On silences and the Ottoman Archives

This article explores the making of the National Palaces Privy Purse Archive, which later was conjoined with the State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey (the Ottoman Archives), and investigates the silences in the Ottoman and Iraqi historiographies that were produced in this process. Building on Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s scholarship, I argue that the moment of fact assembly and the moment of fact retrieval should be highlighted in understanding historiographic shifts as well as their related silences. This article further elaborates on the archival material in the Privy Purse record group, now accessible through the State Archives of the Presidency of the Republic of Turkey in Istanbul, Turkey, and suggests ways in which the Privy Purse record group could inform Ottoman and Iraqi historiographies in the future.