Rethinking Ottoman Education in a Transimperial Perspective: Actors, Connections, and Institutional Transformation

This article examines the establishment of Galatasaray High School in 1868 as a case of educational transfer within a transimperial setting. It combines the cultural transfer paradigm with transimperial history to analyze how educational models were reconfigured in the Ottoman context. Drawing on contemporary accounts by key actors and observers, reform-era texts, and press sources, it argues that Galatasaray cannot be understood as a simple French implant following Abdülaziz’s 1867 visit to Paris. Its emergence was rooted in earlier Ottoman reform trajectories, extending back to the medical school of 1838, and shaped by transimperial cooperation, competition, and connectivity, alongside intraimperial dynamics. Ottoman actors engaged with multiple partners, including Austrian experts, while reinterpreting external models through new educational practices. Driven by practical needs such as training personnel and translating knowledge, these processes challenge diffusionist accounts and show that Galatasaray emerged as an Ottoman reform project shaped by entangled imperial dynamics.