Abstract:

Second Constitutional Era is an important turning point for the development of the scientific Turkish historiography. The first institutional history studies in our history started in this period and the formation of history education as a separate branch in higher education was also implemented in the same period. The Committee of Ottoman History which was established to write a perfect Ottoman history and was the first history institution in the Turkish history, has initiated a large-scale study in order to reach the sources of Ottoman history. Despite all the difficulties of the period, the resources obtained as a result of the researches carried out in archives, museums, libraries and historical buildings both at home and partially abroad were put into the service of the history by being published in the journal. For the first time in our history, a comprehensive review about the general condition of our archives and archival documents were conducted by the Committee and archival documents were used effectively in the field of historiography thanks to the classification works carried out in the institutions. Besides the documents in our own archives, Ottoman documents abroad were also examined. In this context, the Head of the Committee Abdurrahman Şeref was assigned to identify the Ottoman documents in the archives of Berlin and Vienna during the armistice period, perhaps in the most difficult conditions of our history. The tradition of regularly publishing archival documents in the journals that started in the 19th century in Europe, started with the Journal of the Committee of Ottoman History in Turkey. In 70 of the 291 articles in the Journal, archival documents that shed light on the little known aspects and gaps of the Ottoman history were published. In this article, the contributions of the Ottoman Historical Society to the field of archiving and historiography have been discussed with quantitative data and its role in publishing documents has been revealed, tanks to its policy to identify and publish the documents that are important in understanding Ottoman history.

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