CES History Seminar: The Legal Work of Empire: Taming Autonomy through Law

Speaker: Aimee Genell, Assistant Professor of International History, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

Chair: Alison Frank Johnson, Professor of History, Harvard University; Chair, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University; Resident Faculty & Seminar Chair, Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University

While the Ottoman empire had long maintained flexible administrative arrangements, European intervention in Ottoman affairs starting in the 1830s resulted in the creation of a new type of province. Focusing on the period between 1880 and 1908, Aimee Genell will examine Ottoman institution building around international law as a "weapon of the weak" in the empire’s struggles with Europe.