Territorial design and grand strategy in the Ottoman Empire

Kadercan, Burak

doi:10.1080/21622671.2016.1265465

Cited by 12 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Territory, it is agreed, is integral to modern conceptions of sovereignty, but variations in the way in which territory is defined or distinguished from other territories have received little attention. Other kinds of variations in territorial entities have been considered important, such as the sizes of territorial units (Tilly, 1992) and the contiguity of territories under one sovereignty (Teschke, 2003), but variations in kinds of borders remain mostly unremarked upon (except Kadercan, 2017). Moreover, studies of the origins of territorial sovereignty have mostly remained geographically confined to Europe, and few, if any, have tried to understand how and why, or even when, attempts were made to linearize borders globally.…”

Section: The Trouble With 'Territorial Sovereignty'mentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise of linear borders in world politics

Goettlich

2018

European Journal of International Relations

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This article argues that the dominance of precise, linear borders as an ideal in the demarcation of territory is an outcome of a relatively recent and ongoing historical process, and that this process has had important effects on international politics since circa 1900. Existing accounts of the origins of territorial sovereignty are in wide disagreement largely because they fail to specify the relationship between territory and borders, often conflating the two concepts. I outline a history of the linearization of borders which is separate from that of territorial sovereignty, having a very different timeline and featuring different actors, and offer an explanation for the dominance of this universalizing system of managing and demarcating space, based on the concept of rationalization. Finally I describe two broad ways in which linearizing borders has affected international politics, by making space divisible in new ways, and underpinning hierarchies by altering the distribution of geographical knowledge resources.

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Section: The Trouble With 'Territorial Sovereignty'mentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise of linear borders in world politics

Goettlich

2018

European Journal of International Relations

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“…They point out that territory itself is also a bundle of different factors, including linear borders, territoriality, and control over an area, and attempt to identify what particular aspect of territory was unique to Europe and what was not. For example, Goettlich (2019: 210) maintained that territoriality—“the attempt to affect, influence, or control actions, interactions, or access by asserting and attempting to enforce control over a specific geographic area” (Sack, 1983: 55)—can exist without clearly defined borders and argues that “the global linearization of borders, rather than territoriality, is specific to our era, and relies on a host of technologies and practices that are more historically specific than territoriality.” Similarly, Kadercan (2017) argued that territorial rule was not foreign to the Ottoman Empire. It was not an a-territorial system but a different territorial arrangement.…”

Section: Territorial Sovereignty Outside Europementioning

confidence: 99%

“…It was not an a-territorial system but a different territorial arrangement. The difference between European states and the Ottoman Empire was that while the former “showed a consistent preference for and a gradual inclination toward hardening their borders and homogenizing the space-society-politics nexus inside these borders,” the latter “opted for a soft and flexible approach to demarcating space while also empowering a heterogeneous spatial-political dynamic within the lands it ruled over” (Kadercan, 2017: 160). In Branch’s (2014: 19) words, it is “territorial demarcation and mutual exclusion” that were unique to Europe before its expansion.…”

Section: Territorial Sovereignty Outside Europementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Therefore, as non-sovereigns, non-European polities before they encountered European powers have largely been thought to lack ideas and practice of territory. Although some recent scholarship has investigated the development of different aspects of territory, pointing out that some are not unique to Europe (Branch, 2014;Goettlich, 2019;Kadercan, 2017), scholars still largely assume that linear borders did not exist outside Europe until the age of colonialism. Unlike in Europe, this view posits that authorities in the rest of the world exercised political rule over people, rather than lands, and space was a collection of places, not an area demarcated by borders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Eastern cousins of European sovereign states? The development of linear borders in early modern Japan

Mukoyama

2022

European Journal of International Relations

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The conventional accounts of the history of the sovereign state system assume that territorial sovereignty originated in Europe and spread to the rest of the world through colonial expansion. This implies that territory, which is a core feature of the modern state, and more specifically, linear borders, had not existed outside Europe before other societies encountered the West. Focusing on early modern Japan, this article challenges that assumption by showing that there was a similar territorial order outside Europe that developed in parallel with its European counterpart. Through an investigation of boundary disputes, boundary markers, and map-making during the Edo period (1603–1868), it demonstrates that linear borders were not foreign to early modern Japan. Domains in Edo Japan were already well into the process of building a territorial order with demarcated borders and mutual exclusion. This article contributes to International Relations scholarship by addressing the “Westphalian myth” from a geographical rather than temporal perspective and shifting the focus of the study of non-Western international systems from differences to similarities. It also suggests a potential revision of scholarly understandings of discontinuity before and after the Meiji Restoration in Japan.

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“…Burak Kadercan (2017) explores the relationship between different territorial designs and interstate as well as intrastate violence from a macro-historical perspective. Kadercan's essay focuses on an empirical puzzle embedded in classical era Ottoman rule (roughly from 1300 until 1700).…”

Section: Summary Of the Articlesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Territorial designs and international politics: the diverging constitution of space and boundaries

Atzili

Kadercan

2017

Territory, Politics, Governance

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Territorial designs and international politics: the diverging constitution of space and boundaries. Territory, Politics, Governance. The debate about the role and direction of territory and territorialityespecially with respect to the politically and socially constructed nature of territoryhas been evident within political geography and political science, as well as in other disciplines, for some time. Interdisciplinary interaction over the study of territory, however, has so far been less than impressive. Aiming to enhance our understanding of the place of territory in international relations, broadly defined, and to bridge disciplinary divides, this paper introduces the concept of 'territorial designs'. Territorial designs pertain to the delineation of the external boundaries, to the constitution of the society within these boundaries, and to the interaction between delineation and constitution. It is a process by which elites, in interaction with their own society and their external environment, intentionally and systematically constitute and institutionalize territoriality, and hence also territory. Territorial designs framework, as the papers in this volume collectively highlight, sheds a light on four key areas: the strategic logic and interaction behind different territorial systems; the unintended consequences of such designs; the tensions between regional/ local territorial arrangements and global ones; and the roles that technology and knowledge play in the emergence of different forms of territoriality.

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Territorial design and grand strategy in the Ottoman Empire

Cited by 12 publications

References 46 publications

The rise of linear borders in world politics

The rise of linear borders in world politics

The Eastern cousins of European sovereign states? The development of linear borders in early modern Japan

Territorial designs and international politics: the diverging constitution of space and boundaries

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