How are historians and social scientists to understand the emergence, the multiplicity, and the mutability of collective memories of the Ottoman Empire in the political formations that succeeded it? With contributions focussing on several of the nation-states whose peoples once were united under the aegis of Ottoman suzerainty, this volume proposes new theoretical approaches to the experience and transmission of the past through time. Developing the concept of topology, contributors explore collective memories of Ottoman identity and post-Ottoman state formation in a contemporary epoch that, echoing late modernity, we might term “late nationalism”.

Nicolas Argenti is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Brunel University. He is the author of The Intestines of the State: Youth, Violence, and Belated Histories in the Cameroon Grassfields (2007) and coeditor of several collections, including (with Katharina Schramm) Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission (2010).

“This outstanding collection shows us that even after imperial borders disappear, the legacy of empire lives on in the intimate spaces of affect, emotion, gesture, and memory. The focus on the “post-Ottoman” is a challenge to definitions of the postcolonial that limit it to Western European empires. This makes the book essential reading not only in Middle Eastern and Balkan Studies but also for scholars who wish to think more broadly about imperial half-lives.” • Rebecca Bryant, Utrecht University

“This highly original volume studies the post-Ottoman condition in terms of how time is experienced socially, cosmologically, and experientially. It will be a crucial reference not only for studies of post-Ottoman geographies, but also for the comparative and conceptual anthropology of temporality.” • Yael Navaro, University of Cambridge