Project description
The hidden legacy of Ottoman slavery
For centuries, Black women were enslaved in the Ottoman Empire, often forced into domestic labour. After the Empire’s collapse in 1922, their descendants, now known as Afro-Turks, became citizens of the Turkish Republic. Despite their historical presence, the legacy of Ottoman slavery remains overlooked in both global and Turkish historiographies, with the Afro-Turk community facing daily microaggressions. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the LERSiT project seeks to change this by investigating the erasure of domestic slavery in Ottoman history and its lasting impact on Turkish identity. By exploring archival materials and creating a visual digital project, LERSiT aims to shed light on these overlooked histories, expanding our understanding of racial and gendered oppression and its connection to global slavery patterns.
Objective
Throughout the nineteenth century, slavery in the Ottoman Empire relied heavily on Black female domestic labor. After the dissolution of the Empire (1922), the descendants of these enslaved Africans remained in the region and eventually became citizens of the Turkish Republic, identifying as Afro-Turks. Despite the significant historical presence, Ottoman slavery is often overlooked in global slavery studies and mainstream Turkish historiography, and today, the Afro-Turk community faces various forms of microaggressions on a daily basis. However, the exclusion of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) from studies on the legacies of slavery is not just a matter of geography, nor is the neglect of the history of slavery in Turkey and other countries in the region accidental. Instead, it reflects a larger global trend: the long-standing systemic marginalization of gendered domestic work from analyses of the development of capitalism and labor studies. Accordingly, this research has three main objectives: (1) to investigate the erasure of domestic slavery in Ottoman history and its impact on Turkish identity and Afro-Turks’ experiences; (2) to expand the sociological analysis through late Ottoman archival materials, tracing racial ideologies from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic; and (3) to disseminate this scholarship through a complementary visual digital project investigating the urban and rural sites that bear the mark of this history in the region. By examining the history of Ottoman slavery and its effects on contemporary Turkey, this project aims to create a framework that highlights how global patterns of gender oppression and racialized enslavement are interconnected. In doing so, LERSiT will highlight historical contexts often overlooked in studies of colonialism and slavery, thus broadening our understanding of historical and racial formation theories.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- social sciences law human rights human rights violations human trafficking
- social sciences sociology ideologies
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2024-PF-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
WC1H OXG London
United Kingdom
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