At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was composed of a patchwork of different polities. In the aftermath of the early nineteenth-century Napoleonic wars (1803–1815), the Ottoman state began to expand its control over its hinterlands. The violent centralization by three succeeding sultans between 1839 and 1876 might be compared to the centralization efforts of Germany, France, and Italy. In each of these cases, independent or semi-independent principalities were seized by the expanding power centers of Berlin, Paris, and the Piedmont. The processes that unfolded across Eurasia bore striking similarities due to three technologies. These technologies – firearms, steamboats, and the telegraph – were used to centralize Ottoman authority in the mountains. Through these technologies, the Ottoman state was able to first conquer and then, over the course of decades, entrench state rule in areas that had hitherto been autonomous. From the point of view of the inhabitants of highlands, this period of centralization or reordering (Tanzimat) represented nothing short of a violent conquest by the state. The Ottoman conquest of the mountains laid the groundwork for subsequent violence by dividing mountain people against each other.

This essay explores Frederick Douglass’s lifelong engagement with science and technology. In line with other historians, it argues that while Douglass mounted a decades-long critique of scientific racism, he often reified negative racial stereotypes when repurposing racial science for integrationist ends. The essay also highlights Douglass’s emphasis on the liberatory potential of new technologies like steamboats, the telegraph, and photography. In an age enthralled with science and technology, Douglass framed technology’s emancipatory potential as an antidote to antiblack scientific racism. In doing so, he refused to allow scientific knowledge, vis-à-vis scientific racism, to be viewed primarily as a tool for black oppression and instead cast science as a source of black liberation.