ABSTRACT
In Ottoman history a new definition of the object of study is in order, since the present paradigm is characterized by an inability to integrate - both in structure and in time - its various areas of concentration. Its problematic confines it to a dichotomous temporalization of Ottoman history, consonant with the implicit theorizations underpinning historical research. A hybrid institutionalist functionalism on the one hand, and a crude modernization perspective on the other, provide the framework for most present research in Ottoman history. Our attempt in the following section will be to advance a totalizing framework, seeking to integrate both the diverse elements of the structure into an intelligible whole, and to bring together the two disjointed temporalities of the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries by means of a periodization centered on the concept of peripheralization.
