Imperial History

The Haganah and SOE: Allies and Enemies - Irregular Warfare & Politics in Mandatory Palestine - Given at SMH 2012

by Jacob Stoil

'Africa and the Atlantic World, 1450-1850' programme

by Edmond Smith

22nd-23rd June 2012, Centre for African Studies, University of Cambridge

Bringing speakers from four continents to Cambridge, including keynote speakers Prof Alison Games (Georgetown) and... more Bringing speakers from four continents to Cambridge, including keynote speakers Prof Alison Games (Georgetown) and Prof Vincent Brown (Harvard), this conference will explore the role of Africa in the Atlantic World during the early modern period.

To register please follow the link attached, and for further information email africaatlanticconference@gmail.com

"Sowing the seed of national strife in this alien region". The Pahlen Report and Pereselenie in Turkestan, 1908-1911

by Alexander Morrison

Acta Slavica Iaponica Tomus 31 pp.1 - 29

This article examines the institutional background to the decision to send Senator Count K. K. Pahlen's Commission of... more This article examines the institutional background to the decision to send Senator Count K. K. Pahlen's Commission of Inspection to Turkestan in 1908. It concentrates on the divisive issue of 'pereselenie', or peasant resettlement, which Pahlen was supposed to be facilitating but ended up opposing. The article also seeks to establish the value or otherwise to the historian of the Pahlen Commission's multi-volume report.

Zographou et la transmission de l’idée impériale bulgare en Moldavie

by Dan Ioan Muresan

Published in : Bulgaria Mediaevalis 2 (2011), p. 705-755.

Dans l’effort de trouver l’origine et le sens de la terminologie impériale dans les chroniques officielles de... more Dans l’effort de trouver l’origine et le sens de la terminologie impériale dans les chroniques officielles de Moldavie, nous analysons à présent en détail le rôle de levier idéologique du monastère bulgare du Mont Athos, Zographou. Nous montrons d’abord que ce monastère a joué le rôle de fondation impériale de la maison impériale des Assénides, fonction qui est d’ailleurs reconnue aussi par les empereurs byzantins et serbes. Après l’extinction de la branche impériale des Assénides, à la suite de la conquête ottomane, la fonction de patron du monastère échut au patriarche de Constantinople Joseph II, fils illégitime du dernier tsar bulgare, Ioan Alexandre. Or c’est durant son pontificat (1416-1439) que le patronage du monastère fut transféré par dévolution aux princes de Moldavie qui, à la même époque, s’opposent avec succès à l’avancée ottomane. Nous identifions les acteurs du transfert : les métropolites byzantins de Moldavie, Damien et Théoctiste, tous deux d’origine bulgare, et probablement aussi apparentés au patriarche. Nous mettons ainsi en évidence l’existence d’un processus de transfert de patronage de la dynastie impériale des Assénides à la dynastie moldave des Bogdanides. Avec l’insertion des princes moldaves dans les livres liturgiques de l’Église bulgare, tout le vocabulaire du pouvoir impérial fut élargi en direction des souverains de Moldavie. Enfin, nous trouvons ainsi une explication à un détail diplomatique des sources roumaines : le nom du pouvoir Ioan attaché pendant cinq siècles au début des noms de baptême de tous les princes roumains. Ce nom d’autorité – de la même catégorie que César, August, Karl (kral) – renvoie aux deux fondateurs de la dynastie Assénide, Ioan Asan I et son frère Ioannitza, les restaurateurs de l’Empire bulgare. Un phénomène similaire est attesté en Serbie, où tous les membres de la dynastie portaient aussi le nom de pouvoir Stefan, nom du fondateur de l’État serbe.

Africa and the Atlantic World, 1450-1850

by Joshua Newton

22-23 June, University of Cambridge.
See the full Call for Papers here: http://www.history.ac.uk/events/event/3346

See the full Call for Papers here: See the full Call for Papers here: http://www.history.ac.uk/events/event/3346

Language and Culture in the Growth of Imperialism

by Sharron Gu

This book is going to be published by McFarland on March 2012.

It studies the history of global aggression and expansion in the Greek, Roman, Islamic, British, Russian, and American... more It studies the history of global aggression and expansion in the Greek, Roman, Islamic, British, Russian, and American empires. It presents imperialism as a cultural phenomenon rather than merely a military and economic expansion. Imperialism is the natural result for a young and vibrant culture, which emerged from a hybrid of languages. It could be a culture that grew in a multi-lingual environment (Greek, Roman, and English), an established culture revitalized by injection of a new ideology (Islamic and Russian), or a language uprooted from its sub-verbal soil and transplanted into a new cultural mosaic (America). These hybrid giants developed a brand new identity and vision of the world, as well as an inflated sense of self, and a desperate need for gratification and glorification. On the other side of this fragile ego is an exaggerated fear, which became the engine of war.

Updated Call for Papers 'Africa and the Atlantic World, 1450-1850'

by Edmond Smith

The deadline for this CFP has now passed. Registration to attend this event will be open until May 2012.

Französische Interessen im Osmanischen Reich in dern 1760ern - Eine alte Freundschaft unter neuen Vorzeichen

by Christoph Hornig

class paper

Das Osmanische Reich ist in der Frühen Neuzeit vielen Anschuldigungen seitens Auropas ausgesetzt. Ungeachtet dessen... more Das Osmanische Reich ist in der Frühen Neuzeit vielen Anschuldigungen seitens Auropas ausgesetzt. Ungeachtet dessen gab es eine langanhaltende Kooperation westlicher Staaten mit den Sultanen der Pforte. Allen voran steht
Frankreich, das in Abwehr gegen Habsburg mit den Sultanen gemeinsame Sache machte.
Trotz aller Legitimierungsschwierigkeiten zieht sich die Kooperation wie ein roter Faden durch die gesamte Frühe
Neuzeit.
Nach einer Darstellung der diplomatischen Beziehungen in der Frühen Neuzeit und besonders der Entwicklung der permanenten Gesandtschaften, wird auf die französisch-osmanischen Beziehungen eingegangen. Hier werden chronologisch Charakteristika der Kooperation und Konkurrenz erarbeitet. Der geopolitische Kontext ist das Thema des vierten Abschnitts und zeigt, in welcher Lage sich Frankreich nach dem Siebenjährigen Krieg und dem Verlust vieler seiner überseeischen Besitzungen
wiederfindet. Diese Darstellungen sollen den Rahmen für die Analyse der zwei Quellen bieten.
Die beiden Quellen sind Memoranden (Instructions) des französischen Hofes an seine permanenten Botschafter in Konstantinopel einerseits und Petersburg andererseits. Beide stammen aus dem Ende der 1760er Jahre und legen anschaulich die Interessenlage am französischen Hof dar.
Anhand der Quellen wird untersucht wie sich das Verhältnis Frankreichs zum Osmanischen Reich hinsichtlich seiner eigenen Interessen gewandelt hat, nachdem der Nukleus der Kooperation, die gemeinsame Konkurrenz mit den Habsburgern
erloschen ist. Die Betrachtung wird die Handels- und Machtinteressen bevorzugen und die religiösen Aspekte Seitens Frankreichs außen vor lassen.

Beatrice Penati, "Beyond technicalities: on land assessment and land-tax in Russian Turkestan"

by Beatrice Penati

Jahrbuecher fuer Geschichte Osteuropas, 59:1, 2011, pp. 1-27.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the workshop "Le Turkestan russe: une colonie comme les autres?", Paris, May 2009; and at the RESET summer school, Almaty, July 2009.

Notes on the birth of Russian Turkestan’s fiscal system. A view from the Fergana oblast’

by Beatrice Penati

Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 53:5 (2010), p. 739-769.

Lines of fracture in the Tsarist Empire. An overview (in Italian)

by Alberto Masoero

Linee di frattura nell'Impero zarista. Uno sguardo d'insieme, Storica, 2011:3

Alberto Masoero
Lines of Fracture in the Tsarist Empire. An Overview

This essay offers an... more Alberto Masoero
Lines of Fracture in the Tsarist Empire. An Overview

This essay offers an interpretation of the crisis of the Tsarist regime. It analyses three lines of fracture that potentially undermined the stability of the Imperial state during the 19th Century. It examines the tensions between a pre-modern social hierarchy and modern state-building, between an imperial or national definition of the state, and between the promotion of knowledge and the autocratic ideology. The 1905-17 reform-revolution historical cycle is interpreted as the result of the intersection and reciprocal intensification of these long-term factors.

Keywords: Tsarist Empire, Social Conflict, Nation building,
Revolutionary Movement

Review of: Barkey (Karen), Empire of Difference: the Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge UP, 2008)

by Nora Lafi

Published in Comparativ, 2011, 21-2, p.122-126

A review of Karen Barkey's Empire of Difference and a reflection on the governance of diversity in an Ottoman context,... more A review of Karen Barkey's Empire of Difference and a reflection on the governance of diversity in an Ottoman context, as well as on State-building processes and on the mutual construction of legitimacy between the imperial sphere and local powers.
Key Words: Ottoman Empire – State – Centralization – Istanbul – orient – orientalism – imperial model – imperial governance – Byzantium – Kappeler – Osman – Orhan – Wittek – Kafadar – Darling – Imber – Inalcik – Lowry – Matschke – Murad II – Christians – cohabition – governance – diversity – 1453 – petitions – Moore – Crete – Arab provinces – Voltaire – Islam – Locke – multiculturalism – Young Turks – Abdülhamid – Patrona Halil – Tanzimat – World War I – BOA Archives – tolerance – Bourdieu

Introduction to JBS 50.4 (October 2011)

by Brian Cowan

Co-authored with Elizabeth Elbourne

1.  William Perkins, “Atheisme,” and the Crises of England’s Long Reformation (pp. 790-812)  more

1.  William Perkins, “Atheisme,” and the Crises of England’s Long Reformation (pp. 790-812) 
Leif Dixon

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661199

2.  Evil Counsel: The Propositions to Bridle the Impertinency of Parliament and the Critique of Caroline Government in the Late 1620s (pp. 813-839) 
Noah Millstone

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661000

3.  The Citizens of Morley College (pp. 840-862) 
Andrea Geddes Poole

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661021

4.  Remembering the 1605 Gunpowder Plot in Ireland, 1605–1920 (pp. 863-891) 
James McConnel

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661200

5.  1688 and 1888: Victorian Society and the Bicentenary of the Glorious Revolution (pp. 892-916) 
Edmund Rogers

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661209

6.  Voices and Silences of Memory: Civilian Internees of the Japanese in British Asia during the Second World War (pp. 917-940) 
Felicia Yap

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661602

7.  Narrative and the Start of the Northern Irish Troubles: Ireland’s Revolutionary Tradition in Comparative Perspective (pp. 941-964) 
Simon Prince

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/661184

Rabindranath Tagore at 150: Representations and Misrepresentations

by Michael Collins

The Bengali poet, writer and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) remains a unique, though still... more The Bengali poet, writer and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) remains a unique, though still under-recognised genius. Tagore’s cultural production was vast, covering poetry, prose and plays; an astonishing volume of music which is played and sung throughout Bengal to this day (and includes the national anthems of two countries, India and Bangladesh); internationally acclaimed and exhibited paintings; social, political and philosophical essays; agrarian reform; pioneering environmentalism; the creation of a school and a university. His philosophy of education may yet come to be seen as one of his most significant contributions.

Despite all this, and compared to his contemporaries Gandhi and Nehru, relatively few people have heard of Rabindranath Tagore. A Titan of the Bengal Renaissance, Tagore was cast in Romantic mould by a briefly admiring modernist intelligentsia in England. In India he was feted but also castigated for supposedly betraying the nationalist Left. Much maligned and often misunderstood, recovering Tagore’s thought and life in all its complexity is important today – as the twenty-first century eclipse of the West by the East unfolds – for the fact that he tried to imagine and articulate an alternative modernity: not a Eurocentric one but a parallel Indian or ‘Eastern’ modernity that would necessarily involve inter-cultural dialogue and convergence. Tagore would have passionately opposed the post-9/11 ‘clash of civilisations’ argument.

Tagore, Gandhi and the National Question

by Michael Collins

Tagore’s anti-nationalism was born out of the violence that engulfed the anti-partition movement in Bengal between... more Tagore’s anti-nationalism was born out of the violence that engulfed the anti-partition movement in Bengal between 1905 and 1908. Lord Curzon sought to divide the Hindu and Muslim communities of the large and politically active Bengal Presidency, and in response the swadeshi (self-sufficiency) movement in Bengal anticipated Gandhi with its boycott of British goods. Tagore had initially supported the movement but soon turned away in disgust after it spiralled into violence. This was a seminal moment in Tagore’s life. He was less interested in the conditions under which it becomes conceivable for people to act violently than any socialist might have been. Tagore’s belief was rather that freedom cannot solely be attained through the instrumental rationality of politics, of which violence is a subset. The desire to shape or seize control of structures of power – state, army, police, even the economy – is insufficient unless we are willing to also look within at values, beliefs and culture. ‘The way of bloody revolution’, Tagore added, ‘is not the true way’: ‘a political revolution is like taking a short cut to nothing’. This could be seen as Tagore’s answer to the ‘two vital questions about the search for liberation in our times’ that Ashis Nandy has pointed to: ‘namely, why dictatorships of the proletariat never end and why revolutions always devour their children’.

Both Tagore and Gandhi agreed that there was to be nothing passive about resistance, but Tagore could not tolerate the negativity of book burning or education boycotts, which he saw as an offence against a higher ideal of cooperation. The differences between Tagore and Gandhi have been over-stated at times, but differences there were and their debates through the 1920s and 1930s about the nature of freedom deserve much more scholarly attention. Amartya Sen has written that Tagore ‘never criticized Gandhi personally’. This isn’t quite true. In a letter sent to his English missionary friend C. F. Andrews in July 1915, Tagore made the following and striking claim: ‘only a moral tyrant like Gandhi can think that he has the dreadful power to make his ideas prevail through the means of slavery’. When Andrews came to publish Tagore’s letter in his 1928 book Letters to a Friend he deleted Gandhi’s name and left only the generic ‘tyrant’. It suggests to us that in spite of Tagore’s obvious admiration for Gandhi; in spite of the fact that it was Tagore himself who first gave Gandhi the name mahatma – the ‘great soul’ – he held deep reservations about Gandhi’s methods. ‘It is absurd’, Tagore wrote ‘to think that you must create slaves to make your ideas free’. Tagore sometimes saw Gandhi’s willingness to enforce his beliefs as a form of violence. Tagore’s advocacy of the ‘worlding’ or opening out of a creative, expressive Indian self often clashed with Gandhi’s effort to negate external influence.

Tagore, England and the Nobel Prize

by Michael Collins

As perhaps the most famous of Tagore’s Western interlocutors, Yeats often features in commentaries on Tagore and the... more As perhaps the most famous of Tagore’s Western interlocutors, Yeats often features in commentaries on Tagore and the West, most specifically regarding Tagore’s visit to Britain in 1912 and Yeats’ role as midwife to Tagore’s Western reputation. Yeats’ role in securing the Nobel Prize for Rabindranath has been exaggerated: actually, a member of the Nobel Committee read Tagore in Bengali and they awarded the prize on the basis of many more texts than Gitanjali alone. Even so, it is almost universally assumed that Tagore recognised in Yeats a common poetic genius, and that Yeats, in turn, recognised Tagore as a ‘great poet’. But this is quite misleading. Tagore saw Yeats as a junior and less-accomplished man. Yeats’ knowledge of Tagore was embarrassingly vague and he himself had suggested that honouring Tagore in those early years was a piece of ‘wise imperialism’.

Rather than genuine dialogue and mutual learning, Yeats was more interested in instrumentalising Tagore – and the East more generally – as part of a project of European cultural recovery. Tagore functioned not as an independent thinker or agent of historical change in his own right, but as something of an aesthetic object. And when that object of fascination developed a voice beyond the pretty emotions of Gitanjali; when Tagore sought to lecture, educate and sometimes denounce the West in English, or to deepen the West’s understanding of Indian philosophy, his audience of admirers soon changed their mind. ‘Damn Tagore’, Yeats wrote in 1935, ‘he thought it more important to see and know English than to be a great poet, he brought out sentimental rubbish and wrecked his reputation. Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English’. The early green shoots of cross-cultural growth did not last even into the summer of 1913 when Pound decided that Tagore’s philosophy had little to offer anyone who had ‘felt the pangs’ and been ‘pestered with Western civilisation’. Yeats soon distanced himself from Tagore, and whilst his encounters with Indian philosophy and religious thought outlasted the Tagore moment, he found it difficult to move beyond the gauche problematic posed by Pound: ‘Why should India’, Yeats asked in the 1930s, ‘be always thinking of peace – shanti? Life is a conflict’.

[Review of] Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500-1830 Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault

by Andrew Struan

Orde Wingate and Anglo-Jewish Military Cooperation in Palestine - Myth versus Reality

by Simon Anglim

An unpublished paper based on one I gave at a conference at King's College in 2008.

Captain (later Major General) Orde Charles Wingate was engaged in training young Jewish men in counter-insurgency in... more Captain (later Major General) Orde Charles Wingate was engaged in training young Jewish men in counter-insurgency in Palestine for a number of months in 1938, during the Arab uprising of 1936-1939.  From this, he is viewed as one of the founding fathers of the Israeli military tradition.  The popular view is that he did this broadly against the wishes of his superiors in the British Army, and, indeed, was virtually the only friend the Jews had in that organisation: this view has been perpetuated in the literature.  This paper demonstrates that this was not the case: Wingate’s actions in Palestine formed part of a coherent counter-insurgency strategy devised by the British Army in which Jewish involvement – overt in the case of the uniformed police, covert in the form of the Haganah – was welcomed and integrated and continued after Wingate’s departure.  Moreover, there were other pro-Zionist officers serving in the British forces in Palestine at the time. 

Callwell versus Graziani: how the British Army applied 'small wars' techniques in major operations in Africa and the Middle East, 1940–41

by Simon Anglim

This is a manuscript copy of a paper I published in 'Small Wars and Insurgencies', Volume 19 No.4, December 2008

The period 1940-41 saw British forces in North and East Africa, and the Middle East, defeat considerably larger... more The period 1940-41 saw British forces in North and East Africa, and the Middle East, defeat considerably larger Italian and Vichy French forces in the Western Desert, Ethiopia, Somaliland and Syria. A key factor in this was the use at the operational and tactical level of fast-moving mobile forces, operating dispersed and with considerable initiative devolved upon junior commanders. This has been put down to a range of influences - Liddell Hart, Percy Hobart, Eric Dorman-Smith, etc, but this paper demonstrates its origins in the 'small wars' practices of the inter-war years, upon which a major influence was Major General Callwell's much-cited, but not often read tome, 'Small Wars'.

Eine „Familie der Könige“? Anrede und Bezeichnung von sowie Verhandlungen mit ausländischen Machthabern in den Urkunden des Patriarchatsregisters von Konstantinopel im 14. Jh. (A "Family of Kings"? Forms of address and termini for and negotiations with foreign rulers in the documents of the Register of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the 14th Century)

by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller

to be published in: Ch. Gastgeber et al. (ed.), Das Patriarchatsregister von Konstantinopel. Eine zentrale
Quelle zur Geschichte und Kirche im späten Byzanz. Vienna 2011, 40 p. (forthcoming).