A Reluctant Observer Between Two Empires? The Travels of the Botanist Carl Haussknecht to the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia (co-authored with Stefan Knost) Christine Kämpfer

A Reluctant Observer Between Two Empires? The Travels of the Botanist Carl Haussknecht to the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia (co-authored with Stefan Knost) Christine Kämpfer https://www.academia.edu/86335700/A_Reluctant_Observer_Between_Two_Empires_The_Travels_of_the_Botanist_Carl_Haussknecht_to_the_Ottoman_Empire_and_Qajar_Persia_co_authored_with_Stefan_Knost_ 2022, On the Way to the "(Un)Known"? The Ottoman Empire in Travelogues (c. 1450-1900) The regions of West Asia and North Africa, making up the so-called “Orient” (as a mid-nineteenth century traveler would have called it), have ever since been a destination for European travelers from various backgrounds. A particularly interesting decade was the 1860s, a period marked by major developments in the policies of the two main regional powers – the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia. To counter the intensifying European domination, the two empires engaged in several reforms aiming at developing a stronger, more centralized state structure. At the same time, both empires accelerated integration into the globalized world economy, with some regions being better integrated through modern means of transport and a developing export-oriented cash crop economy, and others remaining peripheral. It was in exactly this decade that a young German botanist named Carl Haussknecht (1838–1903) set out on a botanical expedition leading him through both the Ottoman Empire and Qajar Persia. On his way he observed the empires’ endeavors to negotiate their place in the newly globalized world system. Being a scientist, Haussknecht proved to be a rather unusual type of traveler, crossing the boundaries of disciplines – not just collecting plants but also impressions and snapshots of the places he found himself in. In these foreign countries Haussknecht negotiated his own identity, and the strategies he applied are particularly reflected in his encounters with “otherness,” which this article will discuss, drawing from the text corpus of his unpublished travel diaries.