Janet KLEIN. The Margins of Empire

In the Margins of Empire, Janet Klein delivers a solidly researched, thoughtful, and much needed account of the infamous Kurdish Hamidiye tribal regiments of the late Ottoman period. Established in 1890 by Sultan Abdülhamid II, from whence they derive their name, the Hamidiye regiments regularly find mention in histories of the late Ottoman period, but rarely careful analysis. Making extensive use of British, French, and Ottoman archival sources, Klein presents a detailed portrait of the regiments and upends a number of widespread misconceptions. Klein seeks not merely to document the history of the Hamidiye regiments as Ottoman institutions but also to assess their impact on local politics in Eastern Anatolia. Writing the history of Eastern Anatolia at the turn of the twentieth century presents multiple difficulties. A borderland on the margin of the Ottoman Empire alongside the Russian Empire and Persia, the region had never known centralized rule or bureaucracies that generate copious documentation. Yet its demographic structure was complex, comprised of an array of ethnicities, religions, and ways of life from nomads through mountaineers and peasants to city dwellers.. To achieve her goal, Klein interweaves her narrative with the stories of several key individuals, thereby allowing the reader to grasp the institutional logic driving events, to see how local actors adapted the Hamidiye regiments to their ends and altered the political landscape, and to absorb much rich detail.

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Bureaucracy · Empire · Literature · Narrative · Ottoman empire · Period (music) · Political science · Politics · Portrait · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law