Dual-Despotisms: Resisting Internationally and Domestically

• In Event: Theorizing Resistance, Rebellion, and Refusal

Abstract

What is the relationship between domestic and international despotisms in the liberal world order? Does the power imbalance in the world contribute to the unfreedom of citizens of countries that rank ‘lower’ in the hierarchies of wealth and power? Are states that face domination on the international scale also more likely to dominate their own citizenry? And conversely, do states that dominate others provide more freedom and security to their own citizens? While these questions have been theorized upon by some strands of political thought, the viewpoints of the oppressed citizens tend to get overlooked. In order to re-evaluate the relationship between the domestic and the international, especially in the Global South, I suggest reading this dynamic through the lens of inclusion: the countries of the Global South are not fully included in the world system as equal players, and in many cases, they fail to create the types of inclusive citizenship that many countries in the Global North (correctly or incorrectly) boast of having and sustaining. I argue that we should reframe the problem of inclusion at dual scales: not simply as inclusion in the international hierarchy nor as domestic inclusion, but as the intersection and inextricability of the two. Inclusion refers both to the inclusion of all states, powerful or not, in the world system equally, and to the inclusion of the many peoples in each of these states as equal citizens in the polity itself. Fighting for both of these inclusions, which can overlap and at times clash, requires resisting dual despotisms —international and domestic— on the part of citizens and dissidents in the Global South. When confronted with domestic despotism and international despotism simultaneously, what pathways toward equality, freedom, and reform can colonized intellectuals pave? How does the pressure of dual despotisms constrain, structure, or enable the political thought of intellectuals who wish to imagine a future beyond both? In this paper, I look for answers to these questions through the Ottoman archives. The first two sections present an overview of theories of despotism from Enlightenment thinkers and republican and postcolonial thought, presenting their contributions and shortcomings. The third section makes a case for why the Ottoman Empire presents an interesting case for this theory: it is helpful in understanding the contemporary significance of this dynamic, because it is more similar to a contemporary context. In many colonial contexts, the domestic despotism was in the same direction as the global despotism: colonization meant the direct rule of international oppressors in foreign land. The unique status of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century is what makes it both forerunner and prefiguration of contemporary politics of postcolonial states: as victims of global despotism, yet also governments that have produced their own domestic despotism, which are related but distinct from one another. The final section looks at the writings of Ottoman dissidents, who recognized this dynamic and produced a double-pronged theory of resistance, both against the Ottoman dynasty and against European colonialism.

Author

• Merisa B. Sahin, University of Michigan