
Mary Neuburger, “The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria (Cornell UP, 2004)
New Books in Eastern European Studies
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The Millet and the Fez
I was surprised reading your book to learn that the millet is fairly recent adaptation. At least as I understood it from the book, it was not something the Ottomans had set up in 1453. But what scholars have uncovered is although there was the head of the millet appointed in Istanbul from the get-go, they really didn't have power over the entire empire. And then on the ground too, there was self rule by the various Christian groups, but it was much more local in ad hoc.
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