Hilmar Kaiser's important essay could not be more timely, for it deconstructs some of the central statements of modern Ottoman historiography. These include the views that the economic success of the Ottoman Armenian bourgeoisie stemmed from their unscrupulous character and European privileges, that it prevented the economic development of the empire, and that it provoked the Turks into getting rid of the Armenian people.

Kaiser's approach reminds one of Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morals" in that he traces these ideas back to their origins to unveil their ideological content and the interests they conceal. These origins he finds in the racist and nationalist propaganda which developed in German imperialist circles as early as the 1890s. In particular, Kaiser emphasizes the central role played in modern historiography by the writings of one such propagandist, Alphons Sussnitzki.

Kaiser shows that Turkish and Western scholars from diverse ideological horizons adopted these ideas to various degrees and adapted them to their theories. Among them, one finds Turkish nationalists of the so-called Kadro school in the 1930s, proponents of the liberal modernization theory in the 1950s and 1960s, and both Turkish and Western followers of Immanuel Wallerstein's assertedly Marxist world-system theory from the 1970s on.

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Last modified on 14 May 2006.