CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
............................................................................
ix
Note on Transliteration and Date Conversion
............................. xv
Abbreviations
.....................................................................................
xvii
Maps
.....................................................................................................
xix
1. Introduction
..................................................................................
1
2. The ‘Return of the Turks’: The Campaigns of 1871–73 and the
Context of Tanẓīmāt Imperialism ............. 31
3. Imperial Visions: Knowledge Production, Empire, and the Creation
of Difference, 1849–75 .................. 53
4. ‘According to Their Customs and Dispositions’: Elaborating
Politics of Difference in Ottoman Yemen, 1874–91 ..............
91
5. Struggling for a Righteous Order: The Rise of the Zaydī imāms
and the Reconfiguration of Difference, 1890–1908 .... 147
6. An Imperial Borderland as Colony? The Daʿʿān Agreement and the
Reaffirmation of Colonial Ottomanism, 1905–19 .... 201
Conclusion
..........................................................................................
247
Bibliography
........................................................................................
253
Index
....................................................................................................
271
Thomas Kuehn, Ph.D. (2005) in History and Middle Eastern Studies, New York University, is Assistant Professor of Middle East History at Simon Fraser University. He has published extensively on the politics and culture of late Ottoman imperial rule in Arabia.
'Thomas Kuehn's remarkable book breaks new ground by drawing the
late Ottoman Empire into comparative imperial studies. His history
of late-nineteenth century Yemen examines Ottoman methods of
conquest and rule that drew as much on the experience of European
colonial empires as on Istanbul's own practices of ruling remote
Arab lands. Drawing on the widest range of Ottoman archival
sources, reinforced by contemporary Arabic references, Kuehn
presents a lucid and persuasive analysis of the successes and
shortcomings of the Ottomans' civilizing mission in Yemen. The
sectarian order the Ottomans left behind has proven a divisive
legacy that marks Yemen down to the present day. A brilliant book
that deserves the widest possible readership among scholars of late
nineteenth century empire and the Ottomans' place in that
order'.
Eugene Rogan
St Antony's College, Oxford
'Thomas Kuehn's book is an illuminating contribution to scholars'
efforts to study empires not simply in comparison to each but in
relation to their interactions and rivalries. Ottomans, he shows,
did not govern Yemen in the same way they governed other parts of
their empire in the era of Tanzamat reforms; they marked the
"difference" and "backwardness" of the people they now ruled,
rather than seek to integrate them into a homogenizing Ottomanness.
But what Kuehn terms "colonial Ottoman" was not Ottoman
colonialism. It borrowed from but did not copy policies of a
"civilizing mission" and "indirect rule" from French and British
colonial projects of the time. Ottomans administrators balanced
incorporation with differentiation, efforts to change Yeminis' way
of life with tacit and shifting arrangements with local elites.
They did not implement in Yemen the censuses, cadastral surveys,
and conscription mechanisms that were hallmarks of Ottoman rule
elsewhere, but when an Ottoman parliament sat, representatives of
Yemen were included. Kuehn shows that Ottomans shared other
imperial powers' interest in the production of knowledge of the
societies' they conquered, but that the forms of knowledge were
part of a distinct repertoire of rule. By stressing the differences
and similarities in forms of imperial governance within the Ottoman
empire and between different empires in the same era he reveals to
us how particular imperial systems functioned in a world of
competing imperial powers. The result is a book that will be of
great interests not just to Ottomanists, but to any reader
interested in rethinking the nature of imperial rule in 19th and
20th centuries'.
Frederick Cooper
co-author of Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of
Difference
'Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference examines the roots of
modern Yemen during the incorporation and consolidation of
southwestern Arabia by the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Thomas
Kuehn brings into play cutting edge theoretical insights on
colonial constructions of difference in this textured narrative
based on painstaking research in primary Ottoman documents and
other contemporary sources.
The author inserts the Ottoman state into the age of new
imperialism not only as an actor resisting European expansionism
but also one selectively adopting and implementing elements of
European colonialism in its own efforts to extend imperial reach to
outlying areas. He assesses under the rubric of "colonial
Ottomanism" the discursive and political strategies devised to
maintain an intricate equilibrium between incorporation and
differentiation. This hybrid policy, Kuehn argues, while premised
on perceived cultural inferiority of local society in southwestern
Arabia, differs from forms of European colonialism in its
inclusionary and non-discriminatory thrust.
The book analyzes Yemen as a site of Ottoman modernity, where
incorporation (e.g., the implementation of the standard Ottoman
provincial
organization) and institutionalized differentiation (e.g., a
judicial system cognizant of local religious tradition) were
deployed to uphold Ottoman rule. The very strategies, in turn,
primed local society for its empire to nation transition during the
post-World War I twilight of the Ottoman state.
'Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference is a richly researched
and theoretically informed contribution to recent scholarship on
the Arab provinces in the late Ottoman Empire, and more broadly, to
comparative empire studies. The book's nuanced intervention into
debates on internal colonialism is compelling for historians. The
wealth of new historical information on Yemen presented with an
accessible prose makes this a timely book for the general reader
interested in the history of modern Yemen'.
Hasan Kayali
University of California, San Diego
'Kuehn skillfully weaves several themes together to demonstrate the
tensions of Ottoman rule in a frontier province in the age of high
European imperialism. He draws clear and convincing comparisons
between the European colonial and imperial enterprise in the late
nineteenth century and the modern Ottoman endeavor to create what
he dubs “colonial Ottomanism” in Yemen. The Ottoman bureaucrats and
military men that conquered and then created the administrative
structures of Yemen employed techniques of government built on a
set of distinctions between tribal and civilized, between rural and
urban, between governance according to “local” Islamic norm and
governance through modern administration. In their attempt to
govern Yemen, the late imperial Ottomans looked similar to the late
British imperialist. Their colonial enterprise, however, was
distinctly Ottoman. It was from the beginning shaped by the fact
that the Ottomans viewed themselves as Muslim rulers bringing into
the imperial fold a Muslim frontier threatened by European
encroachments. Their bureaucrats viewed the Yemenis as subjects
that needed to be turned into modern Ottomans loyal to the only
surviving Muslim state.
Kuehn’s book should be of great interest to historians and graduate
students focused on the study of comparative empires as well as
scholars who work on imperial frontiers. Is it a welcome edition to
the growing and exciting field of nineteenth century Ottoman
history'.
Dina Rizk Khoury
George Washington University
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