In recent years the history of childhood has expanded dramatically in scope and sophistication, but its geographical coverage has remained heavily skewed towards the West. This volume breaks new ground by focusing on the ways in which childhood was imagined and experienced on the eastern fringes of Western Europe. The contributions that follow show that in the Balkans,
Anatolia and the Arab lands of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the influence of Western ideas about childhood was important but unevenly absorbed, and always mediated through indigenous institutions, individuals, traditions and desires. As the Ottoman Empire gave way to the nationally defined states that supplanted imperial rule, children assumed novel roles and childhood took on new significance and expectations in response to the rapidly changing realities of this turbulent time.