Empire Unbound: France and the Muslim Mediterranean, 1880-1918

Description

European empires were commonly depicted in bright color-coded maps printed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that conveyed the expanse of European power across the globe. Despite this familiar image of a world divided up into neat imperial enclaves, the reality of empire-building often told a different story. Empire Unbound argues that European empires were never the bounded, stable entities that imperialists imagined. In examining Mediterranean empire-building in a comparative context, Gavin Murray-Miller demonstrates that the era of 'new imperialism' which arose in the late nineteenth century fostered connections and synergies between regional powers that influenced the trajectories of imperial states in fundamental ways. Breaking with conventional national approaches, Murray-Miller traces the development of France's North African empire, noting how empire-building relied upon transnational networks and cooperation with Muslims elites across borders just as much as military conquest. By looking at the inter-connected relationships linking the French, British, Italian, and Ottoman empires from the 1880s through the First World War, Empire Unbound proposes a novel spatial framework for imperial studies, showing how migrations, extraterritorial legal regimes, and cross-border interactions both abetted and frustrated imperial designs at the turn of the century. Cover Empire Unbound: France and the Muslim Mediterranean, 1880–1918 Copyright Dedication Acknowledgments Contents List of Maps Introduction: France, Empire, and the Muslim Mediterranean 1: Power Politics and the Imperial Mediterranean Empire-Buildingat a Crossroad Toward a “Uniform Doctrine” of Imperial Acquisition “We Are by Necessity a Muslim Power” Tunisia, Egypt, and the Colonial Press A New Imperialism? 2: Territorialization and Mobility in the Mediterranean A Mobile World Colonial Authority and Emigration Claiming Subjects and Jurisdiction in the Ottoman Empire Imperial Subjecthood: An Ambiguous Concept Janus-FacedImperialism 3: Pan-Islamismand Ottoman Imperialism Unifying the Muslim World Pan-Islamismand Ottoman Trans-ImperialPolicy Sufi Networks: A Mode of Imperial Governmentality Envisioning the Muslim Mediterranean Combating Trans-ImperialPoliticization 4: Paris, a Trans-ImperialMetropole An Arab Renaissance Two Steps from the Folies-Bergères Ottoman Politics à la Paris “An Organ of Islam in Europe” 5: Fragile Empires “We Were Ecstatic” Pan-Islamismand Morocco Libya and the Cause of Islam North Africa and the Libyan War Imperial Crucible 6: Imagining French North Africa A Bushel of Thorns Toward a French Muslim North Africa? “Previously We Only Had to Fear Localized Movements” Reform from Colony to Metropole 7: Trans-ImperialIslam in the Crucible of War “The Rebirth of Europe and the Renaissance of Islam” Liberating Islam “Our Demands Are Clear” 8: Imperial Entanglements and the Making of the Post-Ottoman Mediterranean The Power of the Printed Word The Road to Damascus Taming Transnational Islam The New Mediterranean Order and the Paths of Empire Conclusion: Entangled Histories and Fractured Pasts Works Cited Archives Newspapers and Periodicals Official Publications Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index