Madeleine Elfenbein Writing Sample [Below is a book chapter published in Murat Ates et al., eds., Orte des Denkens – Places of Thinking (Freiburg: Verlag Karl Alber, 2016).] Trees of Liberty and Asiatic Germs: Rethinking Metaphors of Transmission in European and Ottoman Political Thought I. By the end of the nineteenth century, political thinking in the Ottoman Empire had become a deeply layered enterprise. 1 As we approach the centennial of the empire’s collapse in 1922, thinking about the Ottoman Empire continues to pose difficulties of its own. In what follows, I want to explore a few of these conceptual difficulties and reflect on how we understand, or fail to understand, the sources of the intellectual shifts that took place within the Ottoman Empire in its last century. In doing so, I want to join in the collective historiographical re-imagining of late Ottoman history that is presently underway among scholars of the Middle East, while also considering some of its broader implications. It seems to me that what these re-imaginings lead to is a new way of thinking about how ideas travel from one place to another and what happens to them when they do. The nineteenth century is often described as the birth of the global era. It is 1 I am indebted to the organizers and attendees of the “Place/s of Thinking” Conference, hosted at the University of Vienna in October, 2013, and in particular to Sophie Voegele and Karin Hostettler for their thoughtful feedback on an intermediate draft.