Bu kitapta yer alan yeni kuşak tarihçilerin yazdıkları makaleler Türk tarihini sosyal tarih açısından incelemekteler. Soyadı Kanunu'nun uygulanması, Kurtuluş Savaşı'nın sosyal tarih açısından yeniden yazımı, Cumhuriyet'in ilk yıllarında aile ve ulus devletinin kurulması, taşra basını kitapta incelenen konulardan birkaçıdır.

In the past two decades the historiography of Turkey has broken free of the shackles imposed by nationalist ideology. Scholars are now exploring dimensions that previously had been declared either irrelevant or off-limits. Towards a Social History of Modern Turkey is the work of this new generation of scholars who are committed to exploring diverse aspects of Turkish history at a time when there is growing recognition that a socio-historical perspective has an important contribution to make to our understanding of the Turkish past. The authors are all concerned to explore the social dimension of one of the great changes that is common to all modern histories, namely the establishment of the nation-state. The essays in this volume are the result of a series of workshops in which scholars explored how to move beyond the bare skeleton of Ottoman and/or republican Turkish political history, and to add substance to a framework that is already well-known. Trained and employed in both North America and Turkey, this generation of scholars brings to the task a variety of disciplinary perspectives that includes history, anthropology, sociology and political science. In their essays the authors discuss both how they have tackled the challenge of writing the social history of Turkey and also their most important conclusions. As such they provide a variety of refreshing and promising perspectives on the history of modern Turkey.