Figure 1.--
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Figure 1.-- |
HBC at this times has no infornmation on historic Turkish boys' clothing. We do note that the warm Medditeranean climate of Turkey is an imprtant factors as was centuries of rule by the Ottoman Turks. After the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of the modern secular state after World War I, European fashions began to
have greater influence. We have little information on fashion trends in the 19th century. Nor do we have any information on early 20th century clothing.
Two things that one must consider when it come to boys clothing in Greece during the 1940s is that climate and economics. The climate was (and still is) very warm especially in the southern part of Greece. Turkey was also a very poor country at the time.
The Greeks, led by Alexander the Great, conquered most of the then known world and proceeded to Hellenize large areas of the easter Mediterrean.
Greece in 146 BC fell to the Romans. Large numbers of Greeks were enslaved. Many wealthy Greeks used learned Greek slaves to teach their children.
The Emperor Constantine in 330 AD moved the Capital of the Roman Empire to Constantinople, founding the Eastern Roman Empire which was to become known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium. One of Byzantium's many achievements was to transform the linguistic and cultural heritage of Ancient Greece into a vehicle for the new Christian civilization.
The image of the Empire founded by Othman in the 13th century is not a popular one in the modern mind. There are no romantic images as surround many other great empires such as those of Greece and Rome. The images that are most in the public mind are those of a war-like, uncivilized people conquering the great jewl of Christianity--Constaniople, the enslavement of Christian children, the titilating stories of harems, the asault on Christain Europe, and the supression of the Greeks in the 19th century. The geocide of the Armenian people is also often blamed on the Ottomans, although it seems more the result of the rise of Turkish nationalism and the modern secular Turish state. The image of the Ottomans is generally that of the declining Ottoman state of the 19th century when it had become the backward, coruption-ridden Sickman of Europe. This is very different than the state of the Empire at it height. Art and education flowered under the Ottomans at a time when it was many Christain kingdoms that were backwards. Much of the neagative evaluation of the Ottomans comes from the application of 20th century standards which of course is inappropriate.
Turkey in the modern era is struggling with its identity, torn between the Islamic fundamentalist revival sweeping the region and the modern secularism that Kemal Atatürk made the corner stone of the modern state during the 1920s.
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