A rugged borderland of the Empire: the Rhodopean district of Rupçoz in the Late Ottoman Period (1878-1908)

This dissertation examines a Rhodopean district of the Ottoman Empire which was located in the Ottoman-Bulgarian borderland between 1878 and 1908. Focusing on the Rhodope Resistance and the Republic of Tımraş, it investigates the agency of the local actors, particularly the Pomaks, in the making of the boundary. Based on Ottoman and British archival documents, contemporary travel accounts, newspapers, and ethnographic studies, this dissertation explores the transformation caused by the emergence of the border and its social, economic, and cultural effects on the inhabitants of Rupçoz. By combining borderland studies with social history, this research goes beyond nationalistic approaches used in explaining local resistance movements in the Balkans and aims to reveal the power dynamics and the complex relationships between different communities in the region. It asserts that, specifically for the Pomaks, security concerns, economic and commercial interests, and local power dynamics were more important than ethnic concerns. It challenges the idea that the borders were delimited only by politicians. Instead, it argues that both Muslim and Christian populations of the borderland had agency in the formation of the border. Contrary to the literature which demonstrates the Muslims in the Balkans as a uniform group of people who were the victims of the Bulgarian/Macedonian "brutality," it suggests a complex network of relations that maintained the rural hierarchy between the oppressor and the oppressed.