The Crimean Tatars: The Diaspora Experience and the Forging of a Nation

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BRILL, Jan 1, 2001 - History - 488 pages
Taking as its starting point the ethnogenesis of this ethnic group during the Mongol period (13th century), this volume traces their history through Islam, the Ottoman and the Russian Empires (15th and 17th century). The author discusses how Islam, Russian colonial policies and indigenous national movements shaped the collective identity of this victimized ethnic group. Part two deals with the role of forced migration during the Russian colonial period, Soviet nation-building policies and ethnic cleansing in shaping this people's modern national identity. This work therefore also has wider applications "for those dealing with the construction of diasporic identities," Taking a comparative approach, it traces the formation of Crimean Tatar diasporas in the Ottoman Balkans, Republican Turkey, and Soviet Central Asia (from 1944). A theme which emerges through the work is the gradual construction of the Crimea as a national homeland by its indigenous Tatar population. It ends with a discussion of the post-Soviet repatriation of the Crimean Tatars to their Russified homeland and the social and identity problems involved.
 

Contents

Introduction The Crimean Tatars as a Case Study
1
Chapter Two Dar alIslam The Crimean Tatars from
39
Chapter Three The Pearl in the Tsars Crown
73
Chapter Four Dispossession The Loss of the Crimean
111
Chapter Five Dar alHarb The 19th Century Crimean
139
Chapter Six Signs and Portents The Tatars of the Crimea
172
Chapter Seven Ak Toprak The Formation of the Crimean
196
Chapter Eight The Great Retreat The Formation of
227
Chapter Nine Yeşil Ada The Construction of Tatar
279
Chapter Ten Vatan The Construction of the Crimean
301
Chapter Eleven Soviet Homeland The Nationalization
334
Chapter Twelve Sürgün The Crimean Tatar Exile
374
Chapter Thirteen Return The PostSoviet Crimean Tatar
411
Bibliography
465
Index 485
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About the author (2001)

Brian G. Williams, Ph.D. (1999), in Middle Eastern and Central Asian History, University of Wisconsin, is Lecturer in Middle Eastern History, University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies.

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