ABSTRACT
‘Legacy’ is a tantalising idea in history, but it is difficult to trace, except in cases where a verified will and testament survives – and such documents are distress-ingly rare for empires, states and nations. Where such documents do exist, as in the case of the Ottoman Empire, they take the form of international agreements apportioning imperial assets, mainly land, and burdens, notably foreign debt, and in some cases the extraordinary rights accorded to subjects and protégés of European states under trade agreements known as capitulations. While such legacies were obviously important to post-Ottoman states, they hold little to tempt much speculation from historians. Therefore, in cases of conjecture about links between the Ottoman Empire and post-Ottoman states historians have tended to stray into the even less easily definable area of ‘heritage’, meaning supposed continuities in attitude and practice, or simply ‘the way things have been done’, from the imperial to the post-Ottoman period. Some heritage-citers have posited habits such as apathy (yavaşlık), distrust of government, bribery, disregard for the rule of law and even human trafficking. 1
