Dr. Ethan Menchinger, an adjunct professor in the history department at Niagara University, has been awarded a two-year research scholarship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation for a project on the history of the Ottoman Empire. His project, which began this month, explores “Ottoman exceptionalism," a set of beliefs and myths that people in that empire held, including that God had specially blessed the Ottoman sultans; that their empire was better than any other and would play a unique role in history; and that it would last until the end of time on earth. The grant will result in a book on the topic.
“I'm interested in ideas and politics as a historian, and the project, in a way, is about how states ‘think’ about themselves,” Dr. Menchinger said. “It is about the myths they create and, quite often, the unique status they claim. This wasn't just something that happened in the Ottoman Empire, of course. Other empires in the past and many states today spin such myths about their special role or destiny in the world, from China and Japan to Russia and the United States. The project will show us how such a process of myth-making happened in one place, the Ottoman Empire, but hopefully also shed sidelights on how and why it occurs elsewhere.”
Dr. Menchinger is the author of “The First of the Modern Ottomans: the Intellectual History of Ahmed Vasif,” and “A Summary of Admonitions: a Chronicle of the 1768-1774 Russian-Ottoman War,” a translation of the Turkish chronicle of Ahmed Resmi Efendi. He is also co-editor of “Ottoman War and Peace: Studies in Honor of Virginia H. Aksan,” and has published articles in the Journal of the History of Ideas, the Journal of Ottoman Studies, the Wiley-Blackwell History of Islam, the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Journal of Islamic Studies.
Dr. Menchinger has a Ph.D. in Near and Middle Eastern studies from the University of Michigan. He has received fellowships from the U.S. State Department, the American Research Institute in Turkey, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.