Ottoman Women during World War I: Everyday Experiences, Politics, and Conflict
Cambridge University Press, 11/9/2017
EAN 9781107198906, ISBN10: 1107198909
Hardcover, 290 pages, 23.5 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
During war time, the everyday experiences of ordinary people - and especially women - are frequently obscured by elite military and social analysis. In this pioneering study, Elif Mahir Metinsoy focuses on the lives of ordinary Muslim women living in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. It reveals not only their wartime problems, but also those of everyday life on the Ottoman home front. It questions the existing literature's excessive focus on the Ottoman middle-class, using new archive sources such as women's petitions to extend the scope of Ottoman-Turkish women's history. Free from academic jargon, and supported by original illustrations and maps, it will appeal to researchers of gender history, Middle Eastern and social history. By showing women's resistance to war mobilization, wartime work life and the everyday struggles which shaped state politics, Mahir Metinsoy allows readers to draw intriguing comparisons between the past and the current events of today's Middle East.
List of illustrations
List of maps
List of tables
Acknowledgements
Chronology
List of abbreviations and archive references
Glossary
Introduction
Part I. The Home Front
1. Women in Europe and the United States
2. The Ottoman home front
Part II. Women's Negotiation of Wartime Social Policies
3. Hunger and shortages
4. Monetary assistance for soldiers' families
5. The housing problem
6. Motherhood
Part III. Women and Working Life
7. Wartime work opportunities and restrictions
8. Working women's problems
Part IV. Women's Resistance to War Mobilization
9. Forced labor and overtaxation
10. Discontent with Conscription
11. State control of morality and marriage
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.