the circulation of ideas and institutional frameworks between the Russian and Ottoman Empires focusing on the Ottoman-Russian War of 1768-1774. The project’s focus is the Ottoman Empire’s Orthodox Christian populations and their relationship to the Ottoman ruling elite. This project will be carried out using material in Ottoman Turkish and Greek located in the archives in Turkey and Greece.There will be three phases to the project. The first one will concentrate on the Ottoman ruling elite in 1768 and earlier to determine the approach of different networks to the question of war and of the war’s legitimacy. This phase will situate Ottoman arguments for war both in their Ottoman and in the wider European context emphasizing the circulation of ideas. The second phase will focus on the propaganda by the Ottomans and Russians during the war and compare the arguments they used in order to convince different populations to ally with their imperial projects. The third phase will discuss the aftermath of the war focusing on the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople. The aim of the third phase will be to question whether institutional frameworks are comparable and whether they “circulate” between the two empires.