Report
On April 3, 2023, the Tobunken Seminar "The Ottoman Postal System: An Infrastructural History" was held at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia. Dr. Koh Choon Hwee of the University of California, Los Angeles, gave a lecture on the Ottoman postal system, based on her book in preparation for publication. Dr. Koh energetically made a 168-slide presentation on the Ottoman postal system, elucidating its transformation from an exclusive system for government use to a public service catering to common subjects. During the Q&A session, a lively discussion ensued, with questions about why the change occurred in the early nineteenth century, the transition from oral to written transmission of orders, and others. In addition to the seven in-person participants there were 13 online participants.
Date and time: April 3, 2023 (Mon), 15:30〜17:00
Venue： Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, 2nd Meeting Room (302)／Zoom
Speaker： Koh Choon Hwee (UCLA)
Title： The Ottoman Postal System: An Infrastructural History
Chair： Jun Akiba (IASA, U Tokyo)
Lecture Abstracte：
Like its Roman and Mongol predecessors, the horse-run Ottoman postal system was a sprawling infrastructure essential for everyday imperial affairs. Unlike them, however, it left behind a sea of paper documentation that tracked its mundane operations and traced its strategic reforms. Based on this uniquely rich archive, this book project follows eight small-scale actors across its chapters—The Courier, The Decree, The Bookkeeper, The Postmaster, The Villager, The Tatar, The Credit Voucher, and The Horse. It offers a history of the Ottoman Empire as a single, meaningful unit, in stark contrast to the fragmented landscape today of its more than thirty-five successor nation-states. This is a story about the lands from Belgrade to Baghdad, Crimea to Cairo, circa 1600 to 1900––a vast area once home to a united infrastructure that brought together diverse imperial subjects to serve a now forgotten Ottoman social order.
*This seminar is supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant No. 20H01322.