Portrait of a Prospector: Edward Schieffelin’s Own Story

Abstract

language. Cohen observes that “Statistics from the late Ottoman period indicate that even those non-Muslims who attended imperial schools or secured government employment were less likely than Muslims to climb the ranks of the bureaucracy. Even more than other nonMuslim groups, Jews felt obstacles to entering state service, as few among them were proficient in Ottoman, the language of imperial officialdom” p. 11). Also, commanding Cohen’s attention and scholarly treatment are two events few historians have focused on before or since. One is the massacre of Armenians in 1896 in some neighborhoods of Istanbul. Cohen points to both Jewish protection of the Armenians and, at the same time, looting of their properties. She stresses the Jews’ ambivalence toward the event, given this ambiguity. The other event Cohen covers with equal, if not greater, attention is the state visit of Sultan Mehmet V in 1911 to Salonica used by the Jews to demonstrate their patriotism by contributing most of the 26 celebratory arches. These and Ottoman Jews’ other attempts to rise to the ranks of imperial citizens bore less than the desired fruit. Much of the reason was external to them, that is, beyond their control, namely, a period of turmoil which saw the war against Russia (1877–1878), against Greece over Crete (1897), in the Balkans, marked by the loss of Salonica to Greece in 1912, deteriorating economic conditions and governance as a whole, rising interest in socialism and Zionism, and emigration as a popular option. Cohen examines these and other events and their consequences in great depth, like Sir Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, and presents them with the precision of a scientific writer like Isaac Asimov, and the skill of a dramatist like Shakespeare. Her big opus received numerous awards and prizes. This is not surprising. The book fills a void in Ottoman and Sephardi historiography—the ultimate aspiration of an academic work such as this. If it has any weaknesses, they stem from the book’s and its author’s strengths. They are, in a nutshell, the need for more—an update or follow-up. The Ottoman Empire gave way to a modern Turkey of 18 million people, a Turkey that now boasts 82 million whose identity, governance, politics, and alliances are still evolving. Meanwhile, its Sephardi population has dwindled from a peak of nearly a hundred thousand in the young Turkish Republic a century ago to a mere 15,000–20,000 today. What has becoming a Turk meant since becoming Ottomans was the question? What does it mean now? Fortunately for philo-Turks and Sephardi fans, Cohen is young, curious, and seemingly committed enough to provide answers ofthe same quality that she did in her Becoming Ottomans: Sephardi Jews and Imperial Citizenship in the Modern Era.