TEPSIS Workshop 

Friday 16 November 2018, 14h-19h

Paris, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales 

105 Boulevard Raspail, room 13 

Coordinators : Radu G. PĂUN (CERCEC), Laurent TATARENKO (IEŚW/CERCEC) 

ENG: As classic topics of modern history, collective disobedience/revolt movements have traditionally been studied from an economic or/and sociological perspective. These last years have brought an important methodological renewal, which gives large room to anthropological reflection and to comparatist approaches, by emphasizing some “new” aspects: the imaginary and the staging of the rebellions/uprisings, the plurality of the speeches and memories, the transfers of experience, etc. However, this renewal had little impact on studies devoted to Eastern Europe and the Balkans, which continue to deal with these topics in a socio-economic key or to regard them as a direct antecedent of the movements of national liberation in the nineteenth century. 

Our workshop proposes a critical review of studies dedicated to these issues at European and extra-European level with the aim of building methodological tools that could be applied to the Eastern Europe and the Balkans. One of the contributions of this approach is to include these areas in the overall reflection on collective disobedience in the modern era, which will eventually lead to drawing up a connected history of these phenomena at various scales. 

Our investigation begins in the first decades of the sixteenth century with the consolidation of the northern border of the Ottoman Empire and continues until the end of the Napoleonic period, marked by the formation of the Holy Alliance in 1815 and the establishment of a new balance of power in this part of Europe. We pay particular attention to border areas, where belonging to one political entity or another has repeatedly raised serious problems, both within the States concerned and between competing neighbors. This look from the margins towards the center will allow us to consider under a new angle the mechanisms of governance and the process of modern states building in this region. 

FR:  Questions classiques de l’histoire moderne, les désobéissances et les rebellions ont été traditionnellement abordées dans une perspective économique ou sociologique. Ces dernières années ont apporté un renouvellement méthodologique important qui accorde une large place aux analyses anthropologiques et à la perspective comparatiste, en privilégiant certaines facettes «nouvelles» : l’imaginaire et les mises en scène des rébellions, la pluralité des discours et des mémoires de la révolte, les transferts d’expérience. 

Notre atelier propose une révision critique des travaux portant sur ces problématiques à l’échelle européenne et coloniale avec l’objectif de construire un bagage méthodologique à même d’être utilisé sur les terrains de l’Europe orientale et balkanique. L’un des apports de cette démarche serait d’inscrire ces zones dans la réflexion d’ensemble sur la désobéissance collective à l’époque moderne et de proposer à terme une histoire connectée de ces phénomènes à différentes échelles. 

Notre enquête débutera dans les premières décennies du XVIe siècle, pour se poursuivre jusqu’à la fin de la période napoléonienne, marquée par la mise en place d’un nouvel équilibre des pouvoirs en Europe (1815). Une attention particulière sera accordée aux zones frontalières, dont l’appartenance à un ensemble politique ou à un autre a maintes fois soulevé de graves problèmes, tant à l’intérieur des États concernés qu’entre voisins concurrents. Ce regard depuis les marges vers le pouvoir central permettra d’interroger sous un angle nouveau les mécanismes de gouvernance et le processus de constitution des États modernes dans la région. 

PROGRAM 

14:00–14:30: Radu G. PĂUN (CERCEC, CNRS-EHESS, Paris): Cultures of Disobedience in the Ottoman Balkans, 16th –18th centuries. The Outline of a Project 

14:30–15:10: Erica MEZZOLI (University of Trieste, Italy): Inner Fronts in a ‘Side Perspective’ View. Revolts in the Ottoman Empire during the War of Candia (1645-1669) in the Sources of the Republic of Ragusa 

15:10–15:30: Discussion 

15:30–15:50: Break 

15:50–16:30: Gábor KÁRMÁN (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, RCH Institute of History, Budapest, Hungary): In Friendly Chains: The End of Imre Thököly’s Rebellion in Upper Hungary (1685) 

16:30–16:50: Discussion 

16:50–17:30: Nataša ŠTEFANEC (History Department, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia): Rebellions on the Ban’s Military Border in the First Half of the 18th Century 

17:30–17:50: Discussion 

17:50 –18:30: Bojan MITROVIĆ (University of Trieste, Italy): Just an Ordinary Uprising. Peasant Rebellion and the Formation of the Serbian State (1803-1844) 

18:30–18:50: Discussion 

 

DISCUSSANTS / DISCUTANTS 

Marie-Elisabeth DUCREUX (EHESS) 

Christine LEBEAU (IHMC, Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) 

Fabrice MICALEFF (Université de Nantes) 
 

ABSTRACTS / RÉSUMÉS 

Erica MEZZOLI (University of Trieste, Italy): Inner Fronts in a ‘Side Perspective’ View. Revolts in the Ottoman Empire during the War of Candia (1645-1669) in the Sources of the Republic of Ragusa 

The Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik), as a tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, had great care in being constantly well informed about events in the Empire, especially during a war or when a crisis occurred. However, ambassadors or envoys’ reports were not the only way in which Ragusa collected information about what was going on. Beside its consular service, Ragusa’s government constantly maintained a network of agents installed on the Ottoman territory that gathered information on its behalf. In wartime this network of informants became crucial. Moreover, Ragusean authorities relied also on casual informants in order to obtain the most “genuine” information as possible.  That pattern also occurred while two rebellions, two “inner fronts”, were breaking out within the Ottoman Empire during the War of Candia: one in Transylvania and the other in Syria by Abaza Hasan Pasha of Aleppo between 1658 and 1659. Interestingly enough, in informants’ depositons or reports there is almost no mention, apart from a few and brief references, of the events in Transylvania. Instead, much more interest and attention was paid to Hasan Pasha.  The aim of the communication will be to outline the ways of retrieving information on the territory of the pashadom of Bosnia during the War of Candia from the Republic of Ragusa. In particular, the attention will be focused on the networks and the ways of transmission and acquisition of news from Ragusa during the rebellion of Hasan Pasha in Syria. The paper will be based mainly on sources of the Republic of Ragusa (Dubrovnik). 

Gábor KÁRMÁN (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, RCH Institute of History, Budapest, Hungary): In Friendly Chains: The End of Imre Thököly’s Rebellion in Upper Hungary (1685) 

One of the events of the wars in Hungary at the end of the seventeenth century that found the most resonance in contemporary newsletters and pamphlets was the incarceration of Imre Thököly by Ahmed Pasha, the governor of the Ottoman province of Várad in 1685. This action led to the imminent fall of the Ottoman tributary state of Upper (or in the Turkish terminology: Middle) Hungary, established only three years before with the ahdname of Sultan Mehmed IV and ruled by Thököly. Western European prints repeatedly presented with sarcastic commentaries the absurd situation that the existence of this short-lived state was actually ceased due to the action of Ottoman dignitaries, who allegedly should have been interested in its maintenance for the greater glory of the sultan. My paper, based upon contemporary correspondence, mostly in Hungarian and only partly published will address the question largely untouched by previous literature: how the relationship between the anti-Habsburg movement that raised Thököly into his high position, the dignitaries of Ottoman Hungary, as well as the neighbouring Principality of Transylvania (another Ottoman tributary) developed during the years of the rebellion and what causes led to this decision of Ahmed Pasha that eventually proved to be fatal for Ottoman supervision over Northeastern Hungary. 
 

Nataša ŠTEFANEC (History Department, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, Croatia): Rebellions on the Ban’s Military Border in the First Half of the 18th Century 

After the Great Turkish War (1683-1699) the shape and position of the Military Border significantly changed and border area underwent various military reforms dictated from Vienna. Conquered lands were at first controlled by both the Aulic War Council and the Aulic Chamber which brought disorder into devastated area disposed to crimes and migrations. When military authorities finally started to reform the border in the 1730s they had to regulate and standardise four highly different sections in today’s Croatian area (Karlovac Generalate was traditionally ruled from Ljubljana (later also Graz) from the 1540s, Varaždin Generalate was set up according to Statuta Valachorum (1630) and was ruled from Graz, newly established Slavonian Border was ruled from Vienna and Ban’s border was controlled by the Croatian-Slavonian Ban or viceroy). First three sections were the area of a long-lasting power contest between various Austrian elites and interest groups, while the Ban’s Border was largely submitted to the jurisdiction of the Ban. Habsburg military authorities implemented, with more or less success, more than 30 large reform packages in these four border sections and wrapped them up with Militär Gränitz-Rechten in 1754. Reforms provoked numerous rebellions. This presentation will address rebellions on the Ban’s border (i.e. 1730, 1751) with an aim to reconstruct which segment of reforms homogenised and mobilised frontiersmen, who were their (chosen) leaders, were they following any established rebellion pattern (did they develop “culture of disobedience”), did they have political, ideological or just practical goals, what was the response of the military authorities in Zagreb and Vienna, how was the offence categorized and punished (was punishment intended to restore symbolic order or reform groups and individuals). Rebellions will be analysed in the context of the growing need of the early modern state to take control of the violence, even in a militarised society. 
 

Bojan MITROVIĆ (University of Trieste, Italy): Just an Ordinary Uprising. Peasant Rebellion and the Formation of the Serbian State (1803-1844) 

In his Memoirs, Prota Matija Nenadović wrote that after the 1806 Mišar Battle, there were so many captured “Turks” one of the Serbian leaders brought one home so that his child (dete) could cut a Turk’s throat. Nenadović does not dwell further on the anecdote but it is possible to see such an action as an educational measure. The Paşalık of Belgrade was a border province of the Ottoman Empire that was a theater of three Austro-Turkish wars in the previous century (1716-18; 1735-39; 1788-91), fought with the participation of the local population on both sides. In such a setting, the use of violence in the early age could give a child significant possibilities of survival, but did than readiness to violence become a hindrance in the setting of the new nation-state? Traditionally, the 1806-15 uprisings are seen as struggle for national emancipation, but this paper will argue they should be put in a broader context of war and uprising in the Paşalık of Belgrade. Until 1844, on the same territory, there were 9 different uprisings by the Serbs, against the newly established Serbian authorities, an average of one uprising every three years. It will be argued that in the newly established Serbian state, the uprisings, as well as individual acts of rebellion, were at times severely punished, but could have not been considered exceptional. Rather, they were part of the normal functioning of an institutional architecture that needed outside intervention to break through any impasse. Finally, it will be argued that the end of such a system of “ordinary uprisings” was brought about by change in military technology i.e. the purchase of field cannons by the Serbian state that gave the upper hand to the military in any future conflict.

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