Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2022

For almost a century, scholars of the modern Middle East have usually tried to understand the formation and history of the latter with a perspective that foregrounds the rise of nationalisms, the birth of nations, and the emergence of new states. Michael Provence's The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East is a significant challenge to this deeply rooted perspective forged within the framework of nationalism in the early twentieth century. Offering a novel outlook that exceeds the horizons of the former, Provence's book seeks to understand the making of the modern Middle East by focusing, instead of on the birth of new nations and states, on the slow demise of the old Ottoman Empire whose institutions and elite survived after the defeat in the Great War of -. Thus, Provence's book situates the emergence of the modern Middle East within the late Ottoman context as "the common legacy of the late Ottoman modernization project is second only to the colonial legacy in shaping the history of the region and its peoples" (p. ). Having noted the decisive influence of both the late Ottoman and colonial periods in the making of the modern Middle East, Provence underlines that this process should be studied with a beyond national approach since the "tendency to view the history of the region through the lens of national histories […] obscures the commonalities that were clear to all until at least the s" (p. ). One theme that intersects both the two periods and enables such an approach is the life trajectories of "the last Ottoman generation", who were the products of the late Ottoman education system and shared a sense of belonging to the empire but later turned into the military and political elites of various post-Ottoman countries in the Middle East. Tracing the life trajectories of the members of this generation, Provence's book provides a transnational and connected history of the formative period of the modern Middle East. That is to say, rather than recounting the separate histories of the colonial states of Iraq, Syria, Greater Lebanon, Transjordan, and Palestine, Provence's book highlights the common historical trajectory these countries shared and, thus, represents a significant break from the existing literature that mostly underlines ruptures in the transition from empire to nation-state, such as the First World War, the end of the Ottoman state, and the imposition of colonial rule. The book, in this respect, opens with a chapter on "Ottoman modernity in the long nineteenth century", which surveys the development of the Ottoman education and training system that raised the last Ottoman generation. Sketching the formative years of these 'Ottoman sons' coming from different regional and ethnic backgrounds, this chapter argues that the stories of the future statesmen, revolutionaries, and nation builders of the interwar Middle East begin not with the Turkish or Arab nationalism they eventually espoused, but with their transformation into self-conscious Ottoman state elite in late Ottoman schools and institutions, which inculcated them with love for, and loyalty to, the empire. The second chapter examines the wartime arrangements and post-war negotiations for the partition of Ottoman territories by Britain and France. Besides the establishment of Anglo-French colonial rule in the Middle East following the end of the Great War, the chapter also surveys how Britain and France legitimised their continued presence in the region with the League of Nations mandate system, which bore deep traces of religious and race-hierarchical theories of the time that did not qualify Muslim Arabs for independence and self-governance. In the third chapter, Provence returns to the last Ottoman generation and explores how its members coped with the defeat and subsequent developments between  and . Refuting the widespread view that many Arab officers deserted the Ottoman army during the war to join the British-sponsored revolt of Sharif Husayn and Faysal, Provence

2011

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NETSOL: New Trends in Social and Liberal Sciences, 2019

Cem Emrence’s, Remapping the Ottoman Middle East, is an ambitious effort to cultivate a new analytical framework to the field of Ottoman Studies that addresses variables of socio-economic and political diversity that are often overlooked in previous studies of the Ottoman Middle East. The application of this new analytical framework functions both as a mean of explaining the uneven development witnessed in specific regions of the Ottoman Empire and revealing multiple, alternative paths to modernity in the region. Emrence’s call to implement his multi-disciplinary, intra-empire perspective is necessary, according to the author, in order to understand the variations of historical paths in the Ottoman world. Subsequently, Emrence identifies three distinct historical paths spatially situated within the Empire: the Coast, the Interior, and the Frontier. Moreover, while focus is placed on discerning these alternative paths to modernity, Emrence can address the much larger question concerning the disposition of Ottoman rule from the eighteenth century to the Empire’s demise following the War of 1914-18 and, by extension, address the implications of the empire’s demise on Middle Eastern social constructs.

actively called for the modernization of their province. Thus, while the state certainly forced them to co-finance the water scheme, it was also locals who had called for this and other infrastructural measures and who were at times volunteering funds provided the state complemented their efforts. The last part returns to the question of mobility, discussing passports, tickets (thus taking up again the earlier theme of how to organize and limit mobility), as well as the conflicts with the Bedouin caused by imperial communications such as the telegraph and rail. The epilogue traces the development of the Aajj after the end of the Ottoman empire, and the long process it took to completely disentangle Aajj organization from Western imperial influences. Here, as elsewhere in this elegantly written and eminently readable study, the author connects infrastructural questions with new fields in the wider study of history, such as environmental history or technopolitics. He thus opens welcome conversations across regional borders. However, these conceptualizations do not always add much in terms of new perspectives or substance with regard to the history at hand. This is partly linked to the fact-not of the author's making-that he is moving in a very crowded field, as I have tried to show by mentioning just the most recent scholarship on some of the major topics. Probably as a consequence, Low at times seems to paraphrase rather closely some of the extant scholarship in Turkish, perhaps because he follows the same sources. 7 Oftentimes, it does not become clear in the text if sources are quoted from the original, from other studies or other sources which report on conversations (e.g. pp. 214f., 217f.). While he makes sure properly to show his sources, some of his debates resemble shadow-boxing. Low repeatedly argues that unnamed 'historians' claim certain matters which he then contradicts (e.g., pp. 87, 111, 308). Finally, and this is a comment on the publisher rather than the author, the lack of a bibliography means that all references are hidden in the footnotes. This makes it unnecessarily cumbersome to gain an overview of the literature used (which seems to exclude most scholarship in French and languages other than English or Turkish). These criticisms should not deter readers who will find this a very useful and analytically argued book. It makes a well-written and welcome addition to the multilingual field of studies considering the Arabian Peninsula in a global perspective.