From Capitulations to Unequal Treaties: The Matter of an Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Ottoman Empire

In the nineteenth century, justice in the Ottoman Empire appeared to international jurists deeply corrupted and far from the Western model. European consular jurisdictions, as in the past, solved this embarrassment in the prevalent and private interest of Western States in order to control the Mediterranean area. This perpetrated abjuration to recognize an autonomous and sovereign Ottoman administration of justice in civil or criminal cases in which foreigners were involved continued, in spite of the fact that the Porte provided excellent examples of intersection, reception and appropriation of foreign models to construct a new legal system, and to transform society. This process of “westernization” or “modernization” formally started in 1839, by the Hatt Hümayün of Gülkhâne. In order to halt the contradictions derived from the coexistence of the last (French and English) treaties of commerce of 1838 and their confirmation of privileges and consular jurisdiction with the driven effort of Ottoman juridical reforms of Tanzîmât period, in 1840 in both Turkey and Egypt, mixed traders councils composed of local and foreign traders were established. In 1840 the “commercial board” was born in Turkey and, in 1848, European Powers holding capitulary privileges negotiated the formal recognition of mixed tribunals (which were regulated in 1873 and formally inaugurated in 1875). This embarrassing situation was getting worse and accumulating contradictions when in 1856, at the Congress of Paris, the Ottoman Empire was “admitted to participate in the advantages of European Public Law and system” (art. 7 of the Treaty). Thanks to those words, the logical preamble of consular jurisdictions and their extraterritoriality (mitigated by the “monstrous” compromise of mixed tribunals), formally failed. There was a need to investigate and redefine the paradigmatic declensions of sovereignty in the relations between European Powers and the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century

What Kind of End for the Ottoman Empire?

In 19th-century Europe, the juridical texture of space changed entirely. The state came to dominate the new normative and ontological landscape, inducing homogeneity. This phenomenon was more massive, critical, and contradictory in Central and Eastern Europe, as the states there were pursuing a territorialization plan to balance the Mediterranean area. Europe’s strategy moved in step with the Westernization / modernization process of the Ottoman Empire and its attempt to survive the crisis and keep up with the first »global« competition. This article investigates the effects of the ambiguous European inclusion / exclusion policies towards the empire, highlighting the interplay of the Christian paradigm and international law. In so doing, it lays bare the functioning of Western ideas, patterns, and devices to support both the survival of the empire and the territorialization plan within its borders through the claims of nascent, unaware, and fictional nation-states. The aim is to reveal the responsibilities and wrongs of international law as premature and undefined law and to apply the appealing concept of »entanglement« to a new, more global historiography on the fall of the Ottoman Empire

Reading the crisis: legal, philosophical and literary perspectives

Almost a decade has passed since the outbreak of the economic crisis; from its original nucleus, its effects have quickly affected the social and geopolitical fields. Such wide impact and its complex implications make the crisis an object susceptible of multiple readings. The particular aim of the studies collected in this volume is to explore the impact of the crisis on law, culture and society, in order to test the depth of the problem, by comparing the analytical perspectives obtainable from legal and human sciences. The book focuses on three main issues: the crisis as a social object, in order to consider the crisis in terms of its attributing force; the problem of democracy, which is becoming an increasingly central question now, as the changes imposed by the crisis have begun to settle down; the interdisciplinary challenge that, in time of crisis, questions paradigms of knowledge, competences and methods, in order to enable an heuristic dialogue between human, social and legal sciences.Introduction / Massimo Meccarelli (pp. 9-12). -- The Crisis as a Social Object : -- Narrating the Crisis: Fictions of Finance in Contemporary British Novels / Silvana Colella (pp. 15-37). -- Social Rights in Crisis: Any Role for the Court of Justice of the EU? / Francesco Costamagna (pp. 39-64). -- Ripensare la nazione ottocentesca. Vecchi e nuovi paradigmi tra storia, diritto e globalità / Eliana Augusti (pp. 65-97). -- Ma cos'è questa crisi? / Carla Canullo (pp. 99-113). -- The Problem of Democracy : -- Defending Collective Sociality: The Oresteia at Shakespeare's Globe / Louise Owen (pp. 117-131). -- Representation of the Crisis vs Representative Democracy in Italy / Roberta Calvano (pp. 133-148). -- The Unbearable Lightness of the Freedom of Movement: An Analysis of the Relationship Between Brexit and Inmigration / Lucia Barbone, Erik Longo (pp.149-174). -- Représentation, perception de la crise et modification de la «sécurité sociale». Entre prédiction et anticipation, que signifie agir das un monde incertain? / Jean-Philipe Pierron (pp. 175-188). -- The Interdisciplinary Challenge : -- Intercultural Categories of Thought in Times of Crisis: The Challenge of Inter/Multi-discipinary Research / Flavia Stara (pp. 191-198). -- An Interdisciplinary Approach to International Law? Some Cursory Remarks / Paolo Palchetti (pp. 199-208). -- Rights in Times of Crisis: An Interdisciplinary Issue for Legal Studies / Massimo Meccarelli (pp. 209-219). -- Contributors (pp. 221-224)

The real-time multiparametric network of Campi Flegrei and Vesuvius

Volcanic processes operate over a wide range of time scale that requires different instruments and techniques to be monitored. The best approach to survey a volcanic unrest is to jointly monitor all the geophysical quantities that could vary before an eruption. The monitoring techniques are sometimes peculiar for each volcano, which has its own behavior. The simultaneous investigation of all the geophysical and geochemical parameters improves the sensibility and the understanding of any variation in the volcanic system. The Osservatorio Vesuviano is the INGV division charged of the Campi Flegrei and Vesuvius monitoring, two of the highest risk volcanic complexes in the world due to the large number of people living on or close to them. Each of them have peculiarities that increase the monitoring challenge: Campi Flegrei has high anthropic noise due to people living within its numerous craters; Vesuvius has a sharp topography that complicates the data transmission and analysis. The real time monitoring of the two areas involves several geophysical fields and the data are transmitted by a wide data-communication wired or radio infrastructure to the Monitoring Centre of Osservatorio Vesuviano: - The seismic network counts of 20 station sites in Campi Flegrei and 23 in Vesuvius equipped with velocimetric, accelerometric and infrasonic sensors. Some of them are borehole stations. - The GPS network counts of 25 stations operating at Campi Flegrei caldera and 9 stations at Vesuvius volcano. All the procedures for remote stations managing (raw data downloading, data quality control and data processing) take place automatically and the computed data are shown in the Monitoring Centre. - The mareographic network counts of 4 stations in the Campi Flegrei caldera coast and 3 close to the Vesuvius that transmit to the Monitoring Centre where the data are elaborated. - The tiltmetric network consist of 10 stations distributed around Pozzuoli harbor, the area of maximum ground uplift of Campi Flegrei, evidenced since 2005, and 7 stations distributed around the Vesuvius crater. Each tiltmetric station is also equipped with a temperature and magnetic sensor. The signals recorded are sent to the Monitoring Centre. - The 4 marine multiparametric stations installed in the Pozzuoli gulf send accelerometric, broad band, hydrophonic and GPS data to the Monitoring Centre. - The geochemical network counts of 4 multiparametric stations in the fumarolic areas of Campi Flegrei and 2 stations in the Vesuvius crater (rim and bottom) with data transmission to the Monitoring Centre. They collect soil CO2 flux, temperature gradient and environmental and meteorological parameters and transmit them directly to the Monitoring Centre. - The permanent thermal infrared surveillance network (TIRNet) is composed of 6 stations distributed among Campi Flegrei and Vesuvius. The stations acquire IR scenes at night-time of highly diffuse degassing areas. IR data are processed by an automated system of IR analysis and the temperatures values are sent to the Monitoring CentrePublishedVienna, Austria1IT. Reti di monitoraggio e sorveglianz

What Kind of End for the Ottoman Empire?

In 19th-century Europe, the juridical texture of space changed entirely. The state came to dominate the new normative and ontological landscape, inducing homogeneity. This phenomenon was more massive, critical, and contradictory in Central and Eastern Europe, as the states there were pursuing a territorialization plan to balance the Mediterranean area. Europe’s strategy moved in step with the Westernization / modernization process of the Ottoman Empire and its attempt to survive the crisis and keep up with the first »global« competition. This article investigates the effects of the ambiguous European inclusion / exclusion policies towards the empire, highlighting the interplay of the Christian paradigm and international law. In so doing, it lays bare the functioning of Western ideas, patterns, and devices to support both the survival of the empire and the territorialization plan within its borders through the claims of nascent, unaware, and fictional nation-states. The aim is to reveal the responsibilities and wrongs of international law as premature and undefined law and to apply the appealing concept of »entanglement« to a new, more global historiography on the fall of the Ottoman Empire

Le ragioni dell'›altro‹

Review of: Samim Akgönül, Minorités en Turquie, Turcs en minorité. Regards croisés sur l’altérité collective dans le contexte turc (Les cahiers du Bosphore 55), Istanbul: Isis 2010, 146 S., ISBN 978-975-428405-