Class, Language, And The 'Colonial' Mindset In Süleyman Penah Efendi: Imaging Greeks And Albanians In 18th-Century Ottoman Bureaucracy

<p>This study examines Süleyman Penah Efendi’s perspectives on the Greeks of the Morea and the Albanians of the Ottoman Empire, situating his writings within broader eighteenth-century Ottoman debates on governance, identity, and imperial order. Penah Efendi’s nuanced treatment of the Orthodox Greeks, particularly the <em>kocabaşı</em> class and priests, resists essentialist categorizations of community and instead highlights class, individual conduct, and loyalty as determinants of imperial belonging.</p> <p>By contrast, his views on Albanians reveal a strikingly “civilizing” discourse, where language, commerce, and education become tools of assimilation and reform. Employing colonial metaphors and Eurocentric comparisons, Penah Efendi envisioned Albanian integration through linguistic Turkification, professional training, and enforced settlement policies. While critical of exploitation, disorder, and banditry, he framed these not as inherent ethnic flaws but as products of systemic neglect and weak administration.</p> <p>This study argues that Penah Efendi’s observations expose the Ottoman state’s dual approach: pragmatic flexibility in managing diverse subjects, yet also an emergent imperial mindset echoing contemporary colonial thought. His writings thus provide a valuable window into the interplay of social structure, cultural identity, and imperial ideology in the late Ottoman Balkans.</p>