- Yemen, Nationalism, Middle East Studies, Migration Studies, International Political Economy, Historiography, and 64 morePolitical Violence and Terrorism, Empire, Identity politics, Borders and Borderlands, Egypt, Ottoman Balkans, State Formation, Ottoman Empire, Western Balkans, Albanian Studies, Modern Middle East History, Authoritarianism, Sectarianism, Austro-Hungarian History, Balkans, Albania, Kosovo, Arabian Peninsula, Red Sea, Migration, Islamic world, Modern South East Asia, Diaspora, History, Anthropology, Sociology, International Relations, Human Rights, Cultural History, Social History, Migration, Intellectual History, Colonialism, Imperialism, Ottoman History, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Lebanon, Ottoman Studies, Middle East History, Balkan History, Early modern Ottoman History, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Political Science, Islamic Studies, Balkan Studies, Late Ottoman Period, Religion, Post-Colonialism, Talal Asad, South China Sea, Historical Sociology, Louis Althusser, Contentious Politics, Middle East Politics, Zanzibar, Indian Ocean World, Middle Eastern Studies, Swahili Coast, Islamic History, Islam in Africa, Horn of Africa, Yemen (History), Dutch East India Company, Southeast Asian history, Islam in the Southeast Asia, and Jean François Bayartedit
This book examines the role of imperial narratives of multinationalism as alternative ideologies to nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East from the revolutions of 1848 up to the defeat and subsequent... more
This book examines the role of imperial narratives of multinationalism as alternative ideologies to nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East from the revolutions of 1848 up to the defeat and subsequent downfall of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires in 1918. During this period, both empires struggled against a rising tide of nationalism to legitimize their own diversity of ethnicities, languages and religions. Contributors scrutinize the various narratives of identity that they developed, supported, encouraged or unwittingly created and left behind for posterity as they tried to keep up with the changing political realities of modernity.
Beyond simplified notions of enforced harmony or dynamic dissonance, this book aims at a more polyphonic analysis of the various voices of Habsburg and Ottoman multinationalism: from the imperial centres and in the closest proximity to sovereigns, to provinces and minorities, among intellectuals and state servants, through novels and newspapers. Combining insights from history, literary studies and political sciences, it further explores the lasting legacy of the empires in post-imperial narratives of loss, nostalgia, hope and redemption. It shows why the two dynasties keep haunting the twenty-first century with fears and promises of conflict, coexistence, and reborn greatness.
Beyond simplified notions of enforced harmony or dynamic dissonance, this book aims at a more polyphonic analysis of the various voices of Habsburg and Ottoman multinationalism: from the imperial centres and in the closest proximity to sovereigns, to provinces and minorities, among intellectuals and state servants, through novels and newspapers. Combining insights from history, literary studies and political sciences, it further explores the lasting legacy of the empires in post-imperial narratives of loss, nostalgia, hope and redemption. It shows why the two dynasties keep haunting the twenty-first century with fears and promises of conflict, coexistence, and reborn greatness.
Research Interests:
Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. This book explores the... more
Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. This book explores the tensions emerging between those trying to preserve a world almost entirely destroyed by both the nation-state and global capitalism and the agents of the so-called Modern era.
In this selection of Chapter 5 and Conclusion, the Ottoman empire's subjects, often themselves refugees from other parts of the Islamic world by the 1870s under European imperialist rule, mobilize, often with surprising results. In East and Central Africa, Ottoman subjects mobilized a campaign to send missionaries to convert large numbers of indigenous peoples, a good decade prior to the arrival of Belgium, British, German and Italian merchants/agents of empire. These selections also reflect on how Ottoman migrants from Syria/Palestine adapt to their new lives in South and Central America (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras). Finally it considers the consequences of Ottoman imperial collapse on those who did migrate and wished to return to their homelands in the 1920s. In the case of Palestinians, they were largely stopped by Zionist/British authorities from returning, further frustrated by the League of Nations declaring Palestinians in the Americas were Ottoman subjects and thus "Turks" by international standards and no longer permitted to travel to Palestine, their homelands.
In this selection of Chapter 5 and Conclusion, the Ottoman empire's subjects, often themselves refugees from other parts of the Islamic world by the 1870s under European imperialist rule, mobilize, often with surprising results. In East and Central Africa, Ottoman subjects mobilized a campaign to send missionaries to convert large numbers of indigenous peoples, a good decade prior to the arrival of Belgium, British, German and Italian merchants/agents of empire. These selections also reflect on how Ottoman migrants from Syria/Palestine adapt to their new lives in South and Central America (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Honduras). Finally it considers the consequences of Ottoman imperial collapse on those who did migrate and wished to return to their homelands in the 1920s. In the case of Palestinians, they were largely stopped by Zionist/British authorities from returning, further frustrated by the League of Nations declaring Palestinians in the Americas were Ottoman subjects and thus "Turks" by international standards and no longer permitted to travel to Palestine, their homelands.
Research Interests: Latin American Studies, International Relations, Globalization, Armenian Studies, Middle East Studies, and 15 moreRefugee Studies, Albanian Studies, Islam in Africa, Africa, World History, Colonialism, Palestine, Ottoman Empire, Migration Studies, Ottoman Balkans, Syria, Settler Colonial Studies, Imperialism, Swahili Coast, and Mahjar Studies
(Includes Introduction authored by Blumi and Yavuz to the larger volume) War and Nationalism presents thorough up-to-date scholarship on the often misunderstood and neglected Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, which contributed to the outbreak... more
(Includes Introduction authored by Blumi and Yavuz to the larger volume)
War and Nationalism presents thorough up-to-date scholarship on the often misunderstood and neglected Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, which contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The wars represented a pivotal moment that had a long-lasting impact on the regional state system and fundamentally transformed the beleaguered Ottoman Empire in the process. This chapter invariably also suffers from this methodological weakness in that it too mobilizes a narrow selection of events (at the expense of excluding others) in order to suggest possible interpretations of so-called origins and enduring legacies of the 1912–13 Balkan Wars. A major impediment to analyzing the disparate events identified as contributing to the Balkan Wars’ long-term consequences is in some part the result of focusing on specific administrative zones — the mountainous borderlands of Kosova, İşkodra, Serbia, and Montenegro known here as the Malësi e Madhe — without fully engaging seemingly peripheral events beyond these locales.
War and Nationalism presents thorough up-to-date scholarship on the often misunderstood and neglected Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, which contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The wars represented a pivotal moment that had a long-lasting impact on the regional state system and fundamentally transformed the beleaguered Ottoman Empire in the process. This chapter invariably also suffers from this methodological weakness in that it too mobilizes a narrow selection of events (at the expense of excluding others) in order to suggest possible interpretations of so-called origins and enduring legacies of the 1912–13 Balkan Wars. A major impediment to analyzing the disparate events identified as contributing to the Balkan Wars’ long-term consequences is in some part the result of focusing on specific administrative zones — the mountainous borderlands of Kosova, İşkodra, Serbia, and Montenegro known here as the Malësi e Madhe — without fully engaging seemingly peripheral events beyond these locales.
Research Interests:
This special issue draws on work from young scholars concerned with the impact recent waves of Islamophobia has affected the lives of Muslims in Europe. Isa Blumi authored the introduction and chapter one entitled: “Nothing New:... more
This special issue draws on work from young scholars concerned with the impact recent waves of Islamophobia has affected the lives of Muslims in Europe. Isa Blumi authored the introduction and chapter one entitled:
“Nothing New: Islamophobia by Default in Postwar Europe”.
Works in this issue are drawn from conference held in January 2017 in Istanbul, organized by Dr. Mehmet Hacisalihoglu and supported by IRCICA.
http://www.yildiz.edu.tr/media/files/etkinlikler/islamophobia-program.pdf
Contributions in special issue include articles by:
Ali Hüseyinoğlu
Peter Polak-Springer
Elena Lukinykh
Leyla Yıldırım
Ali Çaksu
“Nothing New: Islamophobia by Default in Postwar Europe”.
Works in this issue are drawn from conference held in January 2017 in Istanbul, organized by Dr. Mehmet Hacisalihoglu and supported by IRCICA.
http://www.yildiz.edu.tr/media/files/etkinlikler/islamophobia-program.pdf
Contributions in special issue include articles by:
Ali Hüseyinoğlu
Peter Polak-Springer
Elena Lukinykh
Leyla Yıldırım
Ali Çaksu
Research Interests: European Studies, Race and Racism, Islam in Africa, Islam in Europe, Louis Althusser, and 12 moreTurkey, Islamic Studies, Muslim Minorities, Muslims in Europe, Islam, Islamophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia, Orientalism, Imperialism, Anthropology of Islam, French foreign policy - especially towards the Maghreb and Europe. Islam, immigration and terrorism, and Contemporary Muslim society
Since March 2015, a Saudi-led international coalition of forces—supported by Britain and the United States—has waged devastating war in Yemen. Largely ignored by the world’s media, the resulting humanitarian disaster and full-scale famine... more
Since March 2015, a Saudi-led international coalition of forces—supported by Britain and the United States—has waged devastating war in Yemen. Largely ignored by the world’s media, the resulting humanitarian disaster and full-scale famine threatens millions. Destroying Yemen offers the first in-depth historical account of the transnational origins of this war, placing it in the illuminating context of Yemen’s relationship with major powers since the Cold War. Bringing new sources and a deep understanding to bear on Yemen’s profound, unwitting implication in international affairs, this explosive book ultimately tells an even larger story of today’s political economy of global capitalism, development, and the war on terror as disparate actors intersect in Arabia.
Research Interests: Political Economy, Ottoman History, Globalization, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, and 21 moreWar Studies, Genocide Studies, Political Science, Cold War, International Political Economy, World History, Saudi Arabia, Capitalism, Humanitarian Intervention, Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Yemen, Islam, Middle East Politics, Islamic Banking, Empire, Yemen (History), Middle East, Imperialism, Modernization theory, and Arab Spring (Arab Revolts)
Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long 19 th century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the... more
Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long 19 th century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State moves the study of the modern empire towards a comparative, trans-regional analysis of events along the Ottoman frontiers: Western Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Yemen. This inter-disciplinary approach of studying events at different ends of the Ottoman
Research Interests: Comparative Religion, African Studies, European Studies, Comparative Politics, Political Economy, and 27 moreOttoman History, Political Theory, Middle East Studies, Border Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, World History, Colonialism, Habsburg Studies, Ottoman Studies, Louis Althusser, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, Postmodernism, Islamic Studies, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, Global History, Postcolonial Theory, Migration Studies, Yemen, Ottoman Balkans, Middle East Politics, Empire, Talal Asad, and Imperialism
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230110182#otherversion=9780230119086 This book focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1820-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that the later national history would claim to have... more
http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230110182#otherversion=9780230119086
This book focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1820-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that the later national history would claim to have been Albanians, providing a revisionist exploration of national identity prior to the establishment of the nation-state. It offers new methods to disentangle otherwise anachronistic references to ethno-national identity politics from a much more complicated, dynamic and heterogeneous Balkan world prior to World War I. Using archives from Istanbul, Tirana, Rome, Paris/Nantes, London, Washington, Berlin, Cairo, and Vienna, this book aimed to help initiate (not settle) debates about how we best chart dynamics within a Balkan world prior to the state-building projects of the 20th century.
This book focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1820-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that the later national history would claim to have been Albanians, providing a revisionist exploration of national identity prior to the establishment of the nation-state. It offers new methods to disentangle otherwise anachronistic references to ethno-national identity politics from a much more complicated, dynamic and heterogeneous Balkan world prior to World War I. Using archives from Istanbul, Tirana, Rome, Paris/Nantes, London, Washington, Berlin, Cairo, and Vienna, this book aimed to help initiate (not settle) debates about how we best chart dynamics within a Balkan world prior to the state-building projects of the 20th century.
Research Interests: European Studies, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Albanian Studies, and 25 moreBalkan Studies, Balkan History, Race and Ethnicity, Nationalism, Colonialism, Mediterranean Studies, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, National Identity, Modernity, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, Global History, Migration Studies, Ottoman Balkans, Islamic History, Late Ottoman Period, History of Central and Southeastern Europe, Albanian Nationalism, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Imperialism, Western Balkans, Austro-Hungarian History, and Ethnicity and National Identity
“The Great Powers’ Fixation on Ottoman Albania in the Administration of the post-Berlin Balkans, 1878-1908.” Omar Turan (ed.) The Russo-Ottoman War of 1877-1878. [Ankara: METU Press, 2006]:187-196.
Research Interests:
This is a DRAFT (therefore with some typographical, grammar and spelling errors) of Chapter 4 of Chaos in Yemen (Routledge 2010). This chapter discusses the origins of the rebellions and its supporters in Northwest Yemen, known today... more
This is a DRAFT (therefore with some typographical, grammar and spelling errors) of Chapter 4 of Chaos in Yemen (Routledge 2010). This chapter discusses the origins of the rebellions and its supporters in Northwest Yemen, known today inaccurately as exclusively the Huthi movement. Please note that the page numbers in this draft DO NOT correspond to the ones in the published book (91-115).
Research Interests: Comparative Politics, International Relations, Ottoman History, Political Theory, Middle East Studies, and 24 moreBorder Studies, Political Science, Migration, Race and Ethnicity, Political Violence and Terrorism, International Political Economy, Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern Politics, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, Migration Studies, Yemen, Middle East Politics, Late Ottoman Period, Borderlands Studies, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, War on Terror, Yemen (History), Borders and Frontiers, Yemen Ethnography, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), Global War on Terror, Borders and Borderlands, and Huthi
"In the first half of the 20th century, throughout the Balkans and Middle East, a familiar story of destroyed communities forced to flee war or economic crisis unfolded. Often, these refugees of the Ottoman Empire - Christians, Muslims... more
"In the first half of the 20th century, throughout the Balkans and Middle East, a familiar story of destroyed communities forced to flee war or economic crisis unfolded. Often, these refugees of the Ottoman Empire - Christians, Muslims and Jews - found their way to new continents, forming an Ottoman diaspora that had a remarkable ability to reconstitute, and even expand, the ethnic, religious, and ideological diversity of their homelands.
Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. Isa Blumi explores the tensions emerging between those trying to preserve a world almost entirely destroyed by both the nation-state and global capitalism and the agents of the so-called Modern era."
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Prelude to Disaster: Finance Capitalism and the Political Economy of Imperial Collapse
2 Resettlement Regimes and Empire: The Politics of Caring for Ottoman Refugees
3 Traveling the Contours of an Ottoman Proximate World
4 Transitional Migrants: The Global Ottoman Refugee and Colonial Terror
5 Missionaries at the Imperial Ideological Edge
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. Isa Blumi explores the tensions emerging between those trying to preserve a world almost entirely destroyed by both the nation-state and global capitalism and the agents of the so-called Modern era."
Table of Contents
Introduction
1 Prelude to Disaster: Finance Capitalism and the Political Economy of Imperial Collapse
2 Resettlement Regimes and Empire: The Politics of Caring for Ottoman Refugees
3 Traveling the Contours of an Ottoman Proximate World
4 Transitional Migrants: The Global Ottoman Refugee and Colonial Terror
5 Missionaries at the Imperial Ideological Edge
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Research Interests: European History, Diplomatic History, European Studies, International Relations, Political Economy, and 52 moreHistorical Sociology, Southeast Asian Studies, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Transnationalism, Border Studies, Balkan Studies, Imperial History, Race and Ethnicity, Identity politics, International Political Economy, World History, Colonialism, Global Studies, Ottoman Studies, Philippines, East Africa, Post-Colonialism, Islamic Studies, Sufism, Ottoman Empire, Iraq, History of International Relations, World War I, Migration Studies, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Latin American History, Ottoman Balkans, Syria, Diaspora Studies, Sociology of Migration, Transnational migration, Late Ottoman Period, History of Imperialism, British Imperialism, Diaspora and transnationalism, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Sectarianism, Settler Colonial Studies, Refugees, Islam and Modernity, Colonial Discourse, Imperialism, South China Sea, Western Balkans, Colonial Studies, Borders and Borderlands, Balkan Wars 1912-1913, Ethnicity and National Identity, Post Colonial Theory, and Colonialism and Imperialism
War and Nationalism presents thorough up-to-date scholarship on the often misunderstood and neglected Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, which contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The essays contain critical inquiries into the diverse... more
War and Nationalism presents thorough up-to-date scholarship on the often misunderstood and neglected Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, which contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The essays contain critical inquiries into the diverse and interconnected processes of social, economic, and political exchange that escalated into conflict. The wars represented a pivotal moment that had a long-lasting impact on the regional state system and fundamentally transformed the beleaguered Ottoman Empire in the process.
This interdisciplinary volume stands as a critique of the standard discourse regarding the Balkan Wars and effectively questions many of the assumptions of prevailing modern nation-state histories, which have long privileged the ethno-religious dimensions present in the Balkans. The authors go to great lengths in demonstrating the fluidity of social, geographical, and cultural boundaries before 1912 and call into question the “nationalist watershed” notion that was artificially imposed by manipulative historiography and political machinations following the end of fighting in 1913.
War and Nationalism will be of interest to scholars looking to enrich their own understanding of an overshadowed historical event and will serve as a valuable contribution to courses on Ottoman and European history.
This interdisciplinary volume stands as a critique of the standard discourse regarding the Balkan Wars and effectively questions many of the assumptions of prevailing modern nation-state histories, which have long privileged the ethno-religious dimensions present in the Balkans. The authors go to great lengths in demonstrating the fluidity of social, geographical, and cultural boundaries before 1912 and call into question the “nationalist watershed” notion that was artificially imposed by manipulative historiography and political machinations following the end of fighting in 1913.
War and Nationalism will be of interest to scholars looking to enrich their own understanding of an overshadowed historical event and will serve as a valuable contribution to courses on Ottoman and European history.
Research Interests: European History, Military History, Diplomatic History, European Studies, Ottoman History, and 13 moreMiddle East Studies, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, Race and Ethnicity, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Ottoman Empire, World War I, First World War, Ottoman Balkans, Ethnicity, Western Balkans, and Ethnicity and National Identity
In this work, written in 2003 and newly republished, I seek to reassess some common misconceptions about the history of the Ottoman Empire. Having compared and contrasted events transpiring in Ottoman administered Albania and Yemen, this... more
In this work, written in 2003 and newly republished, I seek to reassess some common misconceptions about the history of the Ottoman Empire. Having compared and contrasted events transpiring in Ottoman administered Albania and Yemen, this early work took up the question of studying communities on the so-called periphery of Ottoman society. Rather than being marginal, this book argues such people are part of the greater Ottoman society and shows that studies of the provinces can provide valuable insights for historians. The chapters of the book are tied together by reflections on being a history writer while using each individual chapter to offer some unique and almost forgotten aspect of Ottoman history.
Research Interests:
"Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long 19th century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity moves the study of the... more
"Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long 19th century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity moves the study of the modern empire towards a comparative, trans-regional analysis of events along the Ottoman frontiers: Western Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Yemen. This inter-disciplinary approach of studying events at different ends of the Ottoman Empire challenges previous emphasis on Europe as the only source of change and highlights the progression of modern imperial states while emphasizing a kind of pre-globalization cosmopolitanism largely erased by discourses of modernity.
As such, the book introduces an entirely new analytical approach to the study of modern state power and the social consequences to the interaction between long-ignored "historical agents" like pirates, smugglers, refugees, and the rural poor. In this respect, the roots of the most fundamental institutions and bureaucratic practices associated with the modern state prove to be the by-products of certain kinds of productive exchange long categorized in negative terms in post-colonial and mainstream scholarship. Such a challenge to conventional methods of historical and social scientific analysis is reinforced by the novel use of the work of Louis Althusser, Talal Asad, William Connolly and Frederick Cooper, whose challenges to scholarly conventions will prove helpful in changing how we understand the origins of our modern world and thus talk about Modernity. "
As such, the book introduces an entirely new analytical approach to the study of modern state power and the social consequences to the interaction between long-ignored "historical agents" like pirates, smugglers, refugees, and the rural poor. In this respect, the roots of the most fundamental institutions and bureaucratic practices associated with the modern state prove to be the by-products of certain kinds of productive exchange long categorized in negative terms in post-colonial and mainstream scholarship. Such a challenge to conventional methods of historical and social scientific analysis is reinforced by the novel use of the work of Louis Althusser, Talal Asad, William Connolly and Frederick Cooper, whose challenges to scholarly conventions will prove helpful in changing how we understand the origins of our modern world and thus talk about Modernity. "
Research Interests: Critical Theory, European History, European Studies, Comparative Politics, International Relations, and 45 moreHistorical Sociology, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Diasporas, Balkan Studies, Historiography, Race and Ethnicity, Identity politics, World History, Colonialism, Global Studies, Ottoman Studies, Louis Althusser, East Africa, Nationalism And State Building, Modernity, Ottoman Empire, Political Economies of Capitalism, Imperialism/Colonialism, Racism, and Patriarchy, Migration Studies, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Yemen, Ottoman Historiography, Ottoman Balkans, Diaspora Studies, Sociology of Migration, Late Ottoman Period, Ottoman-Turkish Westernization, History of Imperialism, Empire, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, William Connolly, Talal Asad, Colonial Discourse, Kuwait, Bahrain, Imperialism, Red Sea, State, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Western Balkans, Austro-Hungarian History, Histories and theories of modernity, Borders and Borderlands, Ethnicity and Identity Politics, and Colonialism and Imperialism
Here is a synopsis of the book: "Chaos in Yemen challenges recent interpretations of Yemen’s complex social, political and economic transformations since unification in 1990. By offering in late 2009 (when I completed the manuscript) a... more
Here is a synopsis of the book: "Chaos in Yemen challenges recent interpretations of Yemen’s complex social, political and economic transformations since unification in 1990. By offering in late 2009 (when I completed the manuscript) a different perspective to the violence afflicting the larger region, it explains why the ‘Abdullah ‘Ali Salih regime, even after his formal "retirement" from politics, has become the principal beneficiary of these conflicts.
Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach, the author offers an alternative understanding of what is creating discord in the Red Sea region by integrating the region’s modern history to an interpretation of current events. In turn, by refusing to solely link Yemen to the "global struggle against Islamists," this work sheds new light on the issues policy-makers are facing in the larger Middle East. As such, this study offers an alternative perspective to Yemen’s complex domestic affairs that challenge the over-emphasis on the tribe and sectarianism.
Offering an alternative set of approaches to studying societies facing new forms of state authoritarianism, this contribution speaks to students and scholars of the Middle East and the larger Islamic world, Conflict Resolution, Comparative Politics, and International Relations.
"
Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach, the author offers an alternative understanding of what is creating discord in the Red Sea region by integrating the region’s modern history to an interpretation of current events. In turn, by refusing to solely link Yemen to the "global struggle against Islamists," this work sheds new light on the issues policy-makers are facing in the larger Middle East. As such, this study offers an alternative perspective to Yemen’s complex domestic affairs that challenge the over-emphasis on the tribe and sectarianism.
Offering an alternative set of approaches to studying societies facing new forms of state authoritarianism, this contribution speaks to students and scholars of the Middle East and the larger Islamic world, Conflict Resolution, Comparative Politics, and International Relations.
"
Research Interests: Comparative Politics, International Relations, Ottoman History, Terrorism, Middle East Studies, and 26 moreBorder Studies, State Formation, Political Violence and Terrorism, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern Politics, Ottoman Empire, Modern Middle East History, Middle Eastern Studies, Yemen, Middle East Politics, Late Ottoman Period, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Frontier Studies, War on Terror, Sectarianism, Authoritarianism, Borders and Frontiers, State, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), Borders and Borderlands, Houthi, and Huthi
You will find chapters 1 and 2 to this book that focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1800-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that subsequent national histories would later identify as Albanians, providing a... more
You will find chapters 1 and 2 to this book that focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1800-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that subsequent national histories would later identify as Albanians, providing a revisionist exploration of national identity prior to the establishment of the nation-state. Isa Blumi posits that such an identity was politically mobilized, and, that prior to the 1912 Balkan war it was culturally opaque and ideologically fluid. In relation to the competition among various state and power structures, be it in the shape of great power intervention, attempts at building new states, or the Ottoman political center, Blumi shows that Ottoman reforms were successful in encouraging most state subjects to commingle local interest with the fate of the empire itself, meaning that parochial concern for the survival of the immediate community, as it transformed over time, was directly linked to the survival of the Ottoman state.
Research Interests: European History, Diplomatic History, European Studies, International Relations, Middle East Studies, and 32 moreMiddle East History, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, State Formation, Race and Ethnicity, Identity politics, Nationalism, International Political Economy, Colonialism, Middle Eastern History, Post-Colonialism, Nationalism And State Building, State Theory, Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Middle Eastern Studies, Turkey And Europe, Migration Studies, Ottoman Balkans, Ethnic Conflict, Sociology of Migration, Albanian Nationalism, Southeastern Europe, Empire, Imperialism, Western Balkans, Nation-State, Austro-Hungarian History, Borders and Borderlands, Ethnicity and National Identity, and Albanians
Inderjeet Parmar's review of Destroying Yemen (UC Press, 2018) This is a compelling analysis of a tragic but unfolding story. It is a deeply humane, passionate, conviction-led, historically rich analysis. It is... more
Inderjeet Parmar's review of Destroying Yemen (UC Press, 2018)
This is a compelling analysis of a tragic but unfolding story. It is a deeply humane, passionate, conviction-led, historically rich analysis. It is rigorously researched, detailed, complex. It collapses so many “divides” in scholarly considerations of “weak” states and polities on the so-called periphery ver-sus so-called core states. It gives agency to the peoples and groups of what are often seen to be marginal states and societies, rarely discussed in relation to world politics or global political development. It explores how central the peripheral is to the strategies of the metropolitan core states or, as Blumi terms it, Western empire. It is an analysis that pulls no punches but excoriates and connects the scholarly, intellectual, and political knowledge-makers to the structural and military violence of the empire and its Middle Eastern allies that have seen Yemen as an economic and strategic prize. It is a work of the heart and head, painful for the author to write and the reader to read. But as war, disease, and disaster ravage Yemen, and unyielding popular resistance to outside forces continues, the book is a must-read for anyone claiming to know and understand the world we live in today, regardless of their field of scholarly research. One can only empathize with an author (and his subject) who begins with a frank confession that he has only been able to complete the study based on his “spiritual radar” and prevalent “sense of guilt” that he “cannot do more” to help the people of Yemen. This is no ivory-tower scholar.In another recent scholarly work of scholarly distinction, Paul Chamberlin presents the global arc of bloodletting during the Cold War, from China in the late 1930s, through East and Southeast Asia, and into the Middle East. The sheer levels of largely Western imperial violence starkly laid out in The Cold War’s Killing Fields (2018) – the bloodbaths in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, among others – should lay to rest any remaining notions about the “Long Peace” since 1945, the fruits of the liberal international order. Blumi’s book complements Chamberlin’s analysis by locating Yemen in regional and global networks of trade, scholarship, art, literature, and philosophy, showing that little-known, if not forgotten, and “backward” Yemen has played an out-sized role in the making of some of the key contours of the modern world.Blumi’s argument is that Yemen is both agent and victim of modernization, globalization, and neoliberalism, not to mention unbridled military aggres-sion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and their Anglo-American suppliers and sponsors. Their purpose and goal is, primarily through market and military forces, to drag Yemen into the twenty-first century of “freedom,” postmodernity, and openness. That is, to transform Yemen into another cog in
This is a compelling analysis of a tragic but unfolding story. It is a deeply humane, passionate, conviction-led, historically rich analysis. It is rigorously researched, detailed, complex. It collapses so many “divides” in scholarly considerations of “weak” states and polities on the so-called periphery ver-sus so-called core states. It gives agency to the peoples and groups of what are often seen to be marginal states and societies, rarely discussed in relation to world politics or global political development. It explores how central the peripheral is to the strategies of the metropolitan core states or, as Blumi terms it, Western empire. It is an analysis that pulls no punches but excoriates and connects the scholarly, intellectual, and political knowledge-makers to the structural and military violence of the empire and its Middle Eastern allies that have seen Yemen as an economic and strategic prize. It is a work of the heart and head, painful for the author to write and the reader to read. But as war, disease, and disaster ravage Yemen, and unyielding popular resistance to outside forces continues, the book is a must-read for anyone claiming to know and understand the world we live in today, regardless of their field of scholarly research. One can only empathize with an author (and his subject) who begins with a frank confession that he has only been able to complete the study based on his “spiritual radar” and prevalent “sense of guilt” that he “cannot do more” to help the people of Yemen. This is no ivory-tower scholar.In another recent scholarly work of scholarly distinction, Paul Chamberlin presents the global arc of bloodletting during the Cold War, from China in the late 1930s, through East and Southeast Asia, and into the Middle East. The sheer levels of largely Western imperial violence starkly laid out in The Cold War’s Killing Fields (2018) – the bloodbaths in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, among others – should lay to rest any remaining notions about the “Long Peace” since 1945, the fruits of the liberal international order. Blumi’s book complements Chamberlin’s analysis by locating Yemen in regional and global networks of trade, scholarship, art, literature, and philosophy, showing that little-known, if not forgotten, and “backward” Yemen has played an out-sized role in the making of some of the key contours of the modern world.Blumi’s argument is that Yemen is both agent and victim of modernization, globalization, and neoliberalism, not to mention unbridled military aggres-sion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and their Anglo-American suppliers and sponsors. Their purpose and goal is, primarily through market and military forces, to drag Yemen into the twenty-first century of “freedom,” postmodernity, and openness. That is, to transform Yemen into another cog in
Research Interests: Development Economics, Comparative Politics, International Relations, International Relations Theory, Globalization, and 15 moreMiddle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, War Studies, Cold War, Islamic Studies, Global History, Arabian Gulf, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Yemen, American imperialism, Middle East Politics, Imperialism, Pan-Arabism, Yemen politics, and Colonialism and Imperialism
It is not easy to write a review of Isa Blumi's new book, Destroying Yemen. It is particularly tricky for a social anthropologist like myself, that is, the representative of a discipline that Blumi uses to lash out against at habitually... more
It is not easy to write a review of Isa Blumi's new book, Destroying Yemen. It is particularly tricky for a social anthropologist like myself, that is, the representative of a discipline that Blumi uses to lash out against at habitually as harshly. Blumi's book begins with the sentence "This was a difficult book" (p. xi), and indeed he seems to have written it in a fit of rage. As a historian, Blumi has presented profound studies on the Ottoman history of Yemen, and Destroying Yemen too takes the current crisis in Yemen as the reference and starting point for his forays into Yemeni history in order to uncover the roots of the country's conflict.
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Review of Destroying Yemen (UC Press, 2018) In Arab Studies Quarterly 41.1 (2019): 121-125.
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Review of 2011 book, Reinstating the Ottoman by S. Aydemir
Research Interests: European History, Modern History, European Studies, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, and 22 moreBorder Studies, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, Identity (Culture), State Formation, Race and Ethnicity, Identity politics, Nationalism, Eastern European history, World History, Mediterranean Studies, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, National Identity, Nationalism And State Building, Islamic Studies, Ottoman Empire, Migration Studies, Ottoman Balkans, Southeastern Europe, and Western Balkans
Review of Isa Blumi's Chaos in Yemen (2010) reviewed for Review of Middle East Studies (2013)
Research Interests: Comparative Religion, Comparative Politics, International Relations, International Relations Theory, Terrorism, and 20 moreInternational Studies, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Political Science, Politics, International Political Economy, Middle Eastern History, Middle Eastern Politics, Modern Middle East History, Middle Eastern Studies, Yemen, Middle East Politics, History of the Modern Middle East, War on Terror, Authoritarianism, Yemen (History), Middle East, Yemen Development, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, and Yemen politics
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Review of my book Ottoman Refugees by Jeffery Dyer, Boston College
Research Interests: Comparative Religion, Latin American Studies, Political Economy, Southeast Asian Studies, Ottoman History, and 35 moreGlobalization, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Transnationalism, Refugee Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Diasporas, Balkan Studies, Poststructuralism, African History, Migration, History of Slavery, World History, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, Postmodernism, Sufism, Ottoman Empire, Islam in the Southeast Asia, Global History, Postcolonial Theory, History of the Islamic World, Migration Studies, Yemen, First World War, Ottoman Balkans, Diaspora Studies, Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), Indian Ocean World, Diaspora and transnationalism, Imperialism, Arabs and Jews in Latin America, Political Economy and History, and East African history
Part of larger review of literature essay on Empires, Modernisation, and Modernities
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Comparative Politics, Ottoman History, Globalization, and 21 morePolitical Theory, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Postcolonial Studies, Balkan Studies, Poststructuralism, Balkan History, World History, Colonialism, Modernization, Post-Colonialism, Postmodernism, Modernity, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, Global History, Postcolonial Theory, Ottoman Balkans, Empire, Imperialism, and Western Balkans
Review of Foundations of Modernity in The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms 20/6 (Spring 2015): 652-658.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Modern History, Comparative Politics, Political Theory, Middle East Studies, and 29 moreBalkan Studies, Balkan History, State Formation, The Persian Gulf, World History, Colonialism, Louis Althusser, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, Modernity, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, British Empire, Global History, History of the Islamic World, Arabian Gulf, Yemen, Ottoman Balkans, Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Imperialism, Italian colonialism, Red Sea, Neo-Marxism, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Western Balkans, and Djibouti
Review of my Ottoman Refugees book in Journal of Refugee Studies (2015)
Research Interests: African Studies, Latin American Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Ottoman History, Armenian Studies, and 33 moreMiddle East Studies, Middle East History, Refugee Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Balkan Studies, Poststructuralism, Balkan History, Africa, Migration, World History, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, East Africa, Post-Colonialism, Capitalism, Postmodernism, Islamic Studies, International Migration, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Migration Studies, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Ottoman Balkans, Islamic History, Islam, Transnational migration, Middle East Politics, Indian Ocean World, Middle East, Imperialism, Western Balkans, and Colonialism and Imperialism
Research Interests: Modern History, Comparative Politics, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, and 24 moreGlobal Studies, Ottoman Studies, Louis Althusser, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Modernity, Ottoman Empire, Globalization And Postcolonial Studies, Multiple Modernities, Middle Eastern Studies, Global History, Arabian Gulf, Yemen, Ottoman Balkans, Middle East Politics, Empire, Middle East, Islam and Modernity, Imperialism, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Histories and theories of modernity, HISTORY OF KUWAIT, Indigenous Modernity, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, and Colonialism and Imperialism
Review in American Historical Review (Feb. 2015) of Isa Blumi, Ottoman Refugees
Research Interests: Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Refugee Studies, World History, Ottoman Studies, and 13 moreTurkish and Middle East Studies, East Africa (History), Islamic Studies, Sufism, Ottoman Empire, Migration Studies, Arabian Gulf, Ottoman Balkans, Syria, Southeast Asian history, Refugees and Forced Migration Studies, Arab Diaspora In Latin America, and Arab Diaspora In the Southeast Asia
Michael Portmann, from University of Vienna, reviews Reinstating the Ottomans
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Comparative Politics, Epistemology, Ottoman History, and 26 moreGlobalization, Political Theory, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Postcolonial Studies, Balkan Studies, Poststructuralism, Race and Ethnicity, Colonialism, Ottoman Studies, Louis Althusser, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, Modernity, Islamic Studies, Ottoman Empire, Althusser, Yemen, Ottoman Balkans, Ethnicity, Empire, Islam and Modernity, Colonial Discourse, Imperialism, Red Sea, and Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, Modern History, Diplomatic History, Comparative Politics, International Relations, and 20 morePolitical Economy, Globalization, Political Theory, Transnational and World History, World History, Colonialism, Global Studies, Louis Althusser, Post-Colonialism, Modernity, Ottoman Empire, British Empire, History of the Islamic World, Arabian Gulf, Yemen, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, Modern Turkey, Comparative study of the Ottoman, habsburg, and Romanov Empires, Islam and Modernity, and Red Sea
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http://www.ucpress.edu/subject.php?sc=hiswor&s=pd&o=desc&r=10&page=3 The Red Sea has, from time immemorial, been one of the world’s most navigated spaces, in the pursuit of trade, pilgrimage and conquest. Yet this multidimensional history... more
http://www.ucpress.edu/subject.php?sc=hiswor&s=pd&o=desc&r=10&page=3 The Red Sea has, from time immemorial, been one of the world’s most navigated spaces, in the pursuit of trade, pilgrimage and conquest. Yet this multidimensional history remains largely unrevealed by its successive protagonists. Intrigued by the absence of a holistic portrayal of this body of water and inspired by Fernand Braudel’s famous work on the Mediterranean, this book brings alive a dynamic Red Sea world across time, revealing the particular features of a unique historical actor. In capturing this heretofore lost space, it also presents a critical, conceptual history of the sea, leading the reader into the heart of Eurocentrism. The Sea, it is shown, is a vital element of the modern philosophy of history. Alexis Wick is not satisfied with this inclusion of the Red Sea into history and attendant critique of Eurocentrism. Contrapuntally, he explores how the world and the sea were imagined differently before im...
Research Interests: History, Geography, Geology, Art History, Ottoman History, and 13 moreArt, Middle East Studies, Historiography, History of Science, World History, History of Cartography, Indian Ocean History, Mediterranean Studies, Indian Ocean World, Global Intellectual History, Red Sea, University of Southern California, and Routledge
Research Interests: European Studies, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Border Studies, Albanian Studies, and 14 moreBalkan Studies, Political Science, Identity politics, Kosovo, Nationalism, National Identity, Democracy, European Union Politics, Albania, Borders and Frontiers, Kosova, Western Balkans, Diplomacy and international relations, and US foreign policy
This chapter offers a modest historical scan of the contours of the early Cold War while introducing Yemenis whose roles as potential surrogates for global interests both ignited new political opportunities in the country and redefined... more
This chapter offers a modest historical scan of the contours of the early Cold War while introducing Yemenis whose roles as potential surrogates for global interests both ignited new political opportunities in the country and redefined what constitutes the modern state. Forming a generation of reformists known as the ‘asriyyun, “modernists,” urban intellectuals cultivated an alliance between the Free Yemeni Movement (FYM) or al-Ahrar al-Yamaniyyun (Free Yemenis) and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) based in Egypt. The resulting coalition of rivals against the Imamate reflected the currents of the larger world and eventually overpowered peoples still resisting global finance capitalism. This chapter tells the story how the Cold War constituted both a threat and opportunity. What happened in Yemen in this period was not solely the consequence of external forces imposing their demands on local societies. Indeed, because Yemenis’ repeated resistance frustrated the ambitions of global powers ...
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The Balkans MICHAEL L. GALATY, OLS LAFE, WAYNE E. LEE and ZAMIR TAFLICA, eds., Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013). Series:... more
The Balkans MICHAEL L. GALATY, OLS LAFE, WAYNE E. LEE and ZAMIR TAFLICA, eds., Light and Shadow: Isolation and Interaction in the Shala Valley of Northern Albania (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, 2013). Series: Monumenta Archaeologica 28. Pp. 274. $ 65.00 cloth.Northern Albania has long attracted (as well as dissuaded) travelers with both its undeniable rugged beauty and seeming isolation. Although generous to those able to strike a viable balance between enjoying the area's insuperable nature and navigating the deep river valleys that rip across the mountain ranges separating the Balkans from the Adriatic, this region, known locally as Malesia e Madhe, has long taunted as much as accommodated outsiders. One particularly notorious valley, that of the Shala, has been visited by any number of imperial, religious, and private adventurers over the centuries. Most of the detailed accounts that resulted from these expeditions, however, have been more sensationalist...
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ADAM MOORE, Peacebuilding in Practice: Local Experience in Two Bosnian Towns (Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2013). Pp. 240. $45.00 cloth.Violence in the Balkans, and especially in the former Yugoslavia's Republic of Bosnia... more
ADAM MOORE, Peacebuilding in Practice: Local Experience in Two Bosnian Towns (Ithaca/London, Cornell University Press, 2013). Pp. 240. $45.00 cloth.Violence in the Balkans, and especially in the former Yugoslavia's Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, remains a point of reference for those looking for emblematic cases of international intervention. Since Bosnia was long deemed a working model for successful coexistence between presumably "different" peoples, namely, Muslim, Christian Orthodox and Catholic Slavs, outside observers saw the outbreak of war in the 1990s, like earlier cases of internecine violence during World War II and the Balkan Wars of 1912-1918, as either an inevitable reversion to "ancient hatreds" or a cruel political opportunism of nationalist leaders. Trying to make sense of this violence has thus been the task of scholars interested in theorizing violence, and writing about how to successfully implement a peacekeeping regime in post-confl...
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Gewalt und Koexistenz: Muslime und Christen im spatosmanischen Kosovo (1870–1913). By Eva Anne Frantz
Europe’s Balkan Muslims: A New History By Nathalie Clayer and Xavier Bougarel, translated by Andrew Kirby
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There is little dispute that the school plays a major role in the narrative of the modern nation. It is one of the central institutions expected to service the state’s ambition to inculcate in its society a sense of citizenship, loyalty,... more
There is little dispute that the school plays a major role in the narrative of the modern nation. It is one of the central institutions expected to service the state’s ambition to inculcate in its society a sense of citizenship, loyalty, and general obedience. It is also connected to the process of building a collective identity, both by disseminating a common narrative about historical claims and by codifying the national language. In this respect, scholars have assumed that the early efforts to expand education to previously “uneducated” communities is at the heart of the requisite modernization process and thus a logical source for much of what we today associate with ethnonational identity. Accompanying these associations is the logical assumption that such investments in education necessarily had the important socioeconomic, cultural, and, finally, political impact on targeted communities.1
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... 4 For details of the build-up to the initial agreement and a general outline of the official narrative of the pre 9/11 period see, Samir Muhammad Ahmad al-'Abdali, al-Wahidah al-Yamaniyyah wa al-Nizam... more
... 4 For details of the build-up to the initial agreement and a general outline of the official narrative of the pre 9/11 period see, Samir Muhammad Ahmad al-'Abdali, al-Wahidah al-Yamaniyyah wa al-Nizam al-Iqalimi al-'Arabi (al-Qahirah: Maktabah Mabuli, 1997), 123-150. ...
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Chapter 6 features another significant scholarly innovation: in light of her findings that Iraqi Jews were fully “immersed in Iraqi life and culture,” Bashkin argues that the dislocation of Iraqi Jews beginning in the early 1950s under... more
Chapter 6 features another significant scholarly innovation: in light of her findings that Iraqi Jews were fully “immersed in Iraqi life and culture,” Bashkin argues that the dislocation of Iraqi Jews beginning in the early 1950s under the pressure of a denationalization law was anomalous rather than inevitable. She offers a detailed analysis of this seemingly “puzzling” event (p. 183). Three factors combined to bring about the tragic collapse of the Iraqi Jewish community: the emergence of a viciously anti-Semitic right-wing press, the Iraqi government’s fear of communism, and the temporary popularity of the idea (among both Arab nationalists and Zionists) of a population exchange between Iraqi Jews and Palestinians. New Babylonians is a significant addition to the literature on the social and political history of modern Iraq. Bashkin’s frameworks and sources also make the work relevant beyond this literature. Indeed, her book is essential reading for those interested in nation building and the relationship between identity and politics in the modern Middle East. It will also be of interest to scholars studying Jews in the Arab world, Arab-Israeli relations, and the histories of communist parties in the Middle East. Due to its accessible prose and availability in paperback, New Babylonians would be an appropriate text to assign in graduate and advanced undergraduate seminars addressing any of these topics.
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Albanians inhabiting Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Southern Serbia face a number of individual and communal challenges today as a result of conflicts regarding political and economic ascendancy in their post-conflict societies.... more
Albanians inhabiting Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Southern Serbia face a number of individual and communal challenges today as a result of conflicts regarding political and economic ascendancy in their post-conflict societies. Despite being in quite distinct formal political settings, Albanians are often caught in the difficult position of deflecting external associations that still orient foreign interests’ policies toward the region in terms of generic ethnonational, sectarian, or, at best, party affiliations. As elsewhere in the Balkans, Albanian politicians in Kosovo and Macedonia wishing to survive the integration of their societies into global affairs have learned to work within these crude associations. As a result of such adjustments, the reapplication of tropes about the realities of distinctive ethnoreligious communities in the Balkans has created important political niches for a variety of agents of change and/or continuity. One of the more important ones has been the commodification (or politicization) of religion, as seen in the continued use of the Serbian Orthodox Church as a totem of political legitimacy and the evocation of Islam as a monolith within various societies. Especially in highly charged political environments like Kosovo, where international forces remain key players in the daily affairs of Albanians’, Islam and Catholicism have also been mobilized by stakeholders whose political opportunism seeks to shape community-building agendas and gain leverage in domestic and international settings.
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of publication. Some are already quite well known to specialists: for instance, his account of Eliade's critical relations with the dominant figure of the previous generation, historian Nicolae Iorga, adds little to the published work... more
of publication. Some are already quite well known to specialists: for instance, his account of Eliade's critical relations with the dominant figure of the previous generation, historian Nicolae Iorga, adds little to the published work of Romanian critic Valeriu Rapeanu. From the western languages, two of the most substantial papers on the subject, by Klaus Heitmann (Siidostforschungen, vol. 29,1970) and Katherine Verdery (Romdnii in istoria universal, vol. 2, pt. 1, 1987), are overlooked. More generally, I found it hard to identify a clear approach to the key concepts that are supposed to organize the study, namely "generation" and "experience." Regarding "generation," comparative notes are offered at various points but not developed into a serious thesis; some generational categories are proposed, but it is not always clear whether these amount to more than a series of individual trajectories. Regarding "experience," the account given of how Romanian intellectuals developed a terminology or an ideology of experience is by no means consistent. Several affirmations on this particular matter are actually wrong: that the Romanian term trdirev/as invented by Nae Ionescu; that its semantic proximity to the German Erlebnis has no parallel in any other European language; or that the term experienfd was used "always in die plural experiente" (307; Vanhaelemeersch's own documentation contradicts this last claim). Meanwhile, the vexed question of this generation's relationship with antisemitic ideology is scarcely even hinted at, let alone confronted directly. In spite of these shortcomings, which find their correlative in some lousy typesetting and page layout—the reader's route through the text is confounded by widowed section headings, uneven margins, and alarming dilations and contractions in font size, in the illustrious East European Monographs tradition—Vanhaelemeersch's book remains worth consulting. Specialists will already be referring to other works, notably Marta Petreu's monograph on Cioran, or Florin Turcanu's biography of Eliade. Nonspecialists needing introductions to the period in English might want to start with the studies of Keith Hitchins, Irina Livezeanu, or Maria Bucur. Having done that, they can glean some interesting additional insights and information from this one, too. But they should use the results carefully.
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published scholarship, including the works of Nader Sohrabi, Uğur Ümit Üngör, and M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, which provide an understanding of the CUP’s social scientific vision for the empire and the radicalization of its nationalism. Third, the... more
published scholarship, including the works of Nader Sohrabi, Uğur Ümit Üngör, and M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, which provide an understanding of the CUP’s social scientific vision for the empire and the radicalization of its nationalism. Third, the last section of book, which aims to rebuff the denialist approach, disrupts the progression of the book and would be better suited as a separate study. Finally, the book lacks a compelling conclusion as Akçam argues that the fundamental issue in the Armenian Genocide is not a legal but rather a moral one (p. 450). By doing this he strips genocide from its legal connotation and argues that, “Regardless of the term used, it is necessary to fully confront the immense human tragedy whose repetition must absolutely be prevented” (p. 451). At a time in which human rights violations are taking place in Turkey daily against Kurdish and Turkish intellectuals and activists, Akçam ends his book on a positive note by trying to convince the reader that the “recent surges of democratization in Turkey” have provided the ground for discussing the “tragedy” and that the “future looks a little more optimistic” (p. 452). Notwithstanding some of its shortcomings, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity is a worthy addition to the recent scholarship on the Armenian Genocide. The book is a useful compendium for every graduate student, scholar, and historian who is interested in exploring different dimensions of the Armenian Genocide and late Ottoman history, the transition from empire to nation–state, ethnic violence, demographic policy, and the history of World War I. It is this reviewer’s hope that scholars in the field will address some of the critical points raised by Akçam and that the book will provide the basis for many further discussions on the subject.
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As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by... more
As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by availing themselves to the evolving Ottoman state with the hope of fusing efforts of reform with the emerging political-cultural structures of the larger world that was explicitly geared to tear the multi-ethnic Ottoman Balkans apart. By exploring the manner in which some members of the Balkans' cultural elite adapted as their worlds transformed, this article introduces new methods of interpreting and narrating transitional periods such as those impacting men like Fan S. Noli. His itinerary itself reveals just how complex life in the Balkans and Black Sea would be during the 1878-1922 period, but not one entirely subordinate to the ethno-nationalist agenda so often associated with him.
Research Interests: American Studies, International Relations, Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Albanian Studies, and 13 moreInternational Migration, Ottoman Empire, Global History, Ottoman Balkans, 20th century (History), Transnational Labour Migration, Albanian Nationalism, 20th Century U.S. History, Orthodox Christianity, Balkans, Modern Egyptian History, Migration and Diaspora Studies, and Colonialism and Imperialism
(Full copy newly uploaded) In Kosovo, the results of the snap October parliamentary elections accurately reflected the collective frustrations of voters. The foremost opposition party, Lëvizja Vetëvendosja! (VV, or Self-Determination),... more
(Full copy newly uploaded)
In Kosovo, the results of the snap October parliamentary elections accurately reflected
the collective frustrations of voters. The foremost opposition party, Lëvizja Vetëvendosja! (VV, or Self-Determination), and its charismatic leader
Albin Kurti seem to have won a mandate to directly challenge Kosovo’s EU/US masters. Yet their efforts to form a new government ran up against the stalling tactics of the second-largest opposition party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). By
all accounts, the LDK, loyal to Washington since the 1990s, has embraced the US embassy’s hostility to the prospect of working with a government led by Kurti. A new coalition government was finally formed on February 5, allowing Kurti to take office
as prime minister. But as this article predicted, it was a difficult partnership with the LDK seeking to block VV from enacting its most radical corrective policies. As suggested this would spell trouble for 2020, and indeed, in late May, the Americans, LDK and PDK successfully brought down the popular VV from power, imposing a new, many would say entirely illegitimate puppet state that will allow for negotiations with Serbia to begin again.
In Kosovo, the results of the snap October parliamentary elections accurately reflected
the collective frustrations of voters. The foremost opposition party, Lëvizja Vetëvendosja! (VV, or Self-Determination), and its charismatic leader
Albin Kurti seem to have won a mandate to directly challenge Kosovo’s EU/US masters. Yet their efforts to form a new government ran up against the stalling tactics of the second-largest opposition party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). By
all accounts, the LDK, loyal to Washington since the 1990s, has embraced the US embassy’s hostility to the prospect of working with a government led by Kurti. A new coalition government was finally formed on February 5, allowing Kurti to take office
as prime minister. But as this article predicted, it was a difficult partnership with the LDK seeking to block VV from enacting its most radical corrective policies. As suggested this would spell trouble for 2020, and indeed, in late May, the Americans, LDK and PDK successfully brought down the popular VV from power, imposing a new, many would say entirely illegitimate puppet state that will allow for negotiations with Serbia to begin again.
Research Interests: European Studies, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and 14 moreBorder Studies, Albanian Studies, Political Science, Kosovo, Nationalism, Russian Foreign Policy, European Union, Balkan Politics, Conflict Resolution, Pipeline, Democracy, Turkish Foreign Policy, Elections, and Imperialism
Though largely understudied to date, the regions in the western Balkans inhabited by Albanian speakers were afflicted by World War I in distinctive ways. The parceling out of former Ottoman lands to satiate the needs of neighboring... more
Though largely understudied to date, the regions in the western Balkans inhabited by Albanian speakers were afflicted by World War I in distinctive ways. The parceling out of former Ottoman lands to satiate the needs of neighboring political and economic elite introduced a unique set of consequences for Albanian-speakers. The battles between armies and the residual horrors accompanying war-famine and forced migration-became the reality of the 20 th century for most Albanians who were exposed to a violence that ripped apart the largely peasant population. The resulting chaos invariably transformed the region into a contested area inhabited by a politically scattered population whose future would be increasingly decided by the outsiders charged with occupying Albanian lands between 1912 and 1920. These occupations often required considerable collaboration with selected local intermediaries, some of whom became the dominant political actors in Albanian lands for much of the 20 th century.
Research Interests: European History, Diplomatic History, Modern Italian History, Albanian Studies, Balkan History, and 13 moreIdentity politics, Nationalism, National Identity, Serbian history, Nationalism And State Building, Ottoman Empire, Modern Greek History, World War I, Ottoman Balkans, French Imperialism, Balkans, Austro-Hungarian History, and Diplomacy and international relations
Since the end of the 1990s, Albanians in North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia have submitted to a regime of political and economic austerity in return for access to the European Union. The heavy costs, from economic... more
Since the end of the 1990s, Albanians in North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia have submitted to a regime of political and economic austerity in return for access to the European Union. The heavy costs, from economic decline, deadly pollution, and political corruption have translated into years of frustrations. These frustrations have exposed a political failure that extends from the region to the United States and Brussels. The resulting political turmoil will soon turn violent as the global economic downturn puts strains on Albanians sliding further away from their untrustworthy EU/U.S. allies. These afflicted relations may also highlight enduring tensions within the larger NATO alliance as American unilateralism continues to strain the divergent interests of key European partners.
Research Interests: European Studies, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Border Studies, Albanian Studies, and 14 moreBalkan Studies, Political Science, Identity politics, Kosovo, Nationalism, National Identity, Democracy, European Union Politics, U.S. Foreign Policy, Albania, Borders and Frontiers, Kosova, Western Balkans, and Diplomacy and international relations
How will historians a generation or two from now write about this war on Yemen? Will there be any interest in inspecting more deeply what happened, why, and under whose watch such a crime was committed? Or will future historians resort to... more
How will historians a generation or two from now write about this war on Yemen? Will there be any interest in inspecting more deeply what happened, why, and under whose watch such a crime was committed? Or will future historians resort to repeating the dominant frames used to characterize (or ignore) this war on Yemen used today?
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Scholars have long studied Western imperialism through the prism of pre-World War I literature and journalism. Characterizing this literature as Orientalist has become pro-grammatic and predictable. The sometimes rigid analysis of this... more
Scholars have long studied Western imperialism through the prism of pre-World War I literature and journalism. Characterizing this literature as Orientalist has become pro-grammatic and predictable. The sometimes rigid analysis of this literature often misses, however, the contested dynamics within. This is especially the case with analyses of Ottoman contributions to the rise of a Western colonialist ethos – orientalism, imperialism , and racism – reflecting the political, structural, and economic changes that directly impacted the world. Essentially, colonial pretensions – servicing the ambitions of European imperialism at the expense of peoples in the 'Orient' – were articulated at a time when patriotic Ottomans, among others, were pushing back against colonialism. This article explores the possibility that such a response, usefully framed as Ottomanism, contributed regularly to the way peoples interacted in the larger context of a contentious exchange between rival imperialist projects. What is different here is that some articulations of Ottomanism were proactive rather than reactive. In turn, some of the Orientalism that has become synonymous with studies about the relationship between Europe, the Americas, and the peoples " East of the Urals " may have been a response to these Ottomanist gestures.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Modern History, Ethnic Studies, Comparative Literature, and 19 moreOttoman History, Globalization, Political Theory, Middle East Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, Race and Ethnicity, Colonialism, Victorian Literature, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Turkey, Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Balkans, Middle East Politics, Modern Turkey, Orientalism, and Imperialism
Call for submissions/abstracts to attend the Global Research Meeting sponsored by the GRC (Geneva/Cambridge) held in Cambridge August 24-27. Abstract attached. Deadline Feb. 28. For details and instructions see... more
Call for submissions/abstracts to attend the Global Research Meeting sponsored by the GRC (Geneva/Cambridge) held in Cambridge August 24-27. Abstract attached. Deadline Feb. 28. For details and instructions see http://gulfresearchmeeting.net/callforpapers/GRM-2015-CALL.jpg
Research Interests: International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Middle East Studies, Political Science, Race and Ethnicity, and 20 moreTurkish and Middle East Studies, Saudi Arabia, Middle Eastern Politics, Middle Eastern Studies, Arabian Gulf, Yemen, Middle East Politics, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, International Relations of Middle East, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Middle East, Red Sea, Yemen Ethnography, Yemen Development, Zaydism, Zaydiyya, South Arabian Culture, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), Shi`a, Zaydis in Yemen, Zaydi leadership, and Yemen politics
Underlying any study wishing to account for fundamental changes in how societies function must be the quest to identify causes and effects of violence. Predictably, this has led to contradictory, if not ultimately confusing, narratives... more
Underlying any study wishing to account for fundamental changes in how societies function must be the quest to identify causes and effects of violence. Predictably, this has led to contradictory, if not ultimately confusing, narratives with as much left out of the story as imposed by the historian. What these contradictory stories ultimately suggest is that any attempt to study the animating factors leading to, and resulting from, violence in any specific moment will suffer from a fundamental flaw: The fact that a composite narrative misrepresents the reality of disparate and geographically scattered events. As such, any reference to bloodshed must account for the fact that any number of things can potentially contribute to different processes taking place at the same time (and even place), processes that cannot be neatly explained by reference to violence alone.
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Research Interests: Modern History, Terrorism, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Political Science, and 16 moreRevolutions, Political Violence and Terrorism, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Middle Eastern Politics, Islamic Studies, Modern Middle East History, Middle Eastern Studies, Yemen, Social movements and revolution, Middle East Politics, History of the Modern Middle East, Yemen (History), Middle East, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, Arab Spring (Arab Revolts), and Yemen politics
Research Interests: European History, Diplomatic History, Eastern European Studies, European Studies, International Relations, and 29 moreDevelopment Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, NATO, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Political Science, Race and Ethnicity, Kosovo, Nationalism, Yugoslavia, Post-Colonialism, Diplomacy, Balkan Politics, Conflict Resolution, Post-Conflict State Building, Hegemony, Independence, Peacebuilding, Kosova, Western Balkans, OSCE, Icons, EULEX, Post Conflict Issues, UNMIK, and Contemporary Balkans Geopolitics
Research Interests: Diplomatic History, International Relations, Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, and 13 moreBorder Studies, World History, Middle Eastern History, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Yemen, Imperialism, Red Sea, Arabian Peninsula, and Borders and Borderlands
Research Interests: European History, Eastern European Studies, European Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, Albanian Studies, and 13 moreBalkan Studies, Political Science, Race and Ethnicity, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, European Foreign Policy, Conflict Resolution, Ethnicity, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Former Yugoslavia, Kosova, Ethnicity and National Identity, and Balkan Wars
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copy of presentation and recording to audience at Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies
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Research Interests: European History, Ethnic Studies, Eastern European Studies, European Studies, Comparative Politics, and 28 moreInternational Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Middle East Studies, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, Political Science, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Race and Ethnicity, Political Violence and Terrorism, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Saudi Arabia, Islamic Studies, Muslims in Europe, Islam, Middle East Politics, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, War on Terror, Political Islam, Modern European History, Islamic Movements and Political Islam, Salafism, Western Balkans, Wahhabism, Ethnicity and National Identity, Balkan Islam, and Islamic Charities
Research Interests: Diplomatic History, Anthropology, Comparative Politics, International Relations, Globalization, and 17 moreAlbanian Studies, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Political Science, Identity politics, Kosovo, Ethnic and Racial Studies, National Identity, Post-Conflict State Building, Ethnic Conflict and Civil War, Etnography, Kosova, Western Balkans, Post Conflict Development, and Post Conflict Issues
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Research Interests: Comparative Politics, Political Theory, Middle East Studies, Political Science, Political Violence and Terrorism, and 15 moreSaudi Arabia, Middle Eastern Politics, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, Yemen, Middle East Politics, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Political Islam, Authoritarianism, Yemen (History), Comparative Politics, Democratization, Authoritarian Regimes, Regime Change, Concept Analysis, Measurement, Yemen Development, Salafism, War on Terrorism, and Yemen politics
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The constant search for systems that could cost-effectively exploit an otherwise unmanageable diversity of interests seemed paramount to any successful transition into the modern world. Historians studying the conflicts caused by such... more
The constant search for systems that could cost-effectively exploit an otherwise unmanageable diversity of interests seemed paramount to any successful transition into the modern world. Historians studying the conflicts caused by such “modernization” do so by comparing relatively successful empires with those that “failed.” Such comparisons benefit from hindsight. While the Ottoman and Habsburg/Romanov empires presumably “failed” to navigate the complexities of the modern world, their masters succeeded to redraw the world’s political boundaries from the 1870s onwards. Analyzing modern imperialism through this prism may, however, prove limiting. More fruitful studies also invest in differentiating the ideologies political classes adopted during periods of transition. Taking this approach helps reveal that in many cases, Ottomans proved far from being mere victims of history. The case of a generation of Southern Albanian Ottoman subjects helps make this case.
Research Interests: Comparative Politics, Globalization, Albanian Studies, Balkan History, African History, and 15 moreIdentity politics, International Political Economy, World History, Modernization, Modernity, Islamic Studies, International Migration, Ottoman Empire, Middle Eastern Studies, British Empire, Global History, Diaspora and transnationalism, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Imperialism, and Austro-Hungarian History
This challenge to conventional understandings of "modern" state institutions and the function of schools in particular includes a close analysis of Austro-Hungarian investments in education in Ottoman Albanian inhabited regions.... more
This challenge to conventional understandings of "modern" state institutions and the function of schools in particular includes a close analysis of Austro-Hungarian investments in education in Ottoman Albanian inhabited regions. Consisting of both Catholic and Muslim subjects deemed strategic for the Habsburg imperial project in the Balkans, the following article highlights the product of years of research in various archives that helped the author challenged popular assumptions about the power of modern institutions to make modern subjects. A challenge to the sweeping embrace of Foucault's reading of the power of the institution to insinuate state/capitalist/elitist influence in the subconscious of Albanian-Ottoman subjects, this early article highlights the need of micro-historical perspectives and allowing for "locals" to remain actors in the shaping of the modern world.
Research Interests: Comparative Religion, Education, Ottoman History, Modern Italian History, Italian Studies, and 15 moreCatholic Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Comparative & International Education, Habsburg Studies, Modernization, Islamic Studies, Globalization And Postcolonial Studies, Ottoman-Habsburg relations, Ottoman Balkans, Europeanization of the Balkans, Anthropology of the State, Foucault and education, Roman Catholicism, Balkans, and Imperialism
To better appreciate modern imperialism in Yemen, the following charts how relations with Eurasian powers like the Ottomans and Britain shifted from humble alliance making to outright (almost always failed) attempts at military conquest.... more
To better appreciate modern imperialism in Yemen, the following charts how relations with Eurasian powers like the Ottomans and Britain shifted from humble alliance making to outright (almost always failed) attempts at military conquest. As argued, it is crucial to reflect more closely on the manner Eurasian agents secured their initial foothold in the Western Indian Ocean world by way of such alliances.
Full copy of:
Blumi I. (2020) Yemen, Imperialism in. In: Ness I., Cope Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Full copy of:
Blumi I. (2020) Yemen, Imperialism in. In: Ness I., Cope Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Research Interests: European History, International Relations, Middle East Studies, British History, War Studies, and 15 moreWorld History, Colonialism, Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Global History, Migration Studies, Yemen, History of Imperialism, British Imperialism, Middle East, Imperialism, Red Sea, Anti-imperialism, Arabian/Persian Gulf Studies, and Colonialism and Imperialism
Surviving the Balkans' twentieth century was no simple task for Albanian Christians. Facing a regime of capitalism that absorbed the socialist Balkans in the 1990s, the efforts of Albanian Orthodox Christians to adapt seem inadequate.... more
Surviving the Balkans' twentieth century was no simple task for Albanian Christians. Facing a regime of capitalism that absorbed the socialist Balkans in the 1990s, the efforts of Albanian Orthodox Christians to adapt seem inadequate. This chapter explores how one may read the struggles of the post-communist Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church that confronted the "universal" liberal enterprise in the context of the concurrent tensions within Albanian circles seeking the reaffirmation of ethno-nationalist concerns. In questioning how the rebuilding of the Church reflected an aggressive missionary approach led by Greek-born Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, it will become clear how necessary it is to read this ongoing process of rebuilding on several institutional and ideological/spiritual planes.
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This chapter explores tactics used by various Albanians traumatized by what they believe is their unwarranted affiliation with Islam. Efforts to rewrite the past as a way to shape these modern identity claims must take on a corrective... more
This chapter explores tactics used by various Albanians traumatized by what they believe is their unwarranted affiliation with Islam. Efforts to rewrite the past as a way to shape these modern identity claims must take on a corrective agenda vis-à-vis the international relations analysis that has contributed to this discourse of Albanian/Muslim marginality. As such, the chapter inspects the ideological assumptions of the proponents of this corrective agenda in the Western Balkans, an area still on the margins of European inclusion. This aim is pursued by critically questioning how a selective reading of the past, often framed as nostalgia for cultural as much as political relations between the Balkans and Europe, highlights a prevailing methodological weakness in the study of the Balkans.
Research Interests: European Studies, Comparative Politics, Ottoman History, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, and 13 morePolitical Science, Race and Ethnicity, Identity politics, Kosovo, Nationalism, Mediterranean Studies, Migration Studies, Ottoman Balkans, Political Islam, Nostalgia, Orientalism, Kosova, and Ismail Kadare - Albanian writer
Over a period that most likely begins in the 1920s and continues to the summer of 2014, processes in the Middle East have taken certain discursive forms and structural directions that invite evoking Louis Althusser in new ways. The... more
Over a period that most likely begins in the 1920s and continues to the summer of 2014, processes in the Middle East have taken certain discursive forms and structural directions that invite evoking Louis Althusser in new ways. The ascendancy—“out of nowhere”—of Da’ish (ISIS, ISIL, Islamic State, or Islamic Caliphate) in the Syrian/Iraqi desert since the spring of 2014 has taken this long process to the center stage of mainstream media and academic portals. A seemingly unstoppable force of hardened “fanatics,” whose intolerance for human spiritual “difference” is (suspiciously) put on conspicuous display by way of beheadings and crucifixions, seems to mark a new phase in what may be called a perpetual Euro-American project. As suggested below, by reconsidering Political Islam as but a product of would-be hegemons’ long cultivated program of full-spectrum domination (on the cheap), it may be possible to finally bring Althusser’s investigations into ideology and its relation to how human subjects internalize modern power in the 1960s and 1970s to work within the context of the Middle East/Islamic studies. Throughout this chapter, it is my intention to initiate what will eventually be a longer investigation into how Althusser’s interventions may help characterize media-constructions of the past twenty years—a period that saw the rise of a generic “Islamic Terrorist” supplant the more ideologically complicated Arab Nationalist, Palestinian freedom fighter, anti-imperialist guerrilla—as part of a project to gain unprecedented leverage over resource rich regions like the Middle East. In evoking Althusser to work for this larger project in such a way, it is hoped that the following not only highlights the enduring utility of his work on thinking about power, but also frees the discussion on contemporary affairs from the very mechanisms of ideological obfuscation that have led so many observers to abandon analytical tools once deemed useful during the still relevant struggle against global capitalism prior to the 1990s. In sum, Althusser may help us resurrect the necessary skepticism of a world concocted from the bowels of Euro-American capitalism.
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“Neither Eastern nor Welcome: The Confused Lives of Berlin’s Balkan Migrants, 1950-2000,” Marc Silberman, (ed.) After the Fall: Berlin in Germany and Europe (Palgrave-Macmillian, 2011): 183-207.
Research Interests: European History, European Studies, German Studies, European integration, Albanian Studies, and 15 moreBalkan Studies, Balkan History, Migration, Cold War, Race and Ethnicity, Labor Migration, Turkish and Middle East Studies, International Migration, Migration Studies, Diaspora Studies, Transnational migration, Cold War history, Modern European History, Berlin, and Integration
“Ethnic Borders to a Democratic Society in Kosova: The UN's Identity Card,” Understanding the War in Kosovo, Bieber, (ed.) [London: Frank Cass, 2003]: 318-356.
Research Interests: International Relations, International Relations Theory, International Development, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, and 15 moreInternational Security, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Democratization, Identity (Culture), Race and Ethnicity, Kosovo, Nationalism, United Nations, Humanitarian Intervention, National Identity, Balkan Politics, Post-Conflict State Building, Ethnicity, Ethnicity and National Identity, and International conflicts Interantional Court of Justice
“Divergent Loyalties and Their Memory: How Three Albanians Shaped Their Histories of the Great War” in The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Olaf Farschid (ed.) [Beirut: Beiruter Texte und Studien... more
“Divergent Loyalties and Their Memory: How Three Albanians Shaped Their Histories of the Great War” in The First World War as Remembered in the Countries of the Eastern Mediterranean Olaf Farschid (ed.) [Beirut: Beiruter Texte und Studien 99, 2006]: 331-344.
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“Adding New Scales of History to the Eastern Mediterranean: Illicit Trade and the Albanian,” Meltem Toksoz and Biray Kirli (eds.), Cities of the Mediterranean: From the Ottomans to the Present Day [London: I.B.Tauris, 2010]: 116-138.
Research Interests: European History, European Studies, Ottoman History, Balkan Studies, Balkan History, and 10 moreMediterranean Studies, Ottoman Studies, Ottoman Empire, Ottoman Balkans, Political Economy of International Trade, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Adriatic Sea, Imperialism, Smuggling, and Austro-Hungarian History
Underlying any study of the violence in the Balkans that ended with wars must be a quest to identify causes and effects. Predictably, this has led to contradictory, if not confusing, narratives that at times blur causal factors by... more
Underlying any study of the violence in the Balkans that ended with wars must be a quest to identify causes and effects. Predictably, this has led to contradictory, if not confusing, narratives that at times blur causal factors by privileging some over others. This study argues that failing to acknowledge a spatial perspective ultimately implies that any attempt to study the animating factors leading to violence in an "area" will suffer from a fundamental flaw: any composite narrative misrepresents the disparate and geographically dispersed events that contribute to very different processes taking place at the same time and even locale.
Research Interests: Area Studies, Comparative Politics, Ottoman History, Violence, Middle East Studies, and 20 moreRefugee Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, Migration, Kosovo, Colonialism, Ottoman Studies, Turkish and Middle East Studies, Post-Colonialism, Serbian history, Islamic Studies, Ottoman Empire, Postcolonial Theory, Forced Migration, Migration Studies, Ottoman Balkans, Middle East Politics, Refugees, and Imperialism
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in Vitalis and al-Rasheed (eds.) Counter Narratives: History, Contemporary Society and Politics in Saudi Arabia and Yemen [New York: Palgrave, 2004]: 103-119.
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Though largely understudied to date, the regions in the western Balkans inhabited by Albanian speakers were afflicted by World War I in distinctive ways. The parceling out of former Ottoman lands to satiate the needs of neighboring... more
Though largely understudied to date, the regions in the western Balkans inhabited by Albanian speakers were afflicted by World War I in distinctive ways. The parceling out of former Ottoman lands to satiate the needs of neighboring political and economic elite introduced a unique set of consequences for Albanian-speakers. The battles between armies and the residual horrors accompanying war—famine and forced migration—became the reality of the 20th century for most Albanians who were exposed to a violence that ripped apart the largely peasant population. The resulting chaos invariably transformed the region into a contested area inhabited by a politically scattered population whose future would be increasingly decided by the outsiders charged with occupying Albanian lands between 1912 and 1920. These occupations often required considerable collaboration with selected local intermediaries, some of whom became the dominant political actors in Albanian lands for much of the 20th century.
Research Interests: French History, Ottoman History, Modern Italian History, Albanian Studies, Balkan Studies, and 16 moreBalkan History, Kosovo, Habsburg Studies, Serbian history, Islamic Studies, World War I, Ottoman-Habsburg relations, Ottoman Balkans, Islamic History, Bulgarian history, Balkans, Serbia, Western Balkans, Austro-Hungarian History, Balkan Wars 1912-1913, and Albanian History
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Reviewed in Comparativ (Leipzig, Germany).
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Review of book in Journal of Anthropological Research vol. 71 2015
Research Interests: European Studies, European integration, French Studies, Middle East Studies, Migration, and 11 moreIslam in Europe, Islamic Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Migration Studies, Politics of Secularism, Islamic History, Migration (Anthropology), Secularisms and Secularities, Religious Studies, Anthropology of Religion, and Islamophobia In Europe
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The routes of migration in the " long " twentieth century constitute passages through which not only people have changed their location, but also the material and immaterial goods which they have taken with them. Scholars from many... more
The routes of migration in the " long " twentieth century constitute passages through which not only people have changed their location, but also the material and immaterial goods which they have taken with them. Scholars from many disciplinary backgrounds have studied the symbols of migrants remembering their origins, which manifest themselves in objects, artifacts, songs, monuments, newspapers and magazines, letters and photographs, performative exclamations and orally transmitted memories. Such representations of migration can freeze positive memories of that which needs preservation or melancholic memories of an often-dramatic migration experience taking place in a distant world. This is certainly the case for tens of millions of people from the Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Empires. With the variable waves of migration subjects of these empires generating a flurry of transformative experiences that have left their imprint well into the Cold War era, it is time to consider what can be salvaged from these events and analyzed in critical new ways. In the hope of opening a new set of comparative and perhaps collaborative investigations into the long-term impact of the explosive migrations out of these three empires, we are organizing a two-day conference to facilitate discussion between advanced graduate students and established scholars. The aim of the gathering in Munich at the beginning of 2018 is to produce a framework in which new inquiries into the dynamics around migration within and beyond the late Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian Empires are possible. With special focus on the traumas and transformations taking place from the 1870s until the early Cold War, we believe there is an important new, often trans-national perspective to be developed for the study of migration. Post-imperial
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The 3rd Annual MUBIT Doctoral Workshop in Late- and Post-Ottoman Studies in Basel, "A Modern World in Flux: Studying Migration, Refugees, and Settlement Regimes from the Middle East and Beyond," is a two-day intensive seminar (May 29-30,... more
The 3rd Annual MUBIT Doctoral Workshop in Late- and Post-Ottoman Studies in Basel, "A Modern World in Flux: Studying Migration, Refugees, and Settlement Regimes from the Middle East and Beyond," is a two-day intensive seminar (May 29-30, 2015) organized by Prof. Dr. Maurus Reinkowski, Dr. Selen Etingü, and Alp Yenen, M.A. at the Middle Eastern Studies of Department of Social Sciences at the University of Basel.
The objective of the workshop is for participants to acquire advanced insight into the study of migration, refugees, and settlement regimes in and from the Global South in a historical-comparative and social-theoretical manner.
This two-day seminar will take an inter-disciplinary approach to discussing, theorizing and historicizing the impact of large-scale, modern human migrations as a result of war and economic development. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship in anthropology, sociology and history, this seminar will apply new methods of analyzing these movements of immigrants and refugees. The same methods will also be used to examine the actions of those governments seeking to settle such people who directly affected the global transformations of the past two centuries (1800-2015). These two days will be broken up into at least four separate sections, with a survey of the larger issues addressed within the different disciplines. In each of the sections, different sources will be used to initiate discussion among the participants.
The doctoral workshop is funded by MUBIT Inter-University Doctoral Coordination in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Basel/Zurich and is a part of the curriculum of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (G3S), University of Basel.
The objective of the workshop is for participants to acquire advanced insight into the study of migration, refugees, and settlement regimes in and from the Global South in a historical-comparative and social-theoretical manner.
This two-day seminar will take an inter-disciplinary approach to discussing, theorizing and historicizing the impact of large-scale, modern human migrations as a result of war and economic development. Drawing on a wide range of scholarship in anthropology, sociology and history, this seminar will apply new methods of analyzing these movements of immigrants and refugees. The same methods will also be used to examine the actions of those governments seeking to settle such people who directly affected the global transformations of the past two centuries (1800-2015). These two days will be broken up into at least four separate sections, with a survey of the larger issues addressed within the different disciplines. In each of the sections, different sources will be used to initiate discussion among the participants.
The doctoral workshop is funded by MUBIT Inter-University Doctoral Coordination in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Basel/Zurich and is a part of the curriculum of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (G3S), University of Basel.
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The British Empire adopted an array of contradictory policies towards Muslim subjects scattered throughout the world. As it managed its post-World War I goal of dominating the former Ottoman territories, London-based policies considered... more
The British Empire adopted an array of contradictory policies towards Muslim subjects scattered throughout the world. As it managed its post-World War I goal of dominating the former Ottoman territories, London-based policies considered varying policies. Since the British Empire managed its affairs with different Muslim subjects through different administrations based in Cairo, Bombay, and occupied Istanbul after 1918, such policies clashed, reflecting the distinctive issues facing administrators of these unique regions. This article makes the observation that there proved to be a range of policies adopted by competing entities of «His Majesty’s Government» (HMG) toward the Caliphate, requiring a rethinking of British imperialism vis-à-vis the Muslim world. Seeking to use the Caliphate from 1912 to 1924 for different objectives, the following reads these policies within the larger context of an empire facing disparate and contradictory challenges from different Muslims demands. In the process, this chapter asks why local events regularly upset such schemes that sought to mobilize the Caliphate, questions answered by returning focus to a multiplicity of factors contributing to the modern world’s (dis)order
Research Interests: Comparative Politics, Islamic Contemporary Studies, Nationalism, Syrian Studies, Saudi Arabia, and 15 moreGlobal History, World War I, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), Turkish Greek Relations, Interwar Period History, Modern Turkey, History of Turkish Republic, French Impressionism, Middle East, Indian Muslims, Salafism, Arab nationalism, Anti-Colonialism, Lausanne Treaty, and Caliphate
As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by... more
As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by availing themselves to the evolving Ottoman state with the hope of fusing efforts of reform with the emerging political-cultural structures of the larger world that was explicitly geared to tear the multi-ethnic Ottoman Balkans apart. By exploring the manner in which some members of the Balkans' cultural elite adapted as their worlds transformed, this article introduces new methods of interpreting and narrating transitional periods such as those impacting men like Fan S. Noli. His itinerary itself reveals just how complex life in the Balkans and Black Sea would be during the 1878-1922 period, but not one entirely subordinate to the ethno-nationalist agenda so often associated with him.
Research Interests: Ottoman History, Middle East Studies, Middle East & North Africa, Albanian Studies, Race and Ethnicity, and 9 moreNationalism, Mediterranean, International Migration, Global History, Ottoman Balkans, Diaspora and transnationalism, Economic and Social History of the Ottoman Empire, Orthodox Christianity, and US History
In Kosovo, .... the results of the snap October parliamentary elections accurately reflected the collective frustrations of voters. The foremost opposition party, Lëvizja Vetëvendosja! (VV, or Self-Determination), and its charismatic... more
In Kosovo, .... the results of the snap
October parliamentary elections accurately reflected
the collective frustrations of voters. The foremost
opposition party, Lëvizja Vetëvendosja! (VV,
or Self-Determination), and its charismatic leader
Albin Kurti seem to have won a mandate to directly
challenge Kosovo’s EU/US masters. Yet their
efforts to form a new government ran up against
the stalling tactics of the second-largest opposition
party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). By
all accounts, the LDK, loyal to Washington since
the 1990s, has embraced the US embassy’s hostility
to the prospect of working with a government led
by Kurti. A new coalition government was finally
formed on February 5, allowing Kurti to take office
as prime minister. But a difficult partnership is
expected, with the LDK seeking to block VV from
enacting its most radical corrective policies. This
spells trouble for 2020.
October parliamentary elections accurately reflected
the collective frustrations of voters. The foremost
opposition party, Lëvizja Vetëvendosja! (VV,
or Self-Determination), and its charismatic leader
Albin Kurti seem to have won a mandate to directly
challenge Kosovo’s EU/US masters. Yet their
efforts to form a new government ran up against
the stalling tactics of the second-largest opposition
party, the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). By
all accounts, the LDK, loyal to Washington since
the 1990s, has embraced the US embassy’s hostility
to the prospect of working with a government led
by Kurti. A new coalition government was finally
formed on February 5, allowing Kurti to take office
as prime minister. But a difficult partnership is
expected, with the LDK seeking to block VV from
enacting its most radical corrective policies. This
spells trouble for 2020.
Research Interests: International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, Albanian Studies, Strategic Studies, Race and Ethnicity, and 14 moreKosovo, Nationalism, Russian Foreign Policy, Conflict Resolution, Pipeline, Democracy, Turkish Foreign Policy, European Union Politics, European Union external relations, Albania, Balkans, Western Balkans, Politics and International relations, and Diplomacy and international relations
This thematic issue of Die Welt des Islams, volume 56, no. 3/4, features 11 articles (6 historical and 5 contemporary) on the different faces of Ottomanism, in the 19th century, and its (re)interpretation, today.