Abstracts - METU - Middle East Technical University

MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
&
MEIJI UNIVERSITY
INSTITUTE OF HUMANITIES
INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
The First World
War in Eurasia
Historiography and Public Image
31 October - 1 November 2014
31 Ekim - 1 Kasım 2014
METU Cultural and Convention Center, Hall A
ODTÜ Kültür ve Kongre Merkezi, Salon A
ABSTRACTS
The Organizing Committee
Prof. Dr. Tetsuya Sahara
Prof. Dr. Mustafa Türkeş
Prof. Dr. Ömer Turan
Assistants
Canan Halaçoğlu
Erol Ozan Yılmaz
Contents
Zafer TOPRAK, How to Finance the War: Economic Historiography of WWI
1
Elizabeth B. FRIERSON, Educating the Senses and Normalizing Total War in
Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America
1
Tetsuya SAHARA, “Rising East and Falling West”: Japanese Views on WWI
and Their Impact on “Asianism”- the Ideology of Japanese Fascism
2
Tassos KOSTOPOULOS, From Civil War and Foreign Occupation to
Oblivion, from “Persecution” to “Genocide”: WWI Greek Historiography and
its Sociopolitical Background
2
Ayşe Pamir DIETRICH, Russian Historiography on the Battle of Sarykamysh
3
Maxime GAUIN, Between Trauma and Resistance: French Historiography of
the First World War
3
Valery KOLEV, Bulgarian Historiography on the Great War in the Years of
Transition, 1990 – 2014
4
Birten ÇELİK, British War Propaganda Used during the Gallipoli Campaigns
4
Predrag MARKOVIC, WWI on the Screen: The Yugoslav and Serbian Case
5
Zhanat KUNDAKBAYEVA, Kazakh National and Cultural Identity in Early
Stalinist Period: Kazakhs during the First World War in M. Auezov’s Historical
Novel “Hard Times”, 1928
5
Ömer TURAN, Turkish Memoirs of the First World War
6
H. Bayram SOY, The Ottoman Image in Germany during the First World War
6
Ulf BRUNNBAUER, Revising Revisionism: German and Serbian Reactions to
Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers
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HOW TO FINANCE THE WAR:
ECONOMIC HISTORIOGRAPHY OF WWI
Zafer TOPRAK
Boğaziçi University, Turkey
War financing is a branch of defense economics or war economics. From a
historiographical point of view it usually consists of the fiscal and monetary measures
that are used in meeting the costs of war, including basically three methods which
are not mutually exclusive, i.e. a) taxation, b) domestic or foreign loans, and c) the
creation of circulating medium, i.e. printing money. Belligerent countries during WWI
differed in financing the war, depending on their financial depth i.e. efficiency in
taxation and debt financing. Britain, the first “fiscal military state” capable of mobilizing
a greater amount of financial resources, did manage to transfer the purchasing power
from the civil population to warfare economics through war taxes. As for Germany,
borrowing was the main method to fill the deficit in the war budget. The third “salvation”
method, i.e. printing money, which is the most dangerous form and resorted to when
no more taxes can be collected and the government’s credit has broken down, was
implemented by the Ottoman Empire. When the war started, having a rigid taxation
structure, and never attempting to issue bonds to the public at large the Unionist
government shifted from hard currency to paper money and printed large quantities of
it. Financing war expenditures through enlarged circulating media did fuel price rises to
a level unseen in history. This made the Ottomans the inventor of “hyper-inflation”, as
prices skyrocketed by % 400 in the third year of the war. From then on Ottoman social
structure disintegrated and became class-based as it was made up of “haves” and
“have-nots”. In fact, Ottoman inflation brought the internal Pax Ottomanica to an end
and paved the way for a nation-state.
EDUCATING THE SENSES AND NORMALIZING TOTAL WAR IN
AFRICA, ASIA, EUROPE, AND NORTH AMERICA
Elizabeth B. FRIERSON
University of Cincinnati, USA
How did civilian populations become accustomed to the grave costs of total war?
Among other things this war changed about the world was the practice of battlefield
medicine. In Britain, doctors and nurses had to fight the military command for the right
to expand treatment of wounded soldiers. Military strategists feared the impact on
civilian support of the war if civilians saw the wounds men were suffering, but medical
practitioners won the struggle and soon great numbers of wounded bodies returned
home for treatment and rehabilitation across the various fronts of the war in the UK and
elsewhere. Thus not only combatants but also civilians in and outside of combat zones
were well aware of the horrors of mechanized warfare on a grand scale. The vast gap
between the old normal and the new was dealt with through narrative strategies in text,
music, image, and the healing arts. This paper will present a comparative sampling of
these narrative strategies and an analysis of the psychological adjustment to believing
these horrors to be necessary and survivable.
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“RISING EAST AND FALLING WEST”: JAPANESE VIEWS ON
WWI AND THEIR IMPACT ON “ASIANISM” - THE IDEOLOGY OF
JAPANESE FASCISM
Tetsuya SAHARA
Meiji University, Japan
Japan entered into WWI as an ally of the Entente, but its war aim was the maximum
use of the political vacuum created by the war in the Far East. For both of the Japanese
government and society, a “European War” was a matter of no concern. This attitude
enabled Japan to record and analyze the course of warfare with a stone-cold sober and
objective point of view. In this regard, the Japanese assessment of Ottoman military
operations merits special attention. In theory, Japan was an enemy of the Ottomans,
but it is also true that it had no will to enter into war against the Turks. For most
Japanese citizen at the time, the Ottoman Empire was an Asian state, and there existed
considerable sympathy for the Turkish resistance to “Western colonialism.” This was
typically expressed in regard to the Ottoman victories in the Gallipoli front and Kut-elAmara. My paper first examines the contemporary media coverage of the events, then,
proceeds to elucidate the extent of the impact felt by the Japanese intellectuals and
military specialists. Finally, the author tries to explicate the paradoxical rise of “Asianist”
discourses in favor of the Turks.
FROM CIVIL WAR AND FOREIGN OCCUPATION TO OBLIVION,
FROM “PERSECUTION” TO “GENOCIDE”: WWI GREEK
HISTORIOGRAPHY AND ITS SOCIO-POLITICAL BACKGROUND
Tassos KOSTOPOULOS
Independent Researcher, Greece
For Greece, WWI was a rather minor military event in a decade of nearly constant
warfare that began with the victorious Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and ended in total
defeat in the Asia Minor Campaign of 1919-1922. The Greek army saw limited combat
action in the trenches of a multinational Macedonian Front that was led by foreign
Entente generals and staffed by a multitude of French, English, Serbian, Russian and
Colonial troops, facing an equally colourful assembly of German, Bulgarian and Turkish
military units; its casualties did not surpass a level of low thousands, compared with
the tens of thousands of dead or missing soldiers who perished during the next round
of hostilities. The most vivid experience felt by the Greek population at the time was
foreign occupation (by the Central Powers in Eastern Macedonia and Entente troops
elsewhere), famine (imposed by the Entente blockade of Southern Greece in 191617 and the harsh occupation regime on Eastern Macedonia) and, first and foremost,
the “National Schism” between pro-Entente and theoretically “neutralist” (in fact, proGerman) political forces, a conflict that verged on low-intensity civil war. For the 2
million-plus “unredeemed” Orthodox Greeks living within the confines of the Ottoman
Empire, whose remnants were transformed half a decade later into the substantial
“refugee” component of Greek citizenry, WWI was, however, a far more traumatic
experience, subjected as they were to various forms of organized state surveillance
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and/or open persecution. My paper describes how all these collective memories were
merged in Greek historiography during the 20th and early 21st century, the variety
of the academic, official and/or “public history” approaches that ensued, as well as
their interplay with a changing socio-political context that provided a succession of
contradictory patterns for institutionalized “memory”, “oblivion” and interpretation.
RUSSIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY ON THE BATTLE OF SARYKAMYSH
Ayşe Pamir DIETRICH
Middle East Technical University, Turkey
The First World War was an event which had a decisive influence on the subsequent
development of Russia, and played a major role in the history of the 20th century. By
1914, Russia was included in the system of international alliances that had developed
in Europe, and could not remain aloof from a world conflict objectively; but also
failed to meet her national interests by pulling out of the war. The war, known as the
Second Patriotic War (Vtoraja otechestvennaja vojna) or the Great World Patriotic War
(Velikaja vsemirnaja otechestvennaja vojna) in Russia, in many respects determined
the historical destiny of the country. The Sarykamysh Operation was one of the most
important and most tragic operations which took place as part of the Caucasus
Campaign during the First World War. It was an engagement between the Russian
and Ottoman empires which took place from December 22, 1914 to January 17, 1915.
Leaving aside a general discussion of the war itself, historical information and sources
about the events of the First World War that took place in the Caucasus, specifically
in Sarykamysh, are extremely scarce for two main reasons: First, operations in these
regions were minor compared to the main fighting on the Eastern Front and so were
less written about; second, because the Bolshevik revolution took place during the
First World War and the new Soviet government pulled out of the war and turned all
their attention to the ongoing Civil War, more has been written about the events of the
revolution and Civil War rather than about Russia’s participation in the First World War.
However, there are some valuable sources, such as Maslovsky, E.V., Mirovaya voyna
na Kavkazskom fronte, 1914-1917, Knigoizdatelstvo, Vozrozhdenie, La Renaissance,
Parizh, 1933, Korsun, N.G., Pervaya mirovaya voyna na Kavkazskom fronte, Voennoie
izdatelstvo, 1946 and Berhman, E. G., Sarykamyshskaya operatsya, 12-24 Dekabria
1914 goda, pod redaktsiey A. Andreeva, Parizh, 1934, related to the events took place
in the Sarykamysh which we will examine in this presentation.
BETWEEN TRAUMA AND RESISTANCE: FRENCH HISTORIOGRAPHY
OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Maxime GAUIN
Middle East Technical University, Turkey
Among the Western powers, France was the one who suffered the most in terms of
human losses and material destruction. The trauma is perceptible in the historiography,
and not only for the first generations of historians. This is one of the reasons for the
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focus on the Western front. This is also why a recurrent question is: how was the war
won? Gradually, the question expanded from debate on the top leaders to (sometime
fierce) arguments on the ordinary soldiers. In spite of these seminal discussions, the
Ottoman and post-Ottoman space have been comparatively neglected. Nevertheless,
the French side was a pioneer in the interwar period for studying “the Turkish war in the
world war” and recently, some researches have emerged from the Defense’s historical
service.
BULGARIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY ON THE GREAT WAR IN THE
YEARS OF TRANSITION, 1990 – 2014
Valery KOLEV
Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, Bulgaria
The paper will deal with the gradual evolution in the perception of Bulgarian historiography
on the theme of World War I during the 25-year-long period of transition from hard-line
Marxism to a non-Marxist approach. The first part will examine the basic characteristics
of the Marxist representation of the Great War in Bulgarian historical science in the
1980s and the first attempts to oppose it by shifting attention away from ideologically
imposed dogmas to a more neutral narrative based on more numerous and complex
historical sources. The second part will deal with the re-emergence of the nationalistic
approach that gradually led to the disintegration of the monolithic Marxist construct by
implementing new themes and perspectives on the levels of historic reconstruction,
analysis and long term consequences.
BRITISH WAR PROPAGANDA USED DURING THE GALLIPOLI
CAMPAIGNS
Birten ÇELİK
Middle East Technical University, Turkey
One of the important tools of that was effectively used during World War-I by the Allied
Powers and the Central Powers was war propaganda. Propaganda leaflets were spread
over enemy trenches by planes and propaganda was disseminated via news planted in
newspapers published in both the Allied Powers’ and Central powers’ countries, as well
as in other European countries or in the Allied Powers’ dominions to persuade their own
people that they were winning victories on the battlefield, to demoralize their enemies,
and to gain the support of the neutral countries. This method and tool was used by
the British Army against the Ottoman Army during the Gallipoli campaign. There were
two types of propaganda that the British Army used: one was aimed at British and
ANZAC soldiers and the other was aimed at the Ottoman government and the Ottoman
Army. The propaganda that British commanders used for their own soldiers was to
encourage them to fight courageously and not to be taken as prisoners of war. For
example, British and ANZAC commanders during the Gallipoli Campaign encouraged
their soldiers by threatening them “not to be taken prisoner of war otherwise the Turks
will kill you and eat you”. Worse than this, these commanders threaten their soldiers,
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“do not be taken prisoner of war, otherwise the Turks will cut off your penis”. On the
other hand, the British and ANZAC commanders tried to convince the Turkish soldiers
with positive images of “the British Army” via the propaganda leaflets spread over the
Turkish trenches by war planes. With these leaflets they were trying to undermine the
morale of the Turkish soldiers (who were in fact suffering from disease, lack of food
and lack of ammunition) and convince them to surrender. For example, in the British
propaganda leaflets for the Turkish soldiers it was written that “we take good care of
our Turkish prisoners of war. We feed them and they have better lives than before.”
In addition to these leaflets the British government placed stories in the newspapers
published in either Britain and other European countries, or in British dominions like
Egypt indicating that they were victorious in the Gallipoli Campaign, while, in reality, they
could not move even one kilometer from their own trenches in the Gallipoli Peninsula.
These news stories were not used only to create a successful image of the British Army
and to make a negative psychological affect on the Ottoman government, people and
the army, but also to encourage and persuade the British people and dominions to
support the government, create the impression that all was well on the battlefields, also
to avoid public criticism. While the British army was busy with effective propaganda,
the Ottoman government and army made counter-propaganda to meet the British
allegations against the Turks while the Turkish Army was preparing to clear the Gallipoli
Peninsula of the Allied armies. This paper will examine the British propaganda activities
used against the Ottoman Army during the Gallipoli Campaign and show how the British
Army carried out the war in this campaign.
WWI ON THE SCREEN: THE YUGOSLAV AND SERBIAN CASE
Predrag MARKOVIC
Institute of Contemporary History, Serbia
WWI has been a cinematographic topic since early days, and movies dedicated to the
Great War were among the first Oscar winners. The cinematic representation of this
war differs from country to country. While in the West the war was depicted in gloomy
colors (Jean Renoir, etc.), in interwar Yugoslavia this conflict was described as a heroic
struggle for liberation and unification. In Communist Yugoslavia the prevailing tone was
not changed, although there were only a few movies on this topic, in comparison to 250
movies about WWII. In the 21st century there have been two major movies on the First
World War, and their message has been very unusual.
KAZAKH NATIONAL AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN EARLY STALINIST
PERIOD: KAZAKHS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN M.
AUEZOV’S HISTORICAL NOVEL “HARD TIMES”, 1928
Zhanat KUNDAKBAYEVA
Al-Farabi Kazakh National University, Kazakhstan
In Kazakhstan from early Soviet times up to today the memory of the First World War was
subsumed into the history of the 1916 Uprising. Soviet period scholarship was attuned
5
to party doctrine and assumed that the needs of Russia’s wartime economy became the
burden borne by Kazakh people which exacerbated class tensions in Kazakh society.
In official Soviet historical narrative the 1916 Uprising was evaluated as a revolt of the
poor (without nationality) against the arbitrariness of the wealthy and higher (without
distinction on ethnic grounds) after the eventual promulgation of a conscription ukaz
in Central Asia in July 1916 (Kazakhs and Uzbeks had to serve in labor battalions).
In the early Stalinist period the Kazakh Writer M. Auezov was not afraid to present
his own vision of the Kazakhs’ pre-revolutionary past. In contrast with the Bolsheviks,
M. Auezov clearly depicted the First World War as a time when the Kazakhs became
aware of their social, psychological, and cultural inferiority in the Russian Empire. M.
Auezov, with his artistic imagination of the 1916 Uprising, was far ahead of professional
historians. Even post-soviet Kazakh Historians still have not seen that ordinary Kazakh
peasants were those who recognized that exemption from the new conscription law of
1874 was sign of “their exclusion from the putative political community of the Russian
Empire” (Morrison 2012). So M. Auezov, by giving voice to the ‘natives’’ hitherto silent
and effaced figures of the other in Russian Empire and Soviet times, used literature
to solidify, and reevaluate Kazakh national identity. His forbidden historical novel was
a great contribution in preserving the historical memory, as well as the protection of
national and cultural identity of the Kazakhs, which was suppressed by the Soviet policy
of erasing national differences.
TURKISH MEMOIRS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Ömer TURAN
Middle East Technical University, Turkey
Memoirs are the most dangerous, but at the same time indispensable source for writing
history. In particular, they are the most important source for the controversial evaluations
of the First World War in Turkey. This paper aims to present the Turkish memoirs of
the First World War by classifying them according to their writers (politicians, soldiers,
foreigners etc.), subjects (Ottoman participation to the WWI, military history, Armenian
deportation), and approaches (pro- and anti-Committee of Union and Progress).
THE OTTOMAN IMAGE IN GERMANY DURING THE FIRST WORLD
WAR
H. Bayram SOY
Kırıkkale University, Turkey
With Wilhelm II’s ascension to the throne in 1888, German concerns about the Ottoman
Empire grew rapidly. Unlike his Chancellor Prince von Bismarck, Wilhelm II was very
interested in the Eastern Question and always wanted a say in this issue. Of course this
was a part of his general expansionist foreign policy: the Weltpolitik. It meant putting
Germany directly at the center of world politics by every means. Pursuing Weltpolitik
required a strong navy and overseas bases. In terms of this policy, the Ottoman
territories were one of the very few opportunities where the Germans could peacefully
6
penetrate and expand their political, military and economic influence. These German
aims coincided with the Ottoman foreign policy in which the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid
II was seeking for new backing, after the British had disappointed him in the 18771878 Ottoman-Russian War and the 1878 Berlin Treaty. The topic of Ottoman-German
relations during the reign of Wilhelm II has been long debated because this relationship
dragged them into a military alliance in 1914 and resulted in a final blow for both
empires. Despite this fatal partnership, it is not easy to say that there was a complete
unanimity between these two countries’ political and economic establishments. In
particular, there was an apparent inconsistency among the German policy makers
about the Ottoman Empire’s continuation. Some thought that the Ottoman Empire was
a “sick man” who could not be revived, and others asserted that it was an important ally
in case of a war against the Allied Powers. But German statesmen were in agreement on
one issue: no matter what her fate, Germany must have a strong economic influence in
the Ottoman Empire. Although the economic data of this period show that the Germans
were not the primary importers or exporters of the Ottoman Empire, they worked to
become it. All the Anatolian and Bagdad railway projects, agricultural breeding plans
and port constructions etc. can be considered as the Germans’ penetration pacifiqué
into the Ottoman Empire. When the First World War broke out, there was still confusion
in Germany over whether the Ottomans could contribute the Central Powers, especially
against the Russians. After crucial debates in Germany and in the German Embassy
in the Ottoman Empire, a military alliance was signed with the Ottomans who were
expected to stop the Russians in the Straits and in the Caucasus, and the British in the
Suez Canal and in the Persian Gulf.
REVISING REVISIONISM: GERMAN AND SERBIAN REACTIONS TO
CHRISTOPHER CLARK’S SLEEPWALKERS
Ulf BRUNNBAUER
University of Regensburg, Germany
Christopher Clark’s major new history of the outbreak of World War One triggered lively
debates, in particular in Germany and Serbia. In both countries, many professional
historians as well as parts of the educated (and sometimes also uneducated) public
felt provoked by Clark’s challenges to the orthodoxies with regard to the narratives
of the Great War, and in particular the question of “guilt”. In Germany, critical reviews
stressed that Clark underestimated the importance of German imperialism. It seems
that the German public has internalized the notion of German main responsibility for the
outbreak of World War One to such an extent that it does not even feel relief when a
historian from abroad seemingly exculpates Germany (at least to a degree). In Serbia, in
contrast, historians, politicians and writers were angered by Clark’s portrayal of Serbia
as a rogue state. The Serbian public fears that Serbia would be made responsible
for the carnage of the war – in a situation in which the conventional Serbian master
narrative describes World War One as a major tragedy, in which Serbia was one of the
main victims but from which it eventually emerged victorious. My presentation has the
following goals: identification of the main patterns of public perception of Clark’s book;
explanation and contextualisation of the debates in Germany and Serbia around the
book; and a discussion of the role of World War One in the ‘national’ memory of the
two countries.
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