Trying to figure out my project

So I got started on my project early, because the proposal is due within two weeks of two psych assignments and the short essay for this class. My original topic idea was that I wanted to do something about romantic relationships across national and cultural boundaries. My initial idea was to focus on marriage mainly because this is a more concrete search term than “romantic relationships”, still I feared my idea was too broad and vague. I tend to be a overly big picture thinker and that’s a habit I’d like to get away from.

So I started to think about concentrations of transnational marriages or romantic relationships, I was still thinking about this when I went out to dinner with my friend Gemma. Gemma is a neuroscience student, and she’s brilliant, but she is not an expert in history and doesn’t know the jargon. This makes her a good person to bounce history ideas off of to make sure they make sense. I was telling her about my general idea, and then I had a more specific idea, that I don’t remember having before I said it. This actually happens to me a lot. I’ve always thought in words, back when I was little I used to narrate my life out loud. Sometimes I think by talking, rather than talk by thinking, even if I’m just talking to myself.

Anyway my idea was to explore the lives of the women in the Ottoman Imperial Harem. Their relationships to the Sultan did not often involve marriage and were often far from romantic, but they still had that contrast between personal bonds and wide cultural separation that I wanted to explore. Plus I’m kind of obsessed with the Ottomans. Aside from my fascination with Islamic art, what I find interesting is their abnormal (at least from a western perspective) power dynamics. Aside from the Sultan the empire was mostly administered and influenced by slaves or former slaves. People who were simultaneously powerful, and at the same time often powerless outsiders. What is especially interesting from a transnational history perspective is that these elite slaves were often born outside the empire or on its periphery, but slaves were used so heavily by the imperial court because they were thought to be loyal only to the empire and to the ruling family. It is surprising that these people were assumed to be loyal to an entity that owned them, and in many cases directly kidnapped them, or was allied with their kidnappers. It is even more surprising that they usually were loyal to this empire. Although perhaps those were disloyal never attained elite status.

One question I want to try and answer with this project is wether they also retained loyalty to their homelands. Their is significant evidence that they did. Murat Iyigun an economist has actually done a statistical analysis of wether a sultan with a european mother was less likely to attack Europe. He has concluded that they were, but he claims this was mostly due to the way the Sultan was raised not the actions his mother took a court. In addition at least one mother of a sultan did seem to encourage better relations between the Ottoman Empire and her native Venice.

I’m currently trying to decide on a more precise approach to the project and that brings me once again to the question of scope and scale. Should I also discuss eunuchs? How many women in the harem should I focus on? Should I focus on just women whose sons went on to become sultan? Only ones who bore the official title of Valide Sultan? What time period should I focus on?

I’m currently leaning towards a more personal approach after reading about transnational lives for this weeks tutorial. Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity, 1700- Present is honestly a delightful read. I really like stories and I want to be able toe examine some of this fascinating people in greater depth. In addition I think I want to write my short essay on “What makes a life transnational?”. The main possible issue with taking a more in depth approach with just a few individuals is that these are not for the most part people whom have had lengthy biographies written about them, so I may have difficulty finding enough detail.