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Dogs, Women, Cholera, and Other Menaces in the Streets: Cartoon Satire in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–11

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Palmira Brummett
Palmira Brummett
Affiliation:
Associate Professor in the Department of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tenn. 37996, U.S.A.
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Extract

History is enamored of revolutions. This essay takes as its subject a revolution—the Young Turk Revolution of 1908—which overthrew one of the most enduring autocracies of early modern times. It concerns itself, however, with revolution of a specific kind, cartoon revolution: where images could take precedence over words; where the past, present, and future were created and imagined; where the celebration of new freedoms brought citizens into contact with menaces in the streets.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , November 1995 , pp. 433 - 460
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

NOTES

1 My thanks to Joe Rader and Hua Li of the University of Tennessee Archive for the production of the digitally scanned cartoons used in this article. A note on transliteration: there is no one standard Ottoman romanization; ordinarily, semiromanizations or transliterations based on modern Turkish are employed. This is not very satisfactory, in part because Ottoman Turkish does not conform to vowel harmony. Here, a modern Turkish transliteration has been employed based on Redhouse, James, Yeni Türkçe-İngilizce Sözlük (Istanbul: Redhouse Press, 1968)Google Scholar. A note on dating: dates of gazettes are given in the Ottoman financial year (malî), the dating scheme used for most periodicals. The Christian-era date equivalent is thirteen days later. So, for example, 1 Mayis 1325 is 14 May 1909. Malî year dates are not the same as hicri year dates. Confusion can also result because different periodicals changed from one fiscal year to the next rather idiosyncratically, many changing in March but others changing in February, sometimes in midmonth; occasionally, a stray gazette does not change years until April. A recent and useful addition to the limited material on dating is Rose, Richard B., “The Ottoman Fiscal Calendar,” Middle East Studies Association Bulleti 25, 2 (1991): 157–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In Ottoman publishing, the confusion that Rose noted from 1916 (p. 162) also applies to the earlier years of the century.

2 Some of these men were educated abroad, but many were trained in the empire's own modern Westernized educational institutions. On Ottoman educational reform, see, for example, Lewis, Bernard, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 83–89Google Scholar; Mardin, Şerif, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962), 206–46Google Scholar; Zürcher, Erik, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 1993), 45–48, 55–56, 82, 90–91Google Scholar.

3 Although the revolution took place in July of 1908, Abd ül-Hamid II was not formally deposed until after an abortive counterrevolution the following spring. For some first hand accounts on censorship, see Bey, Ismail Kemal, The Memoirs of Ismail Kemal Bey, ed. Story, Somerville (London: Constable and Company, 1920), 279Google Scholar, and Garnett, Lucy, Turkish Life in Town and Country (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910), 44–46Google Scholar.

4 This was the second Ottoman constitutional revolution; the first (in 1876) had set up constitutional government in the empire, but the constitution had been suspended after less than two years (in 1878) by Abd ül-Hamid II. The revolution of 1908 demanded the reinstatement of that earlier constitution. On the Young Turks and the history of the revolutions, see Ahmad, Feroz, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics 1908–1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969)Google Scholar; Akşin, Sina, 100 Soruda Jön Türkler ve İttihat ve Terakki (Istanbul: Gerçek Yayinevi, 1980)Google Scholar; Kushner, David, The Rise of Turkish Nationalism 1876–1908 (New York: Frank Cass, 1977)Google Scholar; Zürcher, Erik Jan, The Unionist Factor: The Role of the Committee of Union and Progress in the Turkish Nationalist Movement 1905–1926 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984)Google Scholar; Bayur, Yusuf Hikmet, Türk Inkilabi Tarihi, cilt 1, kisim 1–2 (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1963–1964)Google Scholar; Hanioğlu, M. Şükrü, Osmanli İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti ve Jön Türklük (1889–1902) (Istanbul: İletişim Yayinlari, n.d.)Google Scholar.

5 This essay is part of a larger monographic project in progress on the Ottoman satirical press, entitled “Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press,” which attempts to do a cultural history of Ottoman revolutionary satire in colonial context. It discusses the organization, technologies, themes, format, readership, and imagery of the Ottoman revolutionary press.

6 Rigorous polarizations between the actually conquered states (like India) of Asia and Africa and those that were simply economically dependent on Europe do not serve to illustrate the complex nature of European influence in the Ottoman state. Hence, I have chosen to employ the notion of colonial context, signifying advanced forms of cultural and economic influence or dominance. The possibilities for comparison with India were not lost on the Ottoman journalists. One gazette, for example, in its first issue, carried a story on the economic history of England focusing on the East Indian Company: Meram, 1:24–27, 30 Teşrin-i evvel 1324/12 November 1908 A.D.

7 On Ottoman publishing and the press, see İskit, Server, Türkiyede Neşriyat Hareketleri Tarihine Bir Baktş (Istanbul: Devlet Basimevi, 1939), esp. 25–26, 56–57Google Scholar, and, for an overview, pt. 1, 1–151. See also, Gerçek, Selim Nüzhet, Türk Matbaacdiği (Istanbul: Devlet Basimevi, 1939)Google Scholar.

8 For two catalogs of Ottoman press output, see Duman, Hasan, İstanbul Kütüphaneleri Arap Harfli Süreli Yayinlar Toplu Kataloğu 1828–1928 (Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture, 1986)Google Scholar; and Eski Harfli Türkçe Süreli Yayinlar Kataloğu, vol. 1 (Ankara: Milli Kütüphane Başkanhiği, 1987)Google Scholar.

9 Nüzhet, Selim [Gerçek], ed. 1933 Almanak (Istanbul: Devlet Matbaasi, n.d.), 242–50Google Scholar. The Hakki Tarik Us Library in Istanbul has a good collection of ephemera but is somewhat inaccessible.

10 Salname-i Devlet-i Aliye-i Osmaniye (Istanbul: Matbaa-i Ahmet İhsan, 1326 A.H./1908 A.D.), 64:1050–63Google Scholar. See also, Oral, Fuat Süreyya, Türk Basin Tarihi 1728–1922, 1831–1921, vol. 1, Osmanli Imparatorluğu Dönemi (Istanbul: Yeni Adim Matbaasi, n.d.)Google Scholar; and Şapolyo, Enver Behnan, Türk Gazeteciliği Tarihi Her Yöniyle Basin (Ankara: Güven Matbaasi, n.d.)Google Scholar. The latter work contains a summary history of Ottoman printing, illustration, and the press. Unfootnoted, it is not a scholarly work, but it contains many fascinating tidbits.

11 Findley, Carter, Bureaucratic Reform in the Ottoman Empire: The Sublime Porte, 1789–1922 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 253–54, 258Google Scholar, notes that by 1908 the Domestic Press Bureau included a director with five assistants, five examining clerks, more than a dozen inspectors (responsible for the supervision of newspapers, printing establishments, and theatres) plus clerks and secretaries.

12 See İskit, Server, Türkiyede Matbuat Rejimleri (Istanbul: Ülkü Matbaasi, 1939), 691–729Google Scholar for the press laws, beginning with the 1865 law, in effect under Abd ül-Hamid and implemented in 1909 after the revolution (and counterrevolution). Ali Paşa's edict of 1867 allowed summary suspensions of newspapers. See also Davison, Roderic H., “How the Ottoman Government Adjusted to a New Institution: The Newspaper Press,” in Turkic Culture: Continuity and Change, ed. Akural, Sabri (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 17–26Google Scholar on the press, state, and censorship in the mid-19th century.

13 I have surveyed a group of sixty-nine periodicals published in Istanbul between 1908 and 1911, and this characterization (of predominant underlying or overt support for traditions of sovereignty and social order) holds true.

14 The history of cartooning in the empire has yet to be written. Cartoons, as a form of ephemera, tend not to have been preserved like other types of narrative and visual documents. For some examples of Ottoman cartooning prior to the 20th century, see Çeviker, Turgut, Nişan G. Berberyan, Terakki Edelim Beyler (Istanbul: Adam Yayinlan, 1986)Google Scholar; Tanzimat İmzasiz Karikatürler Antolojisi (Adam Yayinlan, 1986)Google Scholar; Ali Fuat Bey, Osmanli Tokadi (Istanbul: Adam Yayinlan, 1986)Google Scholar.

15 This figure had various names: Mulla Naṣruʾd-Dīn, Djoha, and Goha. See, for example, Dejeux, Jean, Djoha hier et aujourd'huī (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Editions Naaman, 1978)Google Scholar; idem, “Sous le signe de Djo'ha,” in L'humour, séie Mutations no. 131 (Paris: 1992), 192–200Google Scholar; Browne, Edward G., The Press and Poetry of Modern Persia (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1983, reprint of 1914 Cambridge Univ. Press edition), front cover, 16, 23, 166Google Scholar; Fenoglio, Irène, “Caricature et représentation du mythe: Goha,” in Images d'Egypte, De lafresque à la bande dessiné (Cairo: CEDEJ, 1992), 133–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maunoury, Jean-Louis, Sublimes paroles et idioties de Nasr eddin Hodja (Paris: n.p., 1990)Google Scholar. See also, Javadi, Hasan, Satire in Persian Literature (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988), pp. 147–59, 166Google Scholar; and Kishtainy, Khalid, Arab Political Humor (London: Quartet Books, 1985)Google Scholar.

16 The Western press was also aware of Ottoman cartooning, as is evidenced by an article entitled, “La Caricature en Turquie,” Revue du Monde Musulman 6, 9 (09 1908): 160–79Google Scholar.

17 See And, Metin, Karagöz: Turkish Shadow Theater (Istanbul: Dost Yayinlari, 1987)Google Scholar; Kudret, Cevdet, Karagöz, 3 vols. (Ankara: Bilgi Yayinlari, 1968–1970)Google Scholar.

18 Cartoonists in this era were not the independent operators they often are today. Although many of the cartoons in this article are signed, the majority of cartoons in the revolutionary gazettes were unsigned. Çeviker, Turgut, Gelişim Sürecinde Türk Karikatürü, 3 vols. (Istanbul: Adam Yayinlari, 1986–1991)Google Scholar, covering the period 1878–1923; see ibid., 2:100. Çeviker provides brief biographies of the more well-known cartoonists (only a few of which are extensively represented in the gazettes I have surveyed), but many others are quite obscure. The cartoonists' names reflect a variety of ethnic origins but all may well have been Ottoman residents. I have found no evidence of these gazettes importing the work of foreign cartoonists, although some gazettes occasionally reprinted cartoons from foreign periodicals.

19 Baron, Beth, “The Construction of National Honor in Egypt,” Gender and History 5, 2 (1993): 244–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has argued that where the majority of the population cannot read, “an emphasis on print culture (or print capitalism) as the sole vehicle for constructing and transmitting nationalism is misleading. The idea of nationalism was disseminated through oral expression, rituals and symbols to semi-literate and illiterate Egyptians, who in turn used these media to give voice to their own nationalist sentiments and helped to shape the collective memory of Egypt” (244–45). The press, however, particularly where satire was concerned, was not simply an elite class. The rituals and symbols of the illiterate classes were an inherent element of cartoon culture; many symbols, such as Karagöz (Black Eye, the lower-class, everyman hero of the shadow puppet theater) were shared across lines of class and literacy.

20 According to F.D.E., Système des Mesures, Poids et Monnaies de I'Empire Ottoman et des principaux Étatş (Constantinople: n.p., 1910), 23–29Google Scholar, the basic unit of Ottoman coinage was the piastre or kuruş. The gold lira (livre) = 100 piastres; the silver medjidié = 20 piastres; and 1 kuruş/piastre = 0.22 francs. This source noted that legally the medjidié = 19 piastres and 1 piastre = 38 para, but, for convenience sake, the convention was: 1 medjidié = 20 piastres; a double piastre (ikilik) = 80 para; and 1 piastre = 40 para.

21 Ottoman gazettes were ordinarily published daily, twice weekly, twice monthly, or monthly, with many satirical gazettes published weekly. Circulation is very difficult to ascertain. The popular weekly, Kalem, claimed to have a 10,000-issue press run on 15 October 1908 and a 13,000-issue run by the ninth issue on 29 October 1908. Şapolyo, Türk Gazeteciliği Tarihi, 183, claims that the satirical gazette Eşek (Ass, published 1910–12) was the “biggest seller,” and that the daily, İkdam, sometimes had a run of 50,000 (but he cites no sources for this information).

22 Most of the satirical gazettes I have consulted are from the Atatürk Kütüphanesi in Istanbul, a wonderful and very accessible collection. Unfortunately, they were not available either for photographic reproduction or for scanning. A second significant contributing collection was the Middle East Section of the University of Chicago Library; my thanks to Bruce Craig.

23 Printing was done on a variety of presses, often by hand, using block print, lithography, and engraving techniques. The electric press was not yet in use in Istanbul at the time of the revolution, but electric presses were installed by the bigger publishers a few years afterward.

24 Kalem, 17:8, 12 Kanun-i evvel, 1324/25 December 1908 A.D. Ottoman works cited in italics in this article are all gazettes, examples of the periodical press.

25 Kalem, 103:9, 11 Teşrin-i sani 1326/24 November 1910 A.D.

26 Women inhabited the Ottoman cartoon space, but to a much lesser degree than men. Thus, John Q. Public in the Ottoman cartoon was, more often than not, male. Publishing remained an overwhelmingly male industry despite the relatively new phenomenon of women's magazines (often edited by men). On images of women in Ottoman cartoons, see Şeni, Nora, “19 Yüzyil Sonunda Istanbul Mizah Basininda Moda ve Kadin Kiyafetleri,” in Kadin Bakiş Açismdan 1980'ler Türkiye'sinde Kadinlar ed., Tekeli, Şirin (Istanbul: İletişim Yayinlari, 1990), 43–67Google Scholar.

27 See Girouard, Mark, Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 233–54Google Scholar, on “the city as export.” It was often to European architects or foreign planners that the Ottoman government appealed to redesign Istanbul in the 19th and early 20th centuries. See, for example, Çelik, Zeyneb, The Remaking of Istanbul: Portrait of an Ottoman City in the Nineteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 102–53Google Scholar. Çelik, resurrecting the words of a 19th century observer, notes that, “by 1888, the conquest of the city by foreign thought and enterprise had already been accomplished” (p. 188). Of course, Istanbul had been, for centuries, a city where styles and cultures were commingled. The city was remade in the 15th century by Mehmed the Conqueror. The difference, at the turn of the 20th century, was Istanbul's position of extreme economic weakness at a time of radical world transformation.

28 Dogs were a common urban problem. The sanitation committee of 19th-century New York, for example, struggled for years not only with dog packs but with hogs (in the streets and in apartment houses), the latter of which provided both garbage control and food for the poor. See Rosenberg, Charles E., The Cholera Years, The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 110–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dogs were the old scavengers who would be replaced by modern sanitation measures. For scavenger imagery, see Arz-u hal, 2:1, 8 Şubat 1325/21 February 1910 A.D. I have Chinese and Iranian friends who have commented on the scavenger dog packs in the large Asian cities of their childhoods in the 1950s.

29 See, for example, Boşboğaz, 22:3, 9 Teşrin-i evvel 1324/22 October 1908 A.D., for a column entitled “Our Streets,” a sort of newsy narrative that included mention of Istanbul's street dogs.

30 Vaka, Demetra, Haremlik: Some Pages from the Life of Turkish Women (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910), 30Google Scholar. An additional source, which I have been unable to consult, is Cevdet, Abdullah, İstanbul'da Köpekler (Cairo: n.p., 1909)Google Scholar.

31 Salname-i Servet-i Fünun, 1326/1910 A.D., 128. The dogs were also rounded up and dumped on an offshore island to starve.

32 Jackson, A. V. Williams, From Constantinople to the Home of Omar Khayyam: Travels in Transcaucasia and Northern Persia for Historic and Literary Research (New York: Macmillan, 1911), 2Google Scholar.

33 Sykes, Mark, The Caliph's Last Heritage (New York: Arno Press, 1973), 507, 512Google Scholar.

34 In the Ottoman press, pet toy-size dogs were frequently pictured in cartoons of women done up in Paris fashions, a readily identifiable sign of the imitation of European mores. Pet culture is here viewed as distinct from the keeping of hunting dogs and exotic pets, a custom that the Ottoman palace shared with the palaces of Europe. See also Kete, Kathleen, The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth Century Paris (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

35 Polis Mecmuasi, 5:1, 109, 15 Eylül 1329/28 September 1913 A.D.

36 An illustration in Resimli Kitab, 8:846, Mayis 1325/May 1909 A.D., showed the English king with a hand full of leashes stretching across the globe to “English friends, dependents, and protectorates.” The relationships portrayed, including that of the United States to England, are those of servants to master.

37 Fraser, David, The Short Cut to India: the Record of a Journey along the Route of the Baghdad Railway (Edinburg: William Blackwood, 1909), 422–23Google Scholar.

38 Kalem, 55:12, 17 Eylül 1325/30 September 1909 A.D. The caption, given in Ottoman Turkish, French, and Arabic, reads, “The Young Egyptians protesting England's occupation.”

39 For example, Kalem, 118:1, 10 Mart 1327/23 March 1911 A.D. John Bull counting armaments profits in the “shah's garden”; or Kalem, 10:12, 23 Teşrin-i evvel 1324/5 November 1908 A.D., showing the king as insurance salesman.

40 Cartoons usually gendered the nation (especially the threatened and exploited nation) as female.

41 Kalem, 65:5Google Scholar, 26 Teşrin-i evvel 1325/8 November 1909 A.D. While this proverb in modern Turkish would ordinarily read yer rather than yiyer, here the initial letter is clearly doubled. I believe this form is a common vulgarization rather than a misprint; additionally, it might be used to provide a poetic balance of syllables with bakar. This same proverb is repeated in the slogan for the journal, İştirak, of the Ottoman Socialist Party. For a lighter version of hungry dogs, see Dalkavuk, 5:8Google Scholar, 27 Eylül 1324/10 October 1908 A.D.; see also Hande, 3:1Google Scholar, 5 Nisan 1326/18 April 1910 A.D.

42 Kalem, 33:14Google Scholar, 9 Nisan 1325/22 April 1909 A.D. Anthropomorphized animals were commonly usedin cartoons at this time, both in Ottoman and European presses (the gazette Eşek is a characteristic example). See, for example, a cartoon in Yuha, 1:1Google Scholar, 2 Kanun-i evvel 1326/15 December 1910 A.D., where journalists are transformed into animals. But this direct equation of men with dogs is a bit different—a pointed critique rather than a humorous device. Revolutionary gazettes, like Eşek (Ass), routinely used animal mascots.

43 In the animal tales, as in the satirical press, making animals speak critically of the dominant system either suggested that the critique had a humorous purpose or diverted any retaliation away from a designated human subject.

44 There is considerable continuity between the tropes of classical and medieval literatures and the forms and images of modern satire. The Karagöz theatre works as one significant bridge between earlier and later genres.

45 The author who has written the most about the consumption of European fashion in the Ottoman empire is Micklewright, Nancy. See, for example, her “London, Paris, Istanbul, and Cairo: Fashion and International Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” New Perspectives on Turkey 7 (Spring 1992): 125–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Micklewright has demonstrated the prevalence of Western fashion among Istanbul's upper and even upper middle classes by the second half of the 19th century.

46 Resimli Kitab, 2:190Google Scholar, Teşrin-i evvel 1324/October 1908 A.D.

47 Kalem, 109:10Google Scholar, 6 Kanun-i sani 1326/19 January 1911 A.D.

48 For a variety of treatments of the public versus private sphere dichotomy in the analysis of women's behavior and social convention, see Keddie, Nikki and Baron, Beth, ed, Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.

49 Kalem, 53:6Google Scholar, 3 Eylül 1325/16 September 1909 A.D. In this cartoon, the fish monger says, “The women do not resemble us but they copied their styles from us.” See also, for hat satire, Kalem, 64:12, 90:14, 96:8, 109:12Google Scholar. Men, as well as women, were the targets of fashion satire as in, for example Falaka, 10:1Google Scholar (male), 26 Ağustos 1327/8 September 1911 A.D., and Falaka, 3:4 (female), 1 Ağustos 1327/14 August 1911 A.D.

50 Kalem, 126:12Google Scholar, 12 Mayis 1327/25 May 1911 A.D. Such images, showing half-and-half characters to express cultural ambiguity, are fairly common in Ottoman cartoons.

51 Satirization of women's extravagance in dress was also a well worn standard of English and French satirical gazettes. See, for example, Boehn, Max von and Fischel, Oskar, Modes and Manners of the Nineteenth Century as Represented in the Pictures and Engravings of the Time (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1909), vol. 3, 1843–1875Google Scholar; Graves, Charles L., Mr. Punch's History of Modern England (London: Cassell and Co., 1921), vol. 2, 1857–1874Google Scholar; and Ribeiro, Aileen, Fashion in the French Revolution (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988)Google Scholar.

52 Kalem, 125:14Google Scholar, 5 Mayis 1327/18 May 1911 A.D.; Kalem, 64:15Google Scholar, 19 Teşrin-i sani 1325/2 December 909 A.D.

53 On Ottoman women and the textile industry, see Quataert, Donald, “Ottoman Women, Households, nd Textile Manufacturing, 1800–1914,” in Women in Middle Eastern History, 161–76.Google Scholar

54 This paper deals only with one set of images signifying the subordination of the empire to European nterests. Perhaps an even more prevalent set of images was that showing the symbolic exploitee as a chicly dressed member of the government. Images of states embodied as women continued in the Ottoman satirical press after the fall of the empire, as strikingly illustrated on the cover of Papaǧan, 38:1Google Scholar, 7 Kanun-i sani 1341/20 January 1925 A.D., where the female is the object of a lustful “Red” Russia.

55 Kalem, 8:10Google Scholar, 9 Teşrin-i evvel 1324/22 October 1908 A.D., for example, shows two young Ottomans eyeing a fashionable young lady out for a stroll with her dog. “Don't ogle her too long,” says one dapper young man to the other, “She's Austrian!” This cartoon can be contrasted to another in Kalem, 10:7Google Scholar, 23 Terin-i evvel 1324/5 November 1908 A.D., showing Austria as a dirty old man trying to lure two nubile and traditionally dressed “girls” (probably Bosnia and Herzegovina).

56 Kalem, 23:8–9Google Scholar, 22 Kanun-i sani 1324/4 February 1909 A.D.

57 Kalem, 94:7Google Scholar, 9 Eylül 1326/22 September 1910 A.D.

58 For two such images on the boycott, see Musavver Papağan, no. 20, 19Google Scholar Kanun-i evvel 1324/1 January 1909 A.D., the female figure is Türkiye in idealized Turkish dress; and Dalkavuk, 25:1, 21 Şubat 1324/6 March 1909 A.D., a modern bourgeois female.

59 For images of woman as nation and the patriot citizen in the context of the American Revolution, see Kerber, Linda K., Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988)Google Scholar. France and the French Revolution provided the general outside model for the Ottoman revolutionary press; Ottoman litterati were often literate in French. The American Revolution, however, in much of the Middle East, stood as a classic example of the throwing off of oppressive European imperial rule.

60 Kalem, 10:1Google Scholar, 23 Teşrin-i evvel 1324/2 November 1908 A.D.

61 Lak Lak, 12:1Google Scholar, 24 Eylül 1325/7 October 1909 A.D. Lak Lak's cartoons were all drawn by the editor, Mehmed Fazli, whose impressionistic satire was aimed at social as well as political targets. The caption of this cartoon was in Ottoman and Arabic, unlike the cartoons in Kalem, which were usually in Ottoman and French.

62 Of course, in cartoons, dress is itself a caricature; and “traditional” dress is often suggestive of ethnic or national types rather than an exact copy of what “traditionally” dressed women might wear.

63 On the capitulations see Inalcik, Halil, “İmtiyazat,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, ser. 2, 3:1179–89Google Scholar.

64 For another version of a female nation, dressed in classical robes, resisting the blandishments of foreign (male) nations, see Ma'lûm, 2:1Google Scholar, 10 Kanun-i evvel 1326/23 December 1910 A.D.

65 The Iranian writer, Jalâl Al-e Ahmad (1923–69), who in the 1950s wrote a famous satire accusing the Middle East of “Westoxication,” was following a satirical tradition of portraying Westernization as analogous to catching an infectious disease.

66 See Geveze, 34:1Google Scholar, 3 Mart 1325/16 March 1909 A.D.; Kalem, 97:20Google Scholar, 30 Eylül 1326/13 October 1910 A.D.

67 On cholera as a social and moral construct in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, see Rosenberg, , The Cholera Years; and Michael Durey, The Return of the Plague, British Society and the Cholera 1831–1832 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan Press, 1979)Google Scholar. See also Panzac, Daniel, La peste dans I'Empire ottoman, 1700–1850 (Leuven: Editions Peeters, 1985)Google Scholar; and Kuhnke, La Verne, Lives at Risk: Public Health in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Comparative Studies in Health Systems and Medical Care, 24 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

68 Rosenberg, , The Cholera Years, 199–200Google Scholar, proposes that only one in seven physicians in the United States supported “germ theory” in 1866.

69 Images of death as clad enticingly, but actually corrupt and skeletal on the inside, can be traced back at least as far as the Middle Ages in art iconography used for allegorical and moralizing literature. Dandified skeletons take another form in late 19th- and early 20th-century Mexican satire. Death figures in Western art history have been male, female, and sexless. See, for example, Ariès, Philippe, The Hour of Our Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, plates between pp. 204 and 205; Mayor, A. Hyatt, Prints and People: A Social History of Printed Pictures (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972), plates 54, 55, 129, 667Google Scholar.

70 Kalem, 111:14Google Scholar, 20 Kanun-i sani 1326/2 February 1911 A.D.

71 Ibid., 112:8, 27 Kanun-i sani 1326/9 February 1911 A.D.

72 French captions are often more or less discrepant from their Ottoman counterparts. Sometimes the translations are not even close. On more than one occasion I have found a French caption that simply notes that the Ottoman is “untranslatable.”

73 A cartoon by Sedad Nuri combines the images of the pet dog, the stylish female in a big hat, and the male grim reaper, cholera, in another cartoon of enticement: Kalem, 98:8Google Scholar, 7 Teşrin-i evvel 1326/20 October 1910 A.D.

74 Ibid., 97:20, 30 Eylül 1326/13 October 1910 A.D., cholera, the last gift of the esteemed Tsar Nicholas; Geveze, 34:1, 3 Mart 1325/16 March 1909 A.D., cholera, the thief, sneaking from Istanbul with its booty.

75 Kalem, 107:10–11Google Scholar, 23 Kanun-i evvel 1326/5 January 1911 A.D.

76 The mother, as mother patriot or mother of the nation, is an important figure in Ottoman literature and satire. The idea of vatan is more often personified as a motherland than a fatherland in the cartoon space (often these female nation symbols are called “Türkiye”). Although one might argue that vatan is gendered female in Ottoman Turkish, the Arabic waṭan from which it derives is often glossed fatherland. Redhouse, James W., A Turkish and English Lexicon (Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1974 reprint)Google Scholar, 2141, does not gender vatan, choosing, rather, the gender neutral translation “homeland.”