14 | Living in the Ottoman Realm
discourse felt the need to note that not all Muslim scientists were Arabs. Hence,
the effort to find room in the Eurocentric historiography of science led to a de-
liberation on the legacy that Muslim Ottomans could claim as their own and,
consequently, on Ottoman identity itself.
In chapter 20 David Gutman investigates attempts by the Ottoman ambas-
sador to the United States, Alexandros Mavroyeni, a scion of a prominent Greek
Orthodox family who was deeply loyal to the Ottoman state, to spy on and moni-
tor the political activities of Ottoman Armenians residing in the United States.
Mavroyeni sought to recruit some of these Armenian migrants to spy on their
own countrymen in an attempt to thwart Armenian revolutionaries who were
leading uprisings in the empire’s eastern provinces. From the perspective of the
Ottoman state, migration to North America and revolutionary politics went
hand in hand. In addition, he contracted with the infamous Pinkerton Detective
Agency, renowned for its role in infiltrating and disrupting labor and other radi-
cal organizations in the United States, to monitor the activities of Armenian mi-
grant communities. As an Ottoman Christian, Mavroyeni’s actions complicate
our understanding of the relationship between the Islamic Ottoman state and its
Christian populations in the age of nationalism. This story also sheds light on the
Ottoman state’s efforts to demonstrate its power and monitor its population in an
era of mass politics and global mobility.
In chapter 21 Vangelis Kechriotis examines the life and seemingly conflicting
loyalties of a famous and infamous Ottoman Greek Orthodox man to investigate
the contested character of Ottomanist ideology and identity, particularly during
the Second Constitutional Period (1908–1918). Born near Kayseri in 1849, Pavlos
Carolidis later studied in Izmir, Athens, and Germany. In 1886 he was appointed
professor of history at the University of Athens. In 1908 after the Young Turk
Constitutional Revolution he was nominated and elected to the Ottoman Parlia-
ment. By endorsing the ideology of Ottomanism he rejected the directives of the
Hellenic government in Greece and pro-Hellenic circles in Istanbul and Izmir.
He was even elected on the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) ticket in
1912, which cost him his position at the University of Athens. His political choices
eventually made it impossible for him to settle securely in any of the cities that
marked his life: Izmir, Athens, or Istanbul. This chapter addresses the political
and ideological trajectory of one of the most controversial figures of his time.
In chapter 22 Michelle U. Campos investigates the lives and work of two
prominent Ottoman Jewish brothers (Shlomo and David Yellin) during the final
years of the empire and its subsequent dissolution. Both attempted to develop and
negotiate identities and loyalties that straddled a conceptualization of Ottoman
civic nationalism, their own Jewishness, and the solidification of Zionism in Ot-
toman Palestine, particularly in the aftermath of the 1908 Young Turk Constitu-
tional Revolution. Both brothers were undoubtedly committed to Ottomanism,