Benjamin Thomas White
Biographic Data
| ID | 830287 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Thomas White |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin Thomas |
| FAMILY NAME | White |
| SIGNATURE | WHITE B T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0833-784X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 65 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Social History Book Club: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (London: Spectre, 2024)
Social History Book Club: Jo Baker, Longbourn
[No abstract]
Social History Book Club: Zadie Smith, The Fraud
No abstract available
Social History Book Club: White Houses
Social History Book Club: Lyonel Trouillot, Antoine of Gommiers
CHAPTER 2 The Global Origins of the Modern Refugee Camp: Military Humanitarianism and Colonial Occupation at Baquba, Iraq, 1918–1920
What Becomes a Refugee Camp? Making Camps for European Refugees in North Africa and the Middle East, 1943–46
Refugees have often been housed in camps made by ‘adaptive reuse’ of a wide range of existing sites. We argue that any given refugee camp’s previous uses shape the experiences of its residents and may indicate how that displaced population is viewed by the responsible authorities. We test this argument on three historical case studies drawn from an important but under-researched episode in the history of the refugee camp: the far-flung network of…
Continental Encampment: Genealogies of Humanitarian Containment in the Middle East and Europe
During the past decade, Syria’s displacement crisis has made the Middle East one of the world’s premier refugee-hosting regions. The measures to prevent refugees and migrants from leaving the region, and returning those who do, has made the region a zone of containment where millions remain displaced. The volume explores responses to mass migration and traces the genealogy of humanitarian containment from the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of t…
UNHCR and the Algerian war of independence: Postcolonial sovereignty and the globalization of the international refugee regime, 1954–63 – Addendum
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
UNHCR and the Algerian war of independence: Postcolonial sovereignty and the globalization of the international refugee regime, 1954–63
The Algerian war of independence (1954-62) was crucial to the extension of the modern international refugee regime beyond Europe. It is also the exemplar of how that regime became a site for the establishment of postcolonial sovereignty, globally. Tunisia and Morocco, newly independent, requested UNHCR’s help in assisting hundreds of thousands of Algerian refugees: interacting with the refugee regime allowed them to establish their credentials as…
Protection or Isolation?: Humanitarian Evacuees in Australian Quarantine Stations
Refuge and History
Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System. Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
Humans and Animals in a Refugee Camp: Baquba, Iraq, 1918–20
When human populations are forcibly displaced, they often take animals with them—and, even if they are not accompanied by their own, animals often play an important role in their experience of displacement. This article uses a historical example—the Baquba refugee camp near Baghdad in the period 1918–20—to illustrate the multifaceted role of animals in structuring the experiences of refugees: their living spaces; their health; their economic and …
Refugees and the Definition of Syria, 1920-1939
Between the French occupation in 1920 and the outbreak of the Second World War, one of the most striking and controversial features of political and social life in Syria was the arrival and settlement of large numbers of refugees. Armenians and other Christians escaping Anatolia; Kurdish insurgents evading the Turkish military; Assyrians fleeing Iraq: all took refuge in French mandate Syria, where they joined refugees who had arrived, before the …
The Fragments Imagine the Nation? Minorities in the Modern Middle East and North Africa
Minorities in the Middle East have been a perennial object of scholarly attention. Minority politics have traditionally been considered as a problem: indeed, as one of the main reasons for the “unsuccessful” consolidation of the nation-state in the region. In recent years, with the events of the Arab Spring and its aftermath, minorities have been figured at times as an obstacle to broader processes of democratization and liberalization, or at oth…
James Grehan. Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine
In 1747, when a plague of locusts threatened the harvest, the Ottoman governor of Damascus dispatched a delegation of Sufis to an enchanted spring in Persia. The water they drew there, carried carefully back to Syria, would lure a magical black bird—the samarmar—to consume the locusts. Their return was greeted with parades and popular celebration. The bird never appeared. But the fact that everyone thought it would, including Ottoman state offici…
The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890–1908
No abstract available
The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria
Shows which historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'Through close attention to what changed in French-mandate Syria, and what those changes entailed, Benjamin White argues for a careful reappraisal of the term 'minority'. Within a few years of World War I, the term had become fundamental to public understandings of national and international politics, law and society. Minorities (and majorities)…
The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria
This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'
A: Reviews: Modern History, Economics and Politics
The Kurds of Damascus in the 1930s: Development of a Politics of Ethnicity
In the 1930s, certain Kurds in Damascus mobilized in support of Kurds from the Jazira, the remote north-east of Syria (then under French mandate), who were demanding the establishment there of a Kurdish autonomous zone. Why did they do this? Rather than assuming that it was a political action flowing from a self-evident sense of Kurdish identity, this article explores the micropolitics of Damascus under French rule, and the effect of the developm…
Addressing the State: The Syrian ʿUlamaʾ Protest Personal Status Law Reform, 1939
In February 1939, the Syrian government received two documents from ʿulamaʾ protesting two decrees of the French High Commission that were intended to reform personal status law in Syria: decree 60/L.R. of 13 March 1936 and decree 146/L.R. of 18 November 1938. The first was a petition signed by Muslims from Homs to the Syrian prime minister (pictured); the second was a letter from the Damascus Association of ʿUlamaʾ to the Syrian interior ministe…
Frontières et pouvoir d'État: La frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930
Le présent article se propose d'étudier la délimitation de la frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930, afin d'illustrer le rapport dynamique entre le développement des frontières contemporaines - lignes précises et fixes, délimitant des territoires bien définis - et le développement de l'État nation. En Turquie, la définition de la frontière faisait partie de l'extension du pouvoir du nouvel État républicain sur le territoire qu'il …
The Nation‐State Form and the Emergence of ‘Minorities' in Syria
Minorities are specifically modern political groupings: they belong to the era of nation‐states. This article explores the emergence of minorities in Syria under the French mandate. It examines the contradictions caused by French attempts to impose a religious political order within the secular form of the nation‐state, showing how that form created minorities, most of whom cannot simply be mapped onto the millets , or religious communities, of t…
Refugees and the Definition of Syria, 1920-1939
Between the French occupation in 1920 and the outbreak of the Second World War, one of the most striking and controversial features of political and social life in Syria was the arrival and settlement of large numbers of refugees. Armenians and other Christians escaping Anatolia; Kurdish insurgents evading the Turkish military; Assyrians fleeing Iraq: all took refuge in French mandate Syria, where they joined refugees who had arrived, before the …
UNHCR and the Algerian war of independence: Postcolonial sovereignty and the globalization of the international refugee regime, 1954–63
The Algerian war of independence (1954-62) was crucial to the extension of the modern international refugee regime beyond Europe. It is also the exemplar of how that regime became a site for the establishment of postcolonial sovereignty, globally. Tunisia and Morocco, newly independent, requested UNHCR’s help in assisting hundreds of thousands of Algerian refugees: interacting with the refugee regime allowed them to establish their credentials as…
Frontières et pouvoir d'État: La frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930
Le présent article se propose d'étudier la délimitation de la frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930, afin d'illustrer le rapport dynamique entre le développement des frontières contemporaines - lignes précises et fixes, délimitant des territoires bien définis - et le développement de l'État nation. En Turquie, la définition de la frontière faisait partie de l'extension du pouvoir du nouvel État républicain sur le territoire qu'il …
The Nation‐State Form and the Emergence of ‘Minorities' in Syria
Minorities are specifically modern political groupings: they belong to the era of nation‐states. This article explores the emergence of minorities in Syria under the French mandate. It examines the contradictions caused by French attempts to impose a religious political order within the secular form of the nation‐state, showing how that form created minorities, most of whom cannot simply be mapped onto the millets , or religious communities, of t…
Refuge and History
Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System. Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
Humans and Animals in a Refugee Camp: Baquba, Iraq, 1918–20
When human populations are forcibly displaced, they often take animals with them—and, even if they are not accompanied by their own, animals often play an important role in their experience of displacement. This article uses a historical example—the Baquba refugee camp near Baghdad in the period 1918–20—to illustrate the multifaceted role of animals in structuring the experiences of refugees: their living spaces; their health; their economic and …
Continental Encampment: Genealogies of Humanitarian Containment in the Middle East and Europe
During the past decade, Syria’s displacement crisis has made the Middle East one of the world’s premier refugee-hosting regions. The measures to prevent refugees and migrants from leaving the region, and returning those who do, has made the region a zone of containment where millions remain displaced. The volume explores responses to mass migration and traces the genealogy of humanitarian containment from the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of t…
What Becomes a Refugee Camp? Making Camps for European Refugees in North Africa and the Middle East, 1943–46
Refugees have often been housed in camps made by ‘adaptive reuse’ of a wide range of existing sites. We argue that any given refugee camp’s previous uses shape the experiences of its residents and may indicate how that displaced population is viewed by the responsible authorities. We test this argument on three historical case studies drawn from an important but under-researched episode in the history of the refugee camp: the far-flung network of…
The Nation‐State Form and the Emergence of ‘Minorities' in Syria
Minorities are specifically modern political groupings: they belong to the era of nation‐states. This article explores the emergence of minorities in Syria under the French mandate. It examines the contradictions caused by French attempts to impose a religious political order within the secular form of the nation‐state, showing how that form created minorities, most of whom cannot simply be mapped onto the millets , or religious communities, of t…
Frontières et pouvoir d'État: La frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930
Le présent article se propose d'étudier la délimitation de la frontière turco-syrienne dans les années 1920 et 1930, afin d'illustrer le rapport dynamique entre le développement des frontières contemporaines - lignes précises et fixes, délimitant des territoires bien définis - et le développement de l'État nation. En Turquie, la définition de la frontière faisait partie de l'extension du pouvoir du nouvel État républicain sur le territoire qu'il …
A: Reviews: Modern History, Economics and Politics
The Kurds of Damascus in the 1930s: Development of a Politics of Ethnicity
In the 1930s, certain Kurds in Damascus mobilized in support of Kurds from the Jazira, the remote north-east of Syria (then under French mandate), who were demanding the establishment there of a Kurdish autonomous zone. Why did they do this? Rather than assuming that it was a political action flowing from a self-evident sense of Kurdish identity, this article explores the micropolitics of Damascus under French rule, and the effect of the developm…
Addressing the State: The Syrian ʿUlamaʾ Protest Personal Status Law Reform, 1939
In February 1939, the Syrian government received two documents from ʿulamaʾ protesting two decrees of the French High Commission that were intended to reform personal status law in Syria: decree 60/L.R. of 13 March 1936 and decree 146/L.R. of 18 November 1938. The first was a petition signed by Muslims from Homs to the Syrian prime minister (pictured); the second was a letter from the Damascus Association of ʿUlamaʾ to the Syrian interior ministe…
The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria
Shows which historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'Through close attention to what changed in French-mandate Syria, and what those changes entailed, Benjamin White argues for a careful reappraisal of the term 'minority'. Within a few years of World War I, the term had become fundamental to public understandings of national and international politics, law and society. Minorities (and majorities)…
The Emergence of Minorities in the Middle East: The Politics of Community in French Mandate Syria
This book uses a study of Syria under the French mandate to show what historical developments led people to start describing themselves and others as 'minorities'
The Ottoman Administration of Iraq, 1890–1908
No abstract available
James Grehan. Twilight of the Saints: Everyday Religion in Ottoman Syria and Palestine
In 1747, when a plague of locusts threatened the harvest, the Ottoman governor of Damascus dispatched a delegation of Sufis to an enchanted spring in Persia. The water they drew there, carried carefully back to Syria, would lure a magical black bird—the samarmar—to consume the locusts. Their return was greeted with parades and popular celebration. The bird never appeared. But the fact that everyone thought it would, including Ottoman state offici…
The Fragments Imagine the Nation? Minorities in the Modern Middle East and North Africa
Minorities in the Middle East have been a perennial object of scholarly attention. Minority politics have traditionally been considered as a problem: indeed, as one of the main reasons for the “unsuccessful” consolidation of the nation-state in the region. In recent years, with the events of the Arab Spring and its aftermath, minorities have been figured at times as an obstacle to broader processes of democratization and liberalization, or at oth…
Refugees and the Definition of Syria, 1920-1939
Between the French occupation in 1920 and the outbreak of the Second World War, one of the most striking and controversial features of political and social life in Syria was the arrival and settlement of large numbers of refugees. Armenians and other Christians escaping Anatolia; Kurdish insurgents evading the Turkish military; Assyrians fleeing Iraq: all took refuge in French mandate Syria, where they joined refugees who had arrived, before the …
Humans and Animals in a Refugee Camp: Baquba, Iraq, 1918–20
When human populations are forcibly displaced, they often take animals with them—and, even if they are not accompanied by their own, animals often play an important role in their experience of displacement. This article uses a historical example—the Baquba refugee camp near Baghdad in the period 1918–20—to illustrate the multifaceted role of animals in structuring the experiences of refugees: their living spaces; their health; their economic and …
Refuge and History
Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System. Alexander Betts and Paul Collier. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017
Protection or Isolation?: Humanitarian Evacuees in Australian Quarantine Stations
UNHCR and the Algerian war of independence: Postcolonial sovereignty and the globalization of the international refugee regime, 1954–63 – Addendum
An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the ‘Save PDF’ action button
UNHCR and the Algerian war of independence: Postcolonial sovereignty and the globalization of the international refugee regime, 1954–63
The Algerian war of independence (1954-62) was crucial to the extension of the modern international refugee regime beyond Europe. It is also the exemplar of how that regime became a site for the establishment of postcolonial sovereignty, globally. Tunisia and Morocco, newly independent, requested UNHCR’s help in assisting hundreds of thousands of Algerian refugees: interacting with the refugee regime allowed them to establish their credentials as…
CHAPTER 2 The Global Origins of the Modern Refugee Camp: Military Humanitarianism and Colonial Occupation at Baquba, Iraq, 1918–1920
What Becomes a Refugee Camp? Making Camps for European Refugees in North Africa and the Middle East, 1943–46
Refugees have often been housed in camps made by ‘adaptive reuse’ of a wide range of existing sites. We argue that any given refugee camp’s previous uses shape the experiences of its residents and may indicate how that displaced population is viewed by the responsible authorities. We test this argument on three historical case studies drawn from an important but under-researched episode in the history of the refugee camp: the far-flung network of…
Continental Encampment: Genealogies of Humanitarian Containment in the Middle East and Europe
During the past decade, Syria’s displacement crisis has made the Middle East one of the world’s premier refugee-hosting regions. The measures to prevent refugees and migrants from leaving the region, and returning those who do, has made the region a zone of containment where millions remain displaced. The volume explores responses to mass migration and traces the genealogy of humanitarian containment from the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of t…
Social History Book Club: Zadie Smith, The Fraud
No abstract available
Social History Book Club: White Houses
Social History Book Club: Lyonel Trouillot, Antoine of Gommiers
Social History Book Club: The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (London: Spectre, 2024)
Social History Book Club: Jo Baker, Longbourn
[No abstract]
Political science (16 works) · History (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Law (11 works) · History (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Refugee (8 works) · Ancient history (7 works) · Geography (7 works)