Publication
Title
"Please deny these manifestly false reports" : Ottoman diplomats and the press in Belgium (1850-1914)
Author
Abstract
Similar to ruling elites in Western Europe, the Ottomans were preoccupied with foreign public opinion regarding their state. Historians have devoted attention to Ottoman state efforts at image building abroad and, to a lesser degree, related attempts to influence the European mass press. Yet, an in-depth study of this subject is lacking. This article turns to one of the prime, though largely neglected, actors in Ottoman foreign policy making: the sultan's diplomats. Through a case study of Ottoman envoys to Belgium, it demonstrates how foreign press management evolved and was adapted to shifting domestic and international political circumstances. Increasingly systematic attempts to influence Belgian newspapers can be discerned from the reign of Abdulhamid II onward. Brokers between Istanbul and liberal Belgium's thriving newspaper business, Ottoman diplomats proved essential to this development. Ultimately, however, Ottoman efforts to counter Belgian (and European) news coverage of the empire had little impact and occasionally even worked counterproductively, generating the very Orientalist images they aimed to combat in the first place.
Language
English
Source (journal)
International journal of Middle East studies. - Cambridge, 1970, currens
Publication
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2016
ISSN
0020-7438 [print]
1471-6380 [online]
DOI
10.1017/S0020743816000040
Volume/pages
48 :2 (2016) , p. 267-292
ISI
000374176200004
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
Full text (publisher's version - intranet only)
UAntwerpen
Faculty/Department
Research group
Publication type
Subject
Affiliation
Publications with a UAntwerp address
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 06.06.2016
Last edited 09.10.2023
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