Shattered Dreams of Revolution: From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire
Der Matossian reads the 1908 Ottoman revolution as a study in contradictions: a modernizing restoration of constitutional rule that nonetheless opened ethnic, religious and political fault lines. He follows three groups (Arabs, Armenians and Jews) whose expectations of inclusion turned to disillusion once the post-revolutionary celebrations ended. He argues the failure was built into the revolution: the revolutionaries were never wholeheartedly committed to constitutionalism, and neither they nor the empire's ethnic groups would compromise on a new political framework. Drawn from Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, Arabic, Hebrew and Ladino sources. Winner of the Society for Armenian Studies Outstanding Book Award.