Voici les éléments 1 - 10 sur 35
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Ordinary Ottomans: post-World War I settlements and experiences of the end of empire
    (2024)
    Aline Schlaepfer
    ;
    In the introduction to this special issue, we address the concepts of ordinariness and Ottomanness, and how they intersect within the general context of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire.1 Given the already existing scholarship on ordinary groups or individuals in the history of the Middle East, we first position ordinariness as context-specific; that is, we understand it as subjected to various forms of exclusion from the elite. Second, within the framework of the major political changes that characterise the end of Empire we explore ordinariness and how it is embedded in everyday life and practices. We interrogate the capacities of individuals to maintain regularity through ordinary practices, after or despite a disruptive episode. We argue that persisting with everyday life practices despite crisis can serve as a strategy to reclaim spaces of autonomy from power structures. However, we also demonstrate that ordinary individuals, being vulnerable subjects or citizens, are also subject to change. These questions eventually lead us to rethink the debate on ‘continuities and ruptures’ within the post-Ottoman context. We suggest that framing Ottomanness as a time-marker, rather than as an identity-marker (Ottoman-era), allows us to focus on how groups and individuals coped with these changes, rather than attempting to define them.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    "The Kurds and World War II: Some Considerations for a Social History Perspective"
    (Prague: OJS, 2023-10-29)
    Scholars generally argue that during the Second World War the Middle East, and the Kurdish areas in particular, was a peripheral theatre of an otherwise global war. While this is largely true, it seems necessary to introduce some nuances into this analysis. A view from the borderlands, combined with a socio-historical approach to how the war was experienced on a daily basis behind the front line, reveals that military tensions, large-scale arms smuggling, inflation, food shortages and economic migration were common features in the Kurdish borderlands between 1941 and 1945. Furthermore, looking at the uneventful can help us to better understand the context in which the Kurdish nationalist movement developed during the war and in the immediate post-war years.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Rethinking State and Border Formation in the Middle East: Turkish-Syrian-Iraqi Borderlands, 1921-46
    (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2023-05-31)
    While the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, alongside the establishment of the so-called “Islamic Caliphate” have brought the debate about the crisis of the territorial nation-state in the Middle East once again to the fore, this issue cannot be simply understood as the logical consequence of either an imported political construction or the purported artificiality of Middle Eastern borders. Instead, the process of state formation in the region has been a complicated course that involved different institutional traditions, managing societies marked by varying degrees of political loyalty to central power, and dealing with colonial interference. Rethinking State and Border Formation in the Middle East seeks to disentangle some of these complexities by proposing both a decentred and dialectic approach. Taking its cue from the bourgeoning field of borderland studies and a variety of historical sub-disciplines, this monograph pays attention to the circulation of people, goods, diseases and ideas as well as to the everyday encounters between a wide range of state and non-state actors in the borderlands laying between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. The goal is to provide a much more holistic yet finely-grained understanding of the formation of the territorial state in the interwar Middle East.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Between the Homeland and the Hostland: (Re)Claiming the Armenian Refugees in French Mandatory Syria, 1918-1946
    Le nom de « Syrie » est aujourd’hui associé à un grand nombre de réfugiés et aux personnes déplacées à l’intérieur du pays. Le sort actuel des réfugiés syriens survient un siècle après que la région fut le théâtre d’un bouleversement majeur dans le sillage des événements de la Première Guerre mondiale. A cette époque, la « Syrie » était un pays d’accueil pour les réfugiés et devint le nouveau foyer de milliers d’Arméniens, d’Assyriens et de Kurdes. Surtout, l’arrivée et l’installation de ces réfugiés se produisit à l’aune d’un tournant historique marqué par les incertitudes de l’après-guerre, la formation de l’État syrien sous le mandat français, et les tentatives infructueuses de créer un État arabe indépendant. Ces réfugiés jouèrent sans surprise un rôle de premier plan – directement ou indirectement – dans le processus de formation de l’État qui définit les contours de la Syrie contemporaine. Bien que trois groupes de réfugiés – Arméniens, Assyriens et Kurdes – fussent installer en Syrie pendant le mandat cette thèse de doctorat se concentre uniquement sur les Arméniens, soit la plus importante communauté de réfugiés. La plupart des spécialistes et des observateurs qui ont étudié la Syrie pendant l’entredeux- guerres s’accordent à penser que la question des réfugiés s’est posée de manière accrue à l’occasion de certains événements politiques, comme la tenue d’élections, l’octroi de la nationalité, la révolte syrienne (1925-1927), les crises économiques, et le flux de nouveaux réfugiés à la fin des années 1920 et au début des années 1930. Ce fut certainement le cas. Néanmoins, et en dépit de quelques exceptions, la question des réfugiés a été avant tout étudiée sur la base de la presse nationaliste syrienne, des archives du mandat français ou de la Ligue des Nations jusqu’à présent, adoptant ainsi une approche institutionelle. Les réflexions menées sur les réfugiés eux-mêmes en tant qu’acteurs historiques sont restées maigres. Où situer leur marge de manoeuvre ? Quel a été leur attitude à l’égard des événements d’ampleur ? Les Syriens se sont-ils unanimement prononcés contre leur installation ? En outre, les nationalistes syriens et les autorités mandataires françaises ont-ils les seuls acteurs pertinents dans la vie de ces réfugiés ? A travers l’examen de ces questions, cette thèse de doctorat fait le point sur ces faits marquants en utilisant un nouveau corpus de littérature et en développant de nouvelles interprétations. Elle s’appuie sur les approches savantes concernant les réfugiés arméniens pendant l’entre-deux-guerres en Syrie qui se concentrent sur leurs relations dichotomiques avec le pouvoir mandataire français ou les nationalistes syriens. Cette thèse de doctorat vise ensuite à évaluer la marge de manoeuvre des réfugiés arméniens tout en montrant comment ces réfugiés ont négocié leur place et leur statut en Syrie en relation avec tous les acteurs concernés. Ces derniers, outre les interlocuteurs français et syriens, ont compris l’Arménie soviétique, l’URSS, la Turquie kémaliste et les réseaux de la diaspora arménienne.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Regimes of Mobility: Borders and State Formation in the Middle East, 1918-1946
    (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Universtiy Press, 2022) ;
    For the past two decades, insights gained from the burgeoning field of borderlands studies have enabled a new generation of scholars to challenge popular depictions of the emergence of the modern Middle East. For them, the region’s borderlands were not just mere sites of peripheral activity, but rather liminal spaces criss-crossed by global flows and circulations central to state- and nation-formation across the Middle East. Regimes of Mobility offers a select number of case studies that highlight the connectedness of the politics of borderlands throughout the interwar Middle East. The emergence of the modern Middle East is the result of three complementary historical developments: the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the institution of British and French control in its stead and the nationalist challenges to this colonial scramble. The introduction of international borders that accompanied this process is commonly portrayed as the drawing of lines in the sand, an artificial partitioning that brought diplomatic closure to an otherwise contested historical space.
  • Publication
    Accès libre
  • Publication
    Accès libre
    Pêwendîya Franko-Kurdî Li Lubnan û Surîyeyê (1930-1946) û Bandora Wê Li Ser Avabûna Nasnameya Neteweyî Ya Kurdî
    (2021-4-1)
    Ev nivîs pêşî berê xwe dide wê ramana oryantalîzmê ya di navbera her du şerên cihanê de û bi dû ra bala nivîsê dikişîne, tîne ser têgeha nasnameya kurdî û dipirse ka elîtên Kurdan kengî, çira û çawa xebat kirin ku konsepteke maqûl ya nasnameya kurdî ava bibe. Ji ber pêşveçûnên li Rojhilata Navîn, ev xebata ji bo avakirina nasnameyê an jî çêkirina “civakeke yekgirtî ya xeyalî” -mebest ji civakê, civaka kurmanca ye- di bin bandora fransîyan da pêk hat, ji ber ku hingê Sûrîye di bin desthilata fransîyan da bû. Pêwendîya di navbera karmendên fransî û rewşenbîrên kurd da welê kir ku di encama hevkarîya wan da berhemên nivîskî derkevin holê ku him hêz û îlhamê da ji bo avakirina nasnameya kurdî, him jî îmaja kurdan li Ewropayê xweş kir. Lê di çêkirina nasnameyeke kurdî da ku her kesê ku dixwest nikaribû tevî wê proseya çêkir- inê bibe, encameke berbiçav derket holê: “Rewşenbîrê Ewropa dîtî” mecbûr man di nav civakeke sembolîk da bijîn, ev civak ji wê civaka berê gellekî cuda bû ewa ku yên ne-elît yan jî elîtên ‘adetî wekî şêx û serok’eşîr tê de xwedî- hukm bûn.