History always has an additional stage of appeal – in memory of Mehmet Genç Hodja

Historiography is a far more difficult craft than is supposed. Even if you devote your life to examining archival documents, even if you possess an exceptional talent in this field that no one else has, even if you make an extraordinary effort to examine these documents with the most meticulous puritanical ethic, there are other factors you have to wrestle with. A story you are bound to in looking at history, a holistic point of view, an ideology can often become your greatest obstacle. In the end, it is no trouble at all to turn all the documents you have reached, managed to read and analyze into materials that serve, and flow toward, a grand story that you have draped over history, a story that perhaps never existed in history at all, perhaps one entirely attributed to it from today, and to squander them there.

Looking at history accompanied by a certain story attributed to it from today undoubtedly determines your view of history and your vision of history. If you see history as consisting of class struggles, you will interpret all the documents, all the details, even the smallest event, as complements of this master story. If you see it as the story of a nation, then again you will find the past lives of everyone else worthy of note in accordance with the place and role they occupy in relation to that nation.

Your story determines how you see history and how you perceive it. Moreover, this is not a problem that can be easily overcome. For what directs us to history is always a question of today, a problem of today. That is why history is rewritten at every moment, and according to our present interests we select an event in the past, bring it to the present, make that event part of today's quarrel and start it anew. Thus, in a sense, no page in history is ever completely closed, and a final verdict on a matter is never completely given. There is always an additional appeal, an additional stage of cassation, for historical events.

That is why the debate over whether history is a positive science, another kind of knowledge absolutely necessary for human beings, or an occasion for drawing lessons also stands somewhere, waiting to be reopened at any time. Perhaps the most important thing that can help us overcome, to some extent, this difficulty of ours in the face of history is to be aware and conscious of this infirmity of ours.

Historians like Mehmet Genç are among the exceptional examples who stand out for their awareness of this infirmity. The hesitancy, that indecisiveness, that kept him from finishing his thesis stems, in my view, in part from his having discovered that infirmity we have as human beings in the face of history.

Of course, long before this discovery about our fundamental-ontological position, he had also discovered other ailments prevalent in the academic world. As I have said before, he began his work by seeing, from his very first studies, how hastily attributed a story was behind one of the theses current in the field of Ottoman historiography, namely the thesis that Ottoman economy and industry began to dissolve and collapse from the 16th century onward in the face of a developing West, and by refuting it.

On the contrary, in light of the documents he found, he showed that the Ottomans successfully resisted the developing Western industry to the very end and continued to stand. According to this, Europe is advancing rapidly but the Ottoman state is shrinking very slowly.

The Ottomans continued to rule vast territories in Europe, which they had entered in 1350, until the beginning of the 20th century, and the population of most of the lands they ruled was Non-Muslim. That is, they were Christians, the co-religionists of the developing, advancing Europe. On this point alone, a serious confrontation with the question of the mosaic society and with orientalist theses could take place. While calling us to think about what kind of provocative role the torches of nationalism lit by this might have played for these Christian subjects, Mehmet Genç lays out all the subtleties of historical sociology.

Despite these provocations, while the Ottoman state was coping with this problem until the beginning of the 20th century, its industry and economy were not in a rapid decline and collapse as has been supposed. Mehmet Genç demonstrates this with his historical-sociological studies and his documents. He records this as a great success of the Ottoman state, and among the most important factors in this success he counts its having an elite stratum operating on high meritocratic principles in accordance with the glorious verse concerning "entrusting the trust to those worthy of it," and the strength of solidarity.

In fact, Mehmet Genç entered the archives under the influence of the current stories, theses and claims about the Ottomans. However much he interpreted and construed the documents he reached and read in the archive, he could not make them fit these current stories. Thus, from the earliest stages, he experienced a kind of discovery, indeed a more comprehensive enlightenment, that would affect all his later historiography. And in order not to be exposed to an influence that could distort his interest in history, he carried out his studies keeping away from the current. But was it not precisely the darkness of the current that gave him this enlightening discovery in those dusty archives?

Unfortunately, Mehmet Genç's meticulousness also put a brake on his working more and producing more works that could be drawn upon. Despite this paradox between this meticulousness, which inspires a tremendous sense of respect and exemplarity, and the quantity of his works, his work titled "State and Economy in the Ottoman Empire" alone is enough to exalt his name and to make it permanent among the most distinguished figures of Turkish historiography and historical sociology.