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Frontiers of Revolution and Empire in the Middle East

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Rethinking Revolutions from 1905 to 1934

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements ((PSHSM))

Abstract

Looking back at the beginning of the twentieth century, whether one sees the grandeur and optimism of the belle époque or the decadence and pessimism of the fin de siècle, the twentieth century kicked off with a bang. The Japanese victory of 1905 triggered the Russian Revolution and inspired the Iranian constitutional revolution of 1906–1911 and the Young Turk constitutional revolution of 1908–1913.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Charles Kurzman, Democracy Denied, 1905–1915. Intellectuals and the Fate of Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008).

  2. 2.

    Alfred J. Rieber, The Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands. From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 532–614.

  3. 3.

    George Lawson, ‘Reform, Rebellion, Civil War, Coup d’État and Revolution’, in James Defronzo (ed.), Revolutionary Movements in World History. From 1750 to Present (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006), Vol. 3, 3:721.

  4. 4.

    Jack A. Goldstone, Revolutions. A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

  5. 5.

    Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History. Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010).

  6. 6.

    Pierre Serna, ‘Every Revolution Is a War of Independence’, in Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt and William M. Nelson (eds.), The French Revolution in Global Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013), p. 174.

  7. 7.

    In many ways, empires manage “multiple sovereignties”, which is according to Charles Tilly one of the main sources of revolution. Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1978), pp. 191–194; Charles Tilly, ‘How Empires End?’, in Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (eds.), After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building, the Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 1–11. Rebellions in empires are commonly caused by dissident agents uncontrolled by the imperial centre, as argued by Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963).

  8. 8.

    George Lawson, ‘A Global Historical Sociology of Revolution’, in Julian Go and George Lawson (eds.), Global Historical Sociology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 76–98; David Motadel, ‘Global Revolution’, in David Motadel (ed.), Revolutionary World. Global Upheaval in the Modern Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), pp. 1–37.

  9. 9.

    Isa Blumi, Foundations of Modernity. Human Agency and the Imperial State (New York, NY: Routledge, 2012).

  10. 10.

    Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York, NY: H. Holt and Co., 1920).

  11. 11.

    Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Frontier, New edition (Reno, NV: University of Nevada Press, 2003), pp. 143–144.

  12. 12.

    Owen Lattimore, ‘Origins of the Great Wall of China. A Frontier Concept in Theory and Practice’, Geographical Review 27/4 (1937), pp. 529–549.

  13. 13.

    Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, New edition (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2010).

  14. 14.

    For the concept of frontier of empires see: Alp Yenen and Ramazan Hakkı Öztan, ‘Age of Rogues. Transgressive Politics at the Frontiers of the Ottoman Empire’, in Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and Alp Yenen (eds.), Age of Rogues. Rebels, Revolutionaries and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empires (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), pp. 7–8.

  15. 15.

    Frederick F. Anscombe, ‘Continuities in Ottoman Centre-Periphery Relations, 1787–1915’, in A. C. S. Peacock (ed.), The Frontiers of the Ottoman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 235–252. For an innovative reading of spatial differences in historical trajectories see: Cem Emrence, Remapping the Ottoman Middle East. Modernity, Imperial Bureaucracy, and the Islamic State (London: I.B. Tauris, 2011).

  16. 16.

    Leon Carl Brown, International Politics and the Middle East. Old Rules, Dangerous Game (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); Fred Halliday, The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  17. 17.

    For historical overviews on Islam, revolution, and anti-imperialism see: David Motadel, ‘Islam and the European Empires’, The Historical Journal 55/3 (2012), pp. 831–856; Nikki R. Keddie, ‘The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993. Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 36/3 (1994), pp. 463–487. For Muslim encounters with European empires in different regions see the contributions in David Motadel (ed.), Islam and the European Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). For an extensive study of contentious politics, see: John Chalcraft, Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

  18. 18.

    Ali Yaycıoğlu, Partners of the Empire. The Crisis of the Ottoman Order in the Age of Revolutions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).

  19. 19.

    Ian Coller, ‘The French Revolution and the Islamic World of the Middle East and North Africa’, in Alan Forrest and Matthias Middell (eds.), The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 128–129.

  20. 20.

    Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 34.

  21. 21.

    Mahfoud Bennoune, The Making of Contemporary Algeria, 1830–1987. Colonial Upheavals and Post-independence Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 29–31.

  22. 22.

    Benjamin Claude Brower, A Desert Named Peace. The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844–1902 (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 2.

  23. 23.

    Bruce Vandervort, Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa, 1830–1914 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), pp. 56–59.

  24. 24.

    As contemporaries, Abd al-Qadir and Sheikh Shamil were aware about their similar, if not mutual, struggle against colonial occupation. Michael Kemper, ‘The Changing Images of Jihad Leaders. Shamil and Abd Al-Qadir in Daghestani and Algerian Historical Writing’, Nova Religio. The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 11/2 (2007), p. 31.

  25. 25.

    Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah. Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 114–175.

  26. 26.

    Frederick F. Anscombe, State, Faith, and Nation in Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Lands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 66–83.

  27. 27.

    Frederick F. Anscombe, ‘The Balkan Revolutionary Age’, The Journal of Modern History 84/3 (2012), pp. 572–606; Tolga U. Esmer, ‘Economies of Violence, Banditry and Governance in the Ottoman Empire Around 1800’, Past & Present 224/1 (2014), pp. 163–199.

  28. 28.

    Cemil Aydın, ‘The Emergence of Transnational Muslim Thought, 1774–1914’, in Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss (eds.), Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age: Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 121–141.

  29. 29.

    Joel Beinin, Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 44–70.

  30. 30.

    Fatma Müge Göçek, ‘Decline of the Ottoman Empire and the Emergence of Greek, Armenian, Turkish and Arab Nationalisms’, in Fatma Müge Göçek (ed.), Social Constructions of Nationalism in the Middle East (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), pp. 15–84.

  31. 31.

    Ami Ayalon, ‘From Fitna to Thawra’, Studia Islamica 66 (1987), pp. 166–168; Şerif Mardin, ‘The Influence of the French Revolution on the Ottoman Empire’, International Social Science Journal 41/119 (1989), pp. 25–29; Elbaki Hermassi, ‘The French Revolution and the Arab World’, in Joseph Klaits and Michael H. Haltzel (eds.), The Global Ramifications of the French Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 130–137; Nikki R. Keddie, ‘The French Revolution and the Middle East’, in Iran and the Muslim World. Resistance and Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 242–247.

  32. 32.

    See Adam Mestyan, ‘The Muslim Bourgeoisie and Philanthropy in the Late Ottoman Empire’, in Christof Dejung, David Motadel and Jürgen Osterhammel (eds.), The Global Bourgeoisie. The Rise of the Middle Classes in the Age of Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019), pp. 207–228.

  33. 33.

    R. Michael Feener, ‘New Networks and New Knowledge. Migrations, Communications and the Refiguration of the Muslim Community in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, in Robert W. Hefner (ed.), The New Cambridge History of Islam Volume 6: Muslims and Modernity. Culture and Society Since 1800 (Cambridge and New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 39–68.

  34. 34.

    H. Ozan Özavcı, Dangerous Gifts. Imperialism, Security, and Civil Wars in the Levant, 1798–1864 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).

  35. 35.

    Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought. A Study in the Modernization of Turkish Political Ideas, 2nd edition (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000); Nazan Çiçek, The Young Ottomans. Turkish Critics of the Eastern Question in the Late Nineteenth Century (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010); Aylin Koçunyan, Negotiating the Ottoman Constitution. 1839–1876 (Leuven: Peeters, 2018).

  36. 36.

    Florian Riedler, Opposition and Legitimacy in the Ottoman Empire. Conspiracies and Political Cultures (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 42–57; Murat R. Şiviloğlu, The Emergence of Public Opinion. State and Society in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 222–249.

  37. 37.

    For more detail, see: Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East. Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt’s ʿUrabi Movement (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). For ‘Urabi’s conflict with the Turco-Circassian aristocracy see: Eugene L. Rogan, The Arabs. A History (London: Allen Lane, 2009), pp. 123–128.

  38. 38.

    Alexander Schölch, Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-Political Crisis in Egypt 1878–1882 (London: Ithaca Press, 1981).

  39. 39.

    For more detail, see: Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran. The Tobacco Protest of 1891–1892 (London: Cass, 1966).

  40. 40.

    Nikki R. Keddie, ‘Why Has Iran Been Revolutionary? II: Multi-Urbanism in Iran’s Revolts and Rebellions’, in Iran and the Muslim World: Resistance and Revolution (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 76–77; Ahmad Ashraf, ‘Bazaar-Mosque Alliance: The Social Basis of Revolts and Revolutions’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 1/4 (1988), p. 545.

  41. 41.

    Mansoor Moaddel, ‘Shi’i Political Discourse and Class Mobilization in the Tobacco Movement of 1890–1892’, Sociological Forum 7/3 (1992), pp. 451–452. The Islamic decree was actually forgery. Fatema Soudavar Farmanfarmaian, ‘Revisiting and Revising the Tobacco Rebellion’, Iranian Studies 47/4 (2014), pp. 595–625.

  42. 42.

    A pamphlet, for instance, threatened to kill Europeans and local Armenians. Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914. A Study in Imperialism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 258. In Shiraz, Islamist student activists even called for the expulsion of all Christians from the city. Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact. Bargaining Protest and the State in Nineteenth Century Persia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), p. 61.

  43. 43.

    Tanya E. Lawrence, ‘The Iranian Community of the Late Ottoman Empire and the Egyptian ‘Crisis’ Through the Persian Looking Glass. The Documentation of the ʿUrabi Revolt in Istanbul’s Akhtar’, Iranian Studies 51/2 (2017), pp. 245–267.

  44. 44.

    Toygun Altıntaş, ‘The Abode of Sedition. Resistance, Repression and Revolution in Sasun, 1891–1904’, in Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and Alp Yenen (eds.), Age of Rogues: Rebels, Revolutionaries and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empires (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), pp. 178–207.

  45. 45.

    Yenen and Öztan, ‘Age of Rogues’, pp. 10–19.

  46. 46.

    Houri Berberian, Roving Revolutionaries. Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019).

  47. 47.

    On the correlation between war and revolution see: Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 18–45; Fred Halliday, Revolution and World Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Sixth Great Power (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 234–260.

  48. 48.

    Thomas Philipp, ‘From Rule of Law to Constitutionalism’, in Jens Hanssen and Max Weiss (eds.), Arabic Thought Beyond the Liberal Age. Towards an Intellectual History of the Nahda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 142–166.

  49. 49.

    John W. Steinberg, ‘Was the Russo-Japanese War World War Zero?’, The Russian Review 67/1 (2008), pp. 1–7.

  50. 50.

    Cemil Aydın, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia. Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2007), pp. 71–92.

  51. 51.

    For a comprehensive overview see: H. E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin (eds.), Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. Popular Politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010).

  52. 52.

    Ahmad Ashraf, ‘Bazaar-Mosque Alliance: The Social Basis of Revolts and Revolutions’, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 1/4 (1988), pp. 545–547; Ervand Abrahamian, ‘The Crowd in the Persian Revolution’, Iranian Studies 2/2 (1969), pp. 128–150.

  53. 53.

    On the role these anjomans see: Nezam-Mafi M. Ettchadieh, ‘Origin and Development of Political Parties in Persia 1906–1911’ (PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1979).

  54. 54.

    Mansour Bonakdarian, Britain and the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1906–1911. Foreign Policy, Imperialism, and Dissent (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006), p. 54.

  55. 55.

    Edward Granville Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905–09 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), pp. 150–151.

  56. 56.

    James D. Clark, ‘Constitutionalists and Cossacks. The Constitutional Movement and Russian Intervention in Tabriz, 1907–11’, Iranian Studies 39/2 (2006), pp. 199–225.

  57. 57.

    Mangol Bayat, Iran’s First Revolution. Shi’ism and the Constitutional Revolution of 1905–1909 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 76–105; Moritz Deutschmann, ‘Cultures of Statehood, Cultures of Revolution. Caucasian Revolutionaries in the Iranian Constitutional Movement, 1906–1911’, Ab Imperio 2 (2013), pp. 165–190.

  58. 58.

    Farzin Vejdani, ‘Crafting Constitutional Narratives. Iranian and Young Turk Solidarity 1907–09’, in H. E. Chehabi and Vanessa Martin (eds.), Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. Popular Politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 319–340.

  59. 59.

    Vanessa Martin, The Qajar Pact. Bargaining Protest and the State in Nineteenth Century Persia (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), p. 127.

  60. 60.

    Arash Khazeni, Tribes and Empire on the Margins of Nineteenth-Century Iran (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2009), pp. 159–191.

  61. 61.

    Mansour Bonakdarian, ‘A World Born Through the Chamber of a Revolver. Revolutionary Violence, Culture, and Modernity in Iran, 1906–1911’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25/2 (2005), pp. 318–340; Olmo Gölz, ‘Racketeers in Politics. Theoretical Reflections on Strong-man Performances in Late Qajar Iran’, in Ramazan Hakkı Öztan and Alp Yenen (eds.), Age of Rogues: Rebels, Revolutionaries and Racketeers at the Frontiers of Empires (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021), pp. 120–147.

  62. 62.

    M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 71–109.

  63. 63.

    Nader Sohrabi, ‘Global Waves, Local Actors. What the Young Turks Knew About Other Revolutions and Why It Mattered’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 44/1 (2002), pp. 65–66.

  64. 64.

    M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution. The Young Turks, 1902–1908 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 210–217.

  65. 65.

    Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, pp. 221–227; Erik J. Zürcher, ‘Macedonians in Anatolia. The Importance of the Macedonian Roots of the Unionists for Their Policies in Anatolia After 1914’, Middle Eastern Studies 50/6 (2014), pp. 963–964.

  66. 66.

    Ernest E. Ramsaur, The Young Turks. Prelude to the Revolution of 1908 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 133–134.

  67. 67.

    Erik J. Zürcher, ‘The Historiography of the Constitutional Revolution. Broad Consensus, Some Disagreement and a Missed Opportunity’, in The Young Turk Legacy and Nation Building. From the Ottoman Empire to Atatürk’s Turkey (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 37–40.

  68. 68.

    It is, however, highly disputed whether the preceding Anatolian tax revolts of 1905–1907 were expressions popular demands for constitutionalism, as it is argued by Aykut Kansu, The Revolution of 1908 in Turkey (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 29–72.

  69. 69.

    Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution, 261–278; Mehmet Hacısalihoğlu, Die Jungtürken und die Mazedonische Frage (1850–1918) (München: Oldenbourg, 2003), pp. 162–205.

  70. 70.

    Bedross Der Matossian, Shattered Dreams of Revolution. From Liberty to Violence in the Late Ottoman Empire (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), pp. 149–172; George W. Gawrych, ‘The Culture and Politics of Violence in Turkish Society, 1903–14’, Middle Eastern Studies 22/3 (1986), pp. 307–330.

  71. 71.

    Palmira Johnson Brummett, Image and Imperialism in the Ottoman Revolutionary Press, 1908–1911 (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 10–15.

  72. 72.

    Vejdani, ‘Crafting Constitutional Narratives’; Serpil Atamaz, ‘From Enemies to Friends with No Benefits: The Failed Attempt at an Ottoman-Iranian Alliance in the Aftermath of the 1908 Revolution’, Iranian Studies 54/5–6 (2021), pp. 879–905.

  73. 73.

    Odile Moreau, ‘Aref Taher Bey. An Ottoman Military Instructor Bridging the Maghreb and the Ottoman Mediterranean’, in Odile Moreau and Stuart Schaar (eds.), Subversives and Mavericks in the Muslim Mediterranean. A Subaltern History (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2016), pp. 61–62; Edmund Burke III, Prelude to Protectorate in Morocco. Precolonial Protest and Resistance 1860–1912 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 141–142.

  74. 74.

    Jonathan Wyrtzen, Making Morocco. Colonial Intervention and the Politics of Identity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), pp. 93–115.

  75. 75.

    Edward J. Erickson, Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2013), pp. 57–77.

  76. 76.

    On Libya’s history as an Ottoman “frontier-cum-borderland” see: Mostafa Minawi, The Ottoman Scramble for Africa: Empire and Diplomacy in the Sahara and the Hijaz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016).

  77. 77.

    Jonathan C. McCollum, ‘The Anti-Colonial Empire. Ottoman Mobilization and Resistance in the Italo-Turkish War’ (PhD thesis, University of California Los Angeles, 2018).

  78. 78.

    M. Hakan Yavuz, ‘Warfare and Nationalism. The Balkan Wars as a Catalyst of Homogenization’, in M. Hakan Yavuz and Isa Blumi (eds.), War and Nationalism. The Balkan Wars, 1912–1913, and Their Sociopolitical Implications (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2013), p. 32.

  79. 79.

    Katrin Boeckh, Von den Balkankriegen zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Kleinstaatenpolitik und ethnische Selbstbestimmung auf dem Balkan (München: Oldenbourg, 1996), pp. 76–78.

  80. 80.

    Eyal Ginio, Ottoman Culture of Defeat. The Balkan Wars and Their Aftermath (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Murat Kaya, ‘Western Interventions and Formation of the Young Turks’ Siege Mentality’, Middle East Critique 23/2 (2014), pp. 127–145.

  81. 81.

    Ramazan Hakkı Öztan, ‘Point of No Return? Prospects of Empire After the Ottoman Defeat in the Balkan Wars (1912–1913)’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 50/1 (2018), pp. 65–84; Alp Yenen, ‘Envisioning Turco-Arab Co-Existence Between Empire and Nationalism’, Die Welt des Islams 61/1 (2021), pp. 72–112.

  82. 82.

    For the role of Balkan revolutionary networks in the initiation of the First World War, see: Christopher M. Clark, The Sleepwalkers. How Europe Went to War in 1914 (London: Penguin Books, 2013), pp. 3–64; Tetsuya Sahara, ‘The Making of “Black Hand” Reconsidered’, Istorija 20 34/1 (2016), pp. 9–29.

  83. 83.

    Erik J. Zürcher (ed.), Jihad and Islam in World War I. Studies on the Ottoman Jihad at the Centenary of Snouck Hurgronje’s “Holy War Made in Germany” (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2015).

  84. 84.

    Cemil Aydın, The Idea of the Muslim World. A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 104–105, pp. 109–115.

  85. 85.

    Polat Safi, ‘The Ottoman Special Organization - Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. An Inquiry into Its Operational and Administrative Characteristics’ (PhD thesis, Bilkent University, 2012).

  86. 86.

    Hasan Kayalı, Arabs and Young Turks. Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 209–210.

  87. 87.

    M. Talha Çiçek, War and State Formation in Syria. Cemal Pasha’s Governorate During World War I, 1914–17 (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 43–56.

  88. 88.

    Eugene L. Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans. The Great War in the Middle East (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2015), pp. 275–309.

  89. 89.

    Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires. The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires 1908–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 140–166. On the correlation between revolution and genocide see: Robert Melson, Revolution and Genocide. On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 258–286.

  90. 90.

    Yektan Türkyılmaz, ‘Rethinking Genocide. Violence and Victimhood in Eastern Anatolia, 1913–1915’ (PhD thesis, Duke University, 2011), p. 160.

  91. 91.

    Donald Bloxham, ‘Terrorism and Imperial Decline. The Ottoman-Armenian Case’, European Review of History 14/3 (2007), pp. 311–315.

  92. 92.

    The military value of Armenian volunteers should not to be overstated, as they were soon dismantled by the Russian military, precisely because of their revolutionary motivation. Manoug Joseph Somakian, Empires in Conflict. Armenia and the Great Powers, 1895–1920 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), p. 109.

  93. 93.

    For conflicting, yet complementing, views on the decision-making process, see: Erickson, Ottomans and Armenians, pp. 161–182; Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity. The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), pp. 158–175.

  94. 94.

    Michael Adas, ‘Contested Hegemony. The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology’, Journal of World History 15/1 (2004), pp. 31–63.

  95. 95.

    Alp Yenen, ‘The ‘Young Turk Zeitgeist’ in the Middle Eastern Uprisings in the Aftermath of World War I’, in M. Hakan Yavuz and Feroz Ahmad (eds.), War and Collapse. World War I and the Ottoman State (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2016), pp. 1181–1216.

  96. 96.

    Quoted in Alexandre A. Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union. A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 136.

  97. 97.

    Alp Yenen, ‘The Other Jihad. Enver Pasha, Bolsheviks, and Politics of Anticolonial Muslim Nationalism During the Baku Congress 1920’, in T. G. Fraser (ed.), The First World War and Its Aftermath. The Shaping of the Middle East (London: Gingko Library Press, 2015), pp. 273–293.

  98. 98.

    Adeeb Khalid, ‘Pan-Islamism in Practice. The Rhetoric of Muslim Unity and Its Uses’, in Elisabeth Özdalga (ed.), Late Ottoman Society. The Intellectual Legacy (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), pp. 218–220.

  99. 99.

    Martha B. Olcott, ‘The Basmachi or Freemen's Revolt in Turkestan 1918–24’, Soviet Studies 33/3 (1981), pp. 352–369.

  100. 100.

    Stefan Reichmuth, ‘The Transformation of Muslim Societies and the Reorganization of Muslim Statehood During and After the First World War’, in Helmut Bley and Anorthe Kremers (eds.), The World During the First World War (Essen: Klartext, 2014), pp. 47–58.

  101. 101.

    Cemil Aydın, The Idea of the Muslim World. A Global Intellectual History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017), pp. 122–127.

  102. 102.

    Touraj Atabaki, ‘Going East. Ottoman’s Secret Service Activities in Iran’, in Touraj Atabaki (ed.), Iran and the First World War. Battleground of the Great Powers (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), pp. 36–38.

  103. 103.

    Pezhmann Dailami, ‘The Bolshevik Revolution and the Genesis of Communism in Iran, 1917–1920’, Central Asian Survey 12/2 (1999), pp. 51–82.

  104. 104.

    Cosroe Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920–1921. Birth of the Trauma (Pittsburg, PA: University of Pittsburg Press, 1995).

  105. 105.

    Michael P. Zirinsky, ‘The Rise of Reza Khan’, in John Foran (ed.), A Century of Revolution. Social Movements in Iran (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 53–56.

  106. 106.

    Oliver Bast, ‘Duping the British and Outwitting the Russians? Iran’s Foreign Policy, the “Bolshevik Threat”, and the Genesis of the Soviet-Iranian Treaty of 1921’, in Stephanie Cronin (ed.), Iranian-Russian Encounters: Empires and Revolutions Since 1800 (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 261–291.

  107. 107.

    Wyrtzen, Making Morocco, pp. 51–52, pp. 116–135.

  108. 108.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Ramazan Hakkı Öztan, Bedross Der Matossian, David Motadel, Alexander E. Balistreri, and Eren Düzgün, as well as the students from my master seminar (fall 2019) “The Making of the Modern Middle East (1870–1940)” at Leiden University, most notably Camilla Falanesca, for their valuable feedback on drafts of this paper.

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    Alp Yenen

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Yenen, A. (2023). Frontiers of Revolution and Empire in the Middle East. In: Berger, S., Weinhauer, K. (eds) Rethinking Revolutions from 1905 to 1934. Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04465-6_4

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