Digital publication of the opening lecture in English by Prof. Edhem Eldem

Edhem Eldem

The Ottoman Empire and Turkey facing the West

During the long nineteenth century, faced with an increasingly powerful and arrogant West, the Ottoman Empire modernised itself with the objective of dealing with an increasingly precarious situation. The history of this modernity, strongly marked by Westernisation, must be freed from many of the political and ideological influences that have burdened it so far, including Euro-centric orientalism, Kemalist nationalism, Islamising Ottomanism. The study of a wide variety of sources - most of which are still unexploited - will inform critical reflection on this highly important and complex period.

Edhem Eldem, The Ottoman Empire and Turkey facing the West , translation by Liz Libbrecht, Paris, Collège de France, Inaugural Lectures, 2025.

This book was published with the support of the Collège de France Foundation.

Historian Edhem Eldem has taught at the universities of Boğaziçi, Berkeley, Harvard, Columbia, EHESS, EPHE and ENS. Holder of the International Chair in Turkish and Ottoman History at the Collège de France, he is the author of numerous works on trade in the Levant, funeral epigraphy, the Ottoman Bank, the dynamics of Westernisation, Istanbul at the turn of the twentieth century, orientalism, the photography, history of archaeology, and collections in the Ottoman Empire.