THE MILLET SYSTEM AND THE CHALLENGE OF OTHER CONFESSIONAL MODELS, 1856-1865

Abstract

The aim of this article on the interaction of various confessional models is to illustrate interimperial rivalry in the matter of religious freedoms by focusing on the institutionalization of the Ottoman Armenian and Jewish millets in the period following the Crimean War and the promulgation of the 1856 Reform Decree in the Ottoman Empire, which granted equality to all subjects of the Sultan before the law. The article shows how this institutionalization and regulation of religious communities faced the challenge of other confessional models developed outside the Ottoman Empire and how the Crimean War crystallized a process that had already started in decades prior to the promulgation of the 1856 Edict. While prioritizing the influence of the Jewish consistorial model of France and French constitutionalism on the Ottomans, this essay also takes into consideration how the Ottoman and Russian empires interacted with one another as regional competing powers when centralizing their regimes of faiths in the nineteenth century. The cross-imperial case study of Jews and Armenians also illustrates the global impact of Napoleonic codes of which the regime des cultes was an important component. In that respect, the article exemplifies the extent to which religious communities became important human channels, consciously or unconsciously, that spread the Napoleonic confessional model beyond the French territory. It also shows the interaction of various Islamic contexts (Ottoman, Egyptian, and Algerian) in the governance strategy of the non-Muslims.