The History of Imperial Politics and the Politics of Imperial History

Abstract

This article constitutes a discourse of the essence of the empire, and on ensuing contradictions in what otherwise had been a commonly experienced history by Turks and Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. This article is a moment of reflection on the author’s paradigm of empire, based on his academic research and diplomatic experience. The article addresses three questions: 1) What are empires and what are not, 2) Contradictions in the common history of Muslims/Turks and Armenians and possible explanations for these contradictions, 3) The fate of empires in international politics today. The author’s empire paradigm to these three questions is motivated by two main considerations: (1) How can we explain the fundamental differences between the opposing histories of empires and peoples subject to empires? (2) On an intellectual and scientific level, how can we contribute to efforts that can move us closer to a more thorough history from which we could draw some lessons? Historical discourse shows that differences will always remain, but even these differences should be aimed at enriching our knowledge and perspectives, and not at ignoring, obscuring or otherwise ignoring aspects of history itself. Contemporary interest in such comparative research goes beyond the methodologies that support the social sciences and the integrity of the profession of historian or other scholars of history.