[ALBSA-Info] Fwd: Book Review: Bozbora & Sinnu on Albania, Reviewed by Isa Blumi

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Balkan Academic News Book Review 4/2000
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Nuray Bozbora, Osmanli Yönetiminde Arnavutluk: Arnavut Ulusçulugu'nun
Gelis[h]imi. Istanbul: Boyut Kitaplari, 1997. pp. 303 with bibliography; 6
maps and 2 photos, ISBN: 975-521-053-7
language: Turkish

'Abd al-Ra'uf Sinnu, Title: al-Naz'aat al-Kiyaaniyyah al-Islaamiyyah fi
al-Dawlah al-Uthmaaniyyah, 1877-1881: Bilaad al-Shaam, al-Hijaaz,
Kurdistaan, Albaaniyaa. Beirut: Bisaan, 1998, pp. 247 with index and
bibliography; 14 primary documents from London's PRO, 4 maps. ISBN: none.
language: Arabic

Reviewed by Isa Blumi (NYU)
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These two books cover the seminal period of an emerging Albanian political
entity within the confines of the Ottoman Empire.  The attempt to locate
the origins of national movements in past work has an apparent impact on
how both authors narrate the trajectory of history, but they go about
exploring the issue in refreshingly novel ways.  Dr. Bozbora has used her
dissertation from Marmara University in Istanbul (1994) to provide one of
the only scholarly book-length studies of Albanian history in the Turkish
language.  While I am personally engaged in this period with my own
dissertation and thus have a number of problems with Bozbora's methodology
and theoretical foundations, she must at least be congratulated for her
attempt to integrate a wide range of secondary materials in the major West
European languages and Turkish (Ottoman).  That said, having proved her
proficiency in these languages, my first and most assertive criticism of
this book (Albania Under Ottoman Administration: The Growth of Albanian
Nationalism) is the underutilized resources made available to her at the
Prime Minister's Archives in Istanbul and her subsequent reliance on
secondary work for the foundation of her thesis.

Bozbora notes the use of some 40 Ottoman documents (with 29 documents from
London's PRO) spanning a period between 1878 to 1905.  The amount of
material in Istanbul is almost mind-boggling, the whole of Albania history
in the late Ottoman period floods the archive's catalogues begging for a
comprehensive and much belated revision of this important historical
period.  The sorry fact that the most important works of this period are
heavily reliant on sources from Vienna, Tirana, Prishtina, London (anywhere
but the heart of the Empire, Istanbul) cries out for a book of Bozbora's
ambition.  Bozbora does not perform the task, unfortunately, to its full
potential.  It is for this reason that my disappointment is so profound.

Bozbora attempts to identify the origins of Albanian Nationalism through
the sophisticated theory of John Breuilly (Nationalism and the State, 1982)
which posits examples of late nineteenth-century nationalism were responses
to state modernization.  Bozbora suggests that an amalgamation of
institutional and cultural artifacts were central to establishing an
Ottoman presence in its most prized of Balkan possessions and these
artifacts created the context for nationalism in the nineteenth century.
The book meanders through several chapters obviously attempting to
establish this foundation, culminating in a rather lengthy and at times
nuanced study of the period of reform (Tanzimat) which immediately
proceeded the convening of the League of Prizren in 1878.  It is within
these pages that Breuilly's structuralist approach to locate nationalism
reveals its impact.  It is therefore unfortunate that we have to rely on a
dubious selection of sources, all tainted by their outdated narrative
styles or ideological luggage, to understand the period.  Of course these
works constitute the heart of the literature available to us, but I would
expect Bozbora to apply some of her sophistication (demonstrated by finding
inspiration in Breuilly's work) to be a little more critical of the
material she cites.  When Kristo Frasheri, Halil Inalcik, Stanford Shaw and
Stefanaq Pollo constitute our historiographical foundation, we are doomed
to questionable results.  These works were problematic when they were
written for their univocal claims (the lack of scholarship in this area
rendered each of these works essential to historians).  Today, after much
thought has been put into the power of language and the politics of
history, let alone the dubious links to the "Decline" thesis of the Ottoman
Empire these authors claimed, Bozbora should be more critical.

The most productive aspects of this book lies in identifying important
events and processes which impacted how the inhabitants of the Albanian
districts related to Istanbul.  The suggestion that reform measures
emanating from Istanbul in the nineteenth century antagonized local
communities is not a novel contribution.  It is the far more nuanced
interaction between inter-state rivalries (Austrian, Russia, Serbian,
Montenegrin, British and Ottoman) and the expressed reactions and
consequent demands of future Albanian nationalists which proves helpful.
It is within the mechanics of this imperial quagmire which left the
integrated populations of Nish, Kosova, Malisore, Janina, Manastir, and
Shkoder at the mercy of covetous neighbors and the failures of Istanbul.
The League's of Prizren and Peja (Ipek), local revolts in Gjakova (Yakova)
and the activities of Albania's diaspora are listed judiciously as
important markers.

Again, Bozbora's challenge to identify the reforms instituted
(half-heartedly) in Albanian territories as the fundaments of Albanian
nationalism is unfortunately lost in the rather arbitrary use of primary
documents.  I would like to see more effort put into reflecting the clear
developments in Istanbul by the use of documentation (of which there are
hundreds of examples) in order to identify the real actors in this process.
Albanian reactions to the events of the times were not products of a few
great men (since the book does not contain an index, they are themselves,
hard to find in the text) but communal acts.  There is no mention of
wide-spread communal organization in this book because they generally are
lost in the finer print of the archival material.  I am afraid the obvious
dependency on the secondary literature (Skendi, Pollo, Frasheri etc.) to
identify where to start in the arduous work of archival research leads
Bozbora, ultimately, down the same conclusive logic they took.  My solution
would be for research beyond the "moments" of history-the Prizen and Peja
Congresses.  Research which delves into the complex social history of the
Albanians of the late Ottoman Empire, where we would find new heroes and
heroines, starts not with the Albanian members of the Young Ottoman
movement (a worthwhile subject) or Ismail Kemal, but those same people who
made up the heart of Kosova's Liberation Army.

In 'Abd al-Ra'uf Sinnu's work (The Fragmentation of the Islamic Structure
in the Ottoman State, 1877-1881: Syria, Hijaz (Sa'udi 'Arabia--Mecca and
Medina), Kurdistan, Albania) we find a far more specific analysis of events
surrounding the conclusion of war between Imperial Russia and the Ottoman
State in 1877-78.  The central concern of the book is to locate the impact
a growing element of internal resistance to Ottoman centralization (related
to the reforms noted in Bozbora's work) in light of the conclusive
diplomatic defeat at San Stefano and later Berlin.  Identifying four
regions in the empire which proved highly volatile is an innovative and
unexpected (but welcome) move by the author, exhibiting his interests
beyond what Arabic-language texts offer.  The specificity of the study, as
opposed to the long durée approach of Bozbora makes this book, as a whole,
far more intellectually tenable.

For the purposes of this forum, I will focus on chapter five in which the
author explores the "Russian-Ottoman War (1877-1878) and its impact in the
renaissance of the Albanian Region."  Not unlike his treatment of the other
areas under study, the author identifies an incipient external presence in
the events which lead to the League of Prizren.  Largely due to the
material that he uses (more or less the same as Bozbora's in terms of
European-language materials with one welcome exception from the Arabic
language, Muhammad Mufaku's much neglected work) the reader is left to
conclude that dictates from London, Belgrade, St. Petersburg or Istanbul
had far more weight than local actions.  I am reluctant to be overly
critical of this observation because in the context of the larger story the
author is trying tell, it has a profoundly different reading of the period,
both in more accessible European languages and Arabic.  Read autonomously
from the book, however, the chapter is more or less a failure in critical
reading, in particular because it is full of rather unhelpful reiterations
of the same works I noted in the first review.

This is quite suggestive, really.  Bozbora's book does not work as well as
this one because of the focus of his respective study.  As in the
administration of the Holy Cities of Mecca and Medina (Chap 3.) the
Sultan's decisive policy shift after the significant territorial loses in
the Caucuses and Balkans towards a quasi-Islamic nationalism had a
significant impact on politics in Albanian territories.  How the Great and
Lesser Powers responded in what remained Ottoman Albania to the, according
to Sinnu, justifiable policies, has a profound effect on what transpires
during the following forty years.  It is to be remembered that large
numbers of refugees from areas newly awarded Serbia, Montenegro, Greece and
Austria-Hungary not only put logistical strain on locals in the Kosova and
Shkoder administrative districts, but enormous sociological and political
pressure as well.  This point is only hinted at, largely because of the
inadequacy of his sources, and Sinnu does not capture the mood of the time
(Bozbora does not with any great skill in this either).  Sinnu correctly
notes the regime of Sultan Abdülhamid II demonstrated a heightened
awareness of the impending claims made upon the Empire for further
territorial expansion.  The Christian powers, as the author elects to
identify them, pushes for extensive extra-territorial rights for what are
now large minority populations, that of Catholic and Orthodox Albanian,
Slavic and Greek speaking populations.  The concentration of large numbers
of "ethnically cleansed" people mixed with these protected minorities have
very interesting consequences for the Ottoman state and Sinnu's analysis
would have benefited from understanding this element better.

The chapter itself is structured, not surprisingly, to summarize the
outstanding events in Albanian history, from Roman times to 1877.  While
that kind of narrative proves virtually useless in explaining the
relatively complex situation on the ground in 1877-78, the ultimate goal of
the piece still retains some value.  Much as Bozbora attempts to locate
sources of the Albanian expression of nationalism, her failure to address
this geo-strategic game with any authority makes Sinnu's work that much
more admirable.  Out of the same source material, we get a completely
different perspective of the Albanian experience at the height of its
manifested nationalist claims.  Sinnu's work is much more conscious of
geography, careful to identify the territorial fissures which had such an
important role in foreign power intervention-their highly subjective census
reports and maps of ethnic (sectarian) distribution.  In the larger Ottoman
context, such tensions manifested in Albania take on a far more ominous
tone.  Albanian issues, taken from the Ottoman perspective (a view not yet
explored in any other language) highlights the vulnerability of the Ottoman
position.  In light of this observation,one can study Istanbul's
complicated response to these challenges.  Sinnu, in an equally innovative
way, finds formative links between Abdülhamid's heightened Islamic rhetoric
and a growing Albanian, collective identity. (pp. 143-155)  The demands
periodically articulated by various communities in Kosova and Albania find
resonance in a new imperial space.  That space finds the minority
populations largely hostile to continued Ottoman rule, including many
Albanian-speaking Catholic and Orthodox Christians were often in direct
conflict with their Albanian Muslim neighbors.

Such a matrix is of dubious value if we insist on reading this chapter as
an authoritative statement about Albanian nationalism.  I give the author
more credit however, for inducting a rarely cited case, Albania, in the
historical narrative of the Arabic-speaking world.  Untold numbers of
Albanian-Arabs who still live in neighborhoods in Tunis, Cairo, Damascus
and Amman are largely unaware that their forefather's, in the service of
the Empire, emanated from this complex social milieu in the Balkans.  It is
thus quite satisfying that Sinnu (apparently of Kurdish origin) is making a
conscious effort to tie-in the origins of "Arab" nationalism, Kurdish
efforts for a state and the beginnings of European imperialism in the
region.  This book fails to give the larger audience, beyond the
Arabic-speaking world, any new insight into Albanian nation-building, but
does the important job of situating what transpired in the Balkans during
the Berlin Congress with events far on the other side of the Empire.

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© 2000 Balkan Academic News. This review may be distributed and reproduced
electronically, if credit is given to Balkan Academic News and the author.
For permission for re-printing, contact Balkan Academic News.


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