An Ottoman Story Until the End: Reading Fan Noli’s Post-Mediterranean Struggle in America, 1906-1922

Year 2020, Issue: 5, 121 - 144, 27.12.2020

Isa Blumi

Abstract

As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by availing themselves to the evolving Ottoman state with the hope of fusing efforts of reform with the emerging political-cultural structures of the larger world that was explicitly geared to tear the multi-ethnic Ottoman Balkans apart. By exploring the manner in which some members of the Balkans’ cultural elite adapted as their worlds transformed, this article introduces new methods of interpreting and narrating transitional periods such as those impacting men like Fan S. Noli. His itinerary itself reveals just how complex life in the Balkans and Black Sea would be during the 1878-1922 period, but not one entirely subordinate to the ethno-nationalist agenda so often associated with him.

Keywords

Albanian Nationalism, Ottoman Empire, Migration, Egypt, Diaspora, Autocephalous Orthodox Churches, United States of America

References

• Archival Sources Consulted
• Albania
• Arkiv Qendror i Shtetit, Tirana (AQSH)
• Austria
• Haus-,Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Vienna (HHStA)
• France
• Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Paris (AMAE)
• Italy
• Archivio Storico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome (ASMAE)
• Documenti Diplomatici Italiani (DDI)
• Turkey
• Başbakanlık Osmanlı Arşivi, Istanbul (BBA)
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