Possessors and Possessed: Museums, Archaeology, and the Visualization of History in the Late Ottoman Empire

Possessors and Possessed analyzes how and why museums—characteristically Western institutions—emerged in the late—nineteenth—century Ottoman Empire. Shaw argues that, rather than directly emulating post—Enlightenment museums of Western Europe, Ottoman elites produced categories of collection and modes of display appropriate to framing a new identity for the empire in the modern era. In contrast to late—nineteenth—century Euro—American museums, which utilized organizational schema based on p...