In the late Ottoman Empire, efforts to deconstruct Western supremacism often focused on local subjects of the Great Powers that did not meet their standards of assumed superior qualities. One group in particular that received much attention was Austrian subjects engaging in prostitution and human trafficking. Highlighting these subjects served to erode notions of European female superior qualities, especially as teachers, house instructors, and nannies. Diplomatic struggles, especially between the Habsburg and Ottoman authorities, reveal a lack of strategy to effectively counter the vaining of imperial prestige.

Contextualizing the “unraveling” of the Thalassocentric order in the “Age of Anger” (Pankaj Mishra), I examine the Ottoman elites’ “reverse Orientalism” (Erdal Kaynar), the endemic “economies of violence” (Tolga Esmer), and most especially the process of marginalization of some groups of Europeans that paved the way to deconstructing the Europeanization paradigm all together. I claim that unlike some other world regions, Eastern Mediterranean urban society did not bring forth an outright autochthonous intellectual rejection of the West, as it was too closely intertwined with it. There were other forms of rejections though. This was on the one hand the endemic violence in the countryside that threatened material possessions and the well-being of foreigners. Moreover, intercommunal violence could target foreigners and especially consuls, as became evident in the St. George’s Day riots of 1876. Whereas the success of such violence was limited, European dominance in the Eastern Mediterranean was not so much challenged but deconstructed. My example of such a process is the Ottoman campaign targeting the reputation of European women on moral grounds, which provokes the European-led campaigns against the “white slave trade.” Finally, following the moral erosion of the dream of the port cities pertaining to Europe, I trace the steps of their violent disassociation from the Thalassocentric order and the subsequent steps of bringing them into a nation-state order.