Over the Borderline? Rethinking Territoriality at the Margins of Empire and Nation in the Modern Middle East (Part I) (original) (raw)
Related papers
History Compass, 2015
This is the second of two connected articles examining the evolution of historical scholarship on border-lands within the field of Middle East studies. In both articles, I pay particular attention to how historians have addressed the relationship between borderland identities and modern territorializing empires and nation-states. I argue throughout both parts that analyzing what I call the "lived experience of territori-ality" in borderland regions ought to take precedence over approaches that presume the ultimate imposition of fixed nation-state boundaries by the mid-twentieth century. The adoption of borderlands as an analytical category along these lines presents an exciting opportunity for future research in modern Middle Eastern history precisely for its malleability. Historians who take a conceptually nuanced approach to borderlands and relate their work to new scholarship on territoriality will be able to explore a range of ways to understand local as well as state experiences and practices of power and politics; sovereignty and authority; and identity and belonging. In Part I, I focused primarily on laying out a framework for conceptualizing the relationship between borderland identities and the lived experience of modern territori-ality. In Part II, I push this framework further by surveying two large themes that have defined the work of Middle East borderland historians over the last two decades-critical cartography and the visual representation of borderland identities and borderlands as sites of contestation and negotiation. In the final section , I sketch out some possibilities for future research, drawing largely on new scholarship from within Middle East studies.
Borders, Boundaries and Belonging in Post-Ottoman Space in the Interwar Period (Leiden: Brill, 2023)
Borders, Boundaries and Belonging in Post-Ottoman Space in the Interwar Period, 2023
Focusing on new nation states and mandates in post-Ottoman territories, Borders, Boundaries and Belonging in Post-Ottoman Space in the Interwar Period examines how people negotiated, imagined or ignored new state borders and how they conceived of or constructed belonging. Through investigations of border crossing, population transfer, exile and emigration, this book explores the intricacies of survival within and beyond newly imposed state borders, the exploitation of opportunities and the human cost of political partition. Contributors are Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, Leyla Amzi-Erdogdular, Amit Bein, Ebru Boyar, Kate Fleet, Onur İşçi, Liat Kozma, Brian McLaren, Nikola Minov, Eli Osheroff, Ramazan Hakkı Öztan, Michael Provence, Jordi Tejel and Peter Wien.
All Azimuth, 2019
This study aims to evaluate the emergence of the Sykes-Picot order and deconstruct its mythologization by proposing an evolutionary assessment of border understanding. This study addresses the following primary research questions: How did the interplay of domestic, regional, and international developments lay the groundwork for the formation of the Sykes-Picot territorial order? How was the administrative structure and regional divisions before the Sykes-Picot agreement and to which border categorizations did these structures correspond? Was the Sykes-Picot agreement the only international intervention that affected the borders of the region or were there other international interventions before the Sykes-Picot agreement? This study argues that the history of Middle Eastern border formation is not only an international one but also involves many aspects that have not widely been taken into consideration. In doing so, this paper adopts a critical historical perspective to analyze the evolution of Middle Eastern borders. This paper proposes a three-tracked evolutionary analytical framework (frontiers, boundaries, borders) to analyze the emergence of borders and applies it to the emergence of Ottoman territoriality. This study concludes that the Sykes-Picot agreement is only one, complementary part of a long process in the emergence of Middle Eastern geopolitics.
2019
In the last few years, an increasing number of scholars have pointed to the striking paradox of the first wave of globalisation in the Middle East and beyond. While the globe witnessed an unprecedented intensification of the movement of people, goods, diseases, and ideas, states also adopted themselves by developing more or less effective techniques for monitoring and controlling such movements. Border areas constitute a privileged site to observe this process of how globalizing practices interacted with more exclusivist agendas. Middle Eastern states, for one, transformed the physical and social landscape in border areas by creating border posts and implementing shared practices between border authorities, among which was the introduction of symbolic as well as material tools such as passports, and border crossing cards. Taking its cue from scholarship that suggests to interpret the “centre” through the lens of the “periphery”, this conference seeks to explore to what extent historians can also account for the first wave of globalization in the Middle East through a careful observation of how border areas and its populations found themselves at the centre of influence, movements and tensions on regional and global levels. While we do not dismiss the centrality of diplomacy and high-level geostrategic dynamics in the resolution of international conflicts and the shaping of economic policies, we argue for the necessity of linking different scales of analysis as well as the roles played by non-state actors in those processes in order to better understand the emergence of the modern Middle East in the interwar years.
Perspectives on The Politics of Borders and Belonging, Martello Paper Series, 2017
The relationship between borders and belonging seems, prima facie, to be a fairly straightforward one: the existence of a border separates those living on either side of it into different groups that have different histories, identities, and objectives. This relationship between borders and belonging fundamentally tethers the physical demarcation of space to the production of differing identity groups, giving great salience to these concepts in the governance of borderlands, where more mainstream understandings, such as those found within International Relations theory, equate governance with the power of the state and its control over territory (Barnett and Duvall 2005, 2). However, as discussions and presentations at the conference made abundantly clear, this simply is not the case, particularly surrounding questions of identity. Reframing the connection between governance, power, agency, and geographic space is necessary to better understand the relationship between borders and identities.
Diyâr, Vol. 4, No.2, pp. 311-314, 2023
Almost 30 years after the collapse of Ottoman sovereignty in the Balkans following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, British journalist Henry N. Brailsford published his book entitled Macedonia: Its Races and Their Future. In his book, Brailsford narrates a conversation he had with a wealthy peasant at Monastir marketplace. When Brailsford asked whether his village was Greek or Bulgarian, the peasant replied 'Well, it is Bulgarian now, but it was Greek four years ago.' Shocked by the peasant's answer, he questioned how such a miracle happened. The peasant quite calmly told the story how the Greeks held the village by contributing to the salary of the teacher but never appointing a priest. He continued by explaining that when the Bulgarians heard this, they took on the teacher's salary and appointed a priest, thus turning the village Bulgarian. 2 Few anecdotes explain the fragility, obscurity, and ambiguity of the borders emerged in the post-Ottoman territories in the Balkans and elsewhere. The years following the World War I did not only lead to the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire but also witnessed the emergence of new states with their borders that took years to adjust and adapt to the new junctures. However, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, particularly in the Middle East, did not happen overnight. On the contrary, existing social, economic, and political relationships were transformed but continued to exist for decades. At this point, the volume edited by Jordi Tejel and Ramazan Hakkı Öztan enters the stage. The term 'regimes of mobility' entered the lexicon relatively recently, thanks to Ronen Shamir, but began to occupy an even more crucial place in the literature since the publication of the article by Nina G. Schiller and Noel B. Salazar. 3 Within this framework, the volume offers important insights into the regimes of mobility and border-making processes in the Middle East following the World War I until 1946, which transformed the region from a borderless empire into bordered nation-states.