Slavery in a Global Context: the Atlantic, the Middle East, and the Black Sea with Elena Abbott, Soha El Achi, and Michael Polczynski

46. Shared Histories of Bondage.

Slavery, the practice of owning human beings, is a nearly universal historical phenomenon that reached its global peak during the eighteenth century and remains present to this day. However, slavery has taken many different forms in different regions: plantation slavery, domestic slavery, concubinage, military slavery and the like, often predicated on difference of religion or race. In this episode, we discuss slavery as practiced in different regions of the world from the Atlantic to the Middle East to the Black Sea in a comparative perspective.


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Elena Abbott is a PhD student at Georgetown University focusing on the history of the Atlantic during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
Soha El Achi is a PhD student studying slavery and French colonialism in North Africa at Georgetown University
Michael Połczyński is a PhD student studying Ottoman and Polish history at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)
Chris Gratien is a PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)



Select Bibliography

Johnson, Walter. "On Agency." Journal of Social History , Vol. 37, No. 1, Special Issue (Autumn, 2003), pp. 113-124

Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.

Drescher, Seymour. Abolition: A History of Slavery and Antislavery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Eltis, David. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas. Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007.

Clarence Smith, W. G. Islam and the Abolition of Slavery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Cordell, Dennis. “No Liberty, Not Much Equality, and Very Little Fraternity: The Mirage of Manumission in the Algerian Sahara in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century,” in Slavery and Colonial Rule in Africa, ed. Suzane Miers and Martin Klein.

Erdem, Y Hakan. Slavery in the Ottoman Empire and its Demise, 1800-1909. London: Macmillan Press LTD, 1996.

Troutt Powell, Eve M. A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan. University of California Press, 2003.

David, Geza and Pá Fodor. Ransom Slavery Along the Ottoman Borders : Early Fifteenth-Early Eighteenth Centuries. Ottoman Empire and its Heritage ; v. 37. Vol. . 37. Leiden ;Boston: Brill, 2007.

Fisher, Alan. A Precarious Balance : Conflict, Trade, and Diplomacy on the Russian-Ottoman Frontier. Istanbul: Isis Press, 1999.

Gertwagen, R. "Halil Inalcik; Victor Ostapchuk (Volume Ed.), Sources and Studies on the Ottoman Black Sea. Volume I: The Customs Register of Caffa, 1487-1490." NORTHERN MARINER 8, no. 3 (1998): 105.

Hellie, Richard. Slavery in Russia : 1450 - 1725. Chicago [u.a.]: Univ.Pr., 1982.

Kolodziejczyk, Dariusz. "Slave Hunting and Slave Redemption as a Business Enterprise: The Northern Black Sea Region in the Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries." Oriente Moderno. 86, no. 1 (2006): 149.

Tea in Morocco: Nationalism, Tradition and the Consumption of Hot Beverages with Graham Cornwell

45. Tasting the Nation.

Atay, the sweet mixture of mint and green tea consumed throughout Morocco, is nothing less than a national symbol. However, consumption of tea in the Maghreb only became widespread during the latter half of the nineteenth century. In this episode, Graham Cornwell examines the rise of tea in Morocco alongside the rise of the nation-state and other transformations of the modern era.

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Graham Cornwell is a PhD student at Georgetown University focusing on the cultural history of modern North Africa
Chris Gratien is a PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)

Select Bibliography

Billig, Michael. Banal Nationalism. London: Sage, 1995.

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. By Richard Nice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Bowles, Paul. “Café in Morocco.” In Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-93. London: Sort of Books, 2010: 412-22.

Jean-Jacques Hémardinquer. “Le thé à la conquête de l’Occident: le cas marocain.” Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales 17.6 (1962): 1141-51.

Herod, Andrew. “Scale: The Local and the Global.” In Key Concepts in Geography. Edited by Sarah Holloway, Stephen P. Rice, and Gill Valentine, 229-47. London: Sage, 2003.

Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition. Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, 1-14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Mintz, Sidney W. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York: Penguin, 1985.

Sibti, ‘Abd al-Ahad. Min al-shāyʼ ilá al-atāy : al-ʻādah wa-al-tārīkh. Rabat: Kullīyat al-Ādāb wa-al-ʻUlūm al-Insānīyah, 1999.

“U.S. Consular Records: Mazagan, Morocco (1892-1898),” Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Record Group 84 (College Park: National Archives.

“U.S. Consular Records: Mogador, Morocco Vol. I (1847-1920),” Records of the Foreign Service Posts of the Department of State, Record Group 84 (College Park: National Archives.

Napoleon in Egypt and the Description de l'Egypte, 1798-1801

44. Napoleon's Fantasy

France's invasion of Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 was once seen as a seminal moment in the history of the Middle East and the spread of a modernity equated with European civilization to Muslim world. This narrative, which was largely the product of Napoleon's own propaganda, has been criticized, and scholars using sources such as al-Jabarti's chronicle of the Egypt expedition have focused less on the immediate political impact than on the ways that the French and their Egyptian partners viewed their respective others. The expedition also produced, Description de l'Egypte, a massive but very problematic study of Egypt that can be seen as the birth of Orientalism. In this episode, we explore these issues by considering Napoleon's Egypt campaign not in terms of its military significance but rather its symbolic meaning.

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Select Bibliography

Cole, Juan Ricardo. Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Godlewska, Anne, and Neil Smith. Geography and Empire. Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1994.

Godlewska, Anne. 1995. "Map, Text and Image. The Mentality of Enlightened Conquerors: A New Look at the Description De L'Egypte". Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 20, no. 1: 5-28.

Herold, J. Christopher. Bonaparte in Egypt. New York: Harper & Row, 1962.

Moreh, S. Al Jabarti's chronicle of the first seven months of the French occupation of Egypt. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1975.

Reid, Donald M. Whose Pharaohs?: Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Music and History in Lebanon: an Historiographical Mixtape

43. Modern Lebanon's Musical Past and Present.

Lebanon is a country of just a few million, but its musical output has historically rivaled its much larger neighbors in the Arab world. This episode of the Ottoman History Podcast provides an overview of the the history of music in modern Lebanon as well as an overview of the history of modern Lebanon through music. We discuss topics such as nationalism, war, migration, and gender, all while listening to some of the most memorable and beloved songs and artists that the country has produced.

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Artists include:

Nasri Shamseddine, Wadih El Safi, Sabah, Fairuz, Mansour and Assi Rahbani, Zaki Nassif, Melhem Barakat, Samira Tawfik, Farid al-Atrache, Sami Clark, The Bandaly Family
Marcel Khalife, Ahmad Kaabour, Ziad Rahbani, Joseph Saqr, Julia Boutros, Makhoul Kassouf, Sami Hawat, Azar Habib, Majida El Roumi, Adiss Harmandian
Najwa Karam, Ragheb Alama, Nawal El Zoghbi, Wael Kfoury, Nancy Ajram, Elissa
Soapkills, Mashrou' Leila, Charbel Rouhana, Ziad Sakhab

For more visit Arabic Song Lyrics and Translation

Select Bibliography:

Stone, Christopher Reed. Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon: The Fairouz and Rahbani Nation. London: Routledge, 2008.
ʻAssāf, Aḥmad. Fayrūz wa-dawlat al-Raḥābinah. Dimashq: Dār al-Rāʼī lil-Dirāsāt wa-al-Tarjamah wa-al-Nashr, 2008.
Reynolds, Dwight Fletcher. Arab Folklore: A Handbook. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2007.
O'Ballance, Edgar. Civil War in Lebanon, 1975-92. New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Khater, Akram Fouad. Inventing Home Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.

Is History a Science? Definitions and Debates with Lawrence McMahon and Daniel Pontillo

42. History and Science

For all the debate the question has so often provoked, historians have been left with more confusion, disagreement, and apathy than answers when asking whether or not their discipline should be considered a science. However, this debate should have major implications for how historians relate to scholars in other fields and how their discipline is perceived (and funded) in their societies. In this podcast, we examine the question by looking at some scholarly debates about the definitions of science itself in conjunction with a discussion of how working definitions of history relate to these debates.

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Lawrence W. McMahon is a PhD student in the Department of History at Georgetown University and is co-founder of CPOK, Oklahoma's first School of Marxist Thought and Practice (www.cpok.us)
Daniel Pontillo is a PhD student studying cognitive science (see Linkedin)
Chris Gratien is a PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)

Select Bibliography

Popper, Karl R. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. New York: Harper & Row, 1968.

Popper, Karl R. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1959.

Kuhn, Thomas S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Hume, David, L. A. Selby-Bigge, and P. H. Nidditch. A Treatise of Human Nature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Quine, W. V. From a Logical Point of View: 9 Logico-Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961.

Revel, Jacques and Lynn Hunt, eds. Histories: French Constructions of the Past. New York: New Press, 1995.

Curthoys, Ann and John Docker. Is History Fiction? Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Christian, David. Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004.

Limnatis, Nectarios G. German Idealism and the Problem of Knowledge: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Springer, 2008.

Lukács, Georg. The Young Hegel. London: Merlin Press, 1975.

Lenin, V. I. Materialism and Empirio-Criticism. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House, 1920.

Engels, Friedrich. Dialectics of Nature. New York: International Publishers, 1940.

White, Hayden V. 1966. "The Burden of History". History and Theory. 5, no. 2: 111-134.

Ottoman Syria: Environment, Agriculture and Production

41. Environment, Agriculture, and Production in Ottoman Syria

In our second installment of an ongoing series on Ottoman Syria, we explore the ecological and economic conditions of Bilad al-Sham and their transformations throughout four centuries of Ottoman rule. Influenced by new interpretations of the region's history over the past decades that have highlighted the dynamism of the Syrian economy, we provide a qualitative overview of the major agricultural and finished products of the different parts of Greater Syria such as modern-day Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Southern Turkey as well as the different modes of economic production.

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Chris Gratien is a PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)

Select Bibliography

Chenciner, Robert.Madder Red: A History of Luxury and Trade : Plant Dyes and Pigments in World Commerce and Art. Richmond: Curzon, 2000.

Doumani, Beshara.Rediscovering Palestine Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1995.

Gerber, Haim.The Social Origins of the Modern Middle East. Boulder, Colo: L. Rienner, 1987.

Grove, Alfred Thomas, and Oliver Rackham.The Nature of Mediterranean Europe: An Ecological History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

Hughes, J. Donald.The Mediterranean: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2005.

Kasaba, Reşat.A Moveable Empire: Ottoman Nomads, Migrants, and Refugees. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2009.

Mishliḥ, ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd.al-Minṭaqah al-gharbīyah li-Wilāyat Ḥalab: Idlib fī al-qarn al-thāmin ʻashar, 1700-1800 : dirāsah ijtimāʻīyah-iqtiṣādīyah-tārīkhīyah. Dimashq: Wizārat al-Thaqāfah, 2006.

Mishliḥ, ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd.al-Minṭaqah al-gharbīyah li-wilāyat Ḥalab: Idlib fī al-qarn al-sābiʻ ʻashar, 1600-1700 M. Dimashq: ʻIkrmah lil-Ṭibāʻah wa-al-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʻ, 2002.

Mundy, Martha, and Richard Saumarez Smith.Governing Property, Making the Modern State Law Administration and Production in Ottoman Syria. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007.

Owen, Roger.The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914. London: Methuen, 1981.

Özdemir, Rifat.Antakya esnaf teşkilâtı: 1709-1860. Antakya: S.S. Antakya Esnaf ve Sanatkarlar Kredi ve Kefalet Kooperatifi, 2007.

Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, Peter Sluglett, and Stefan Weber.Syria and Bilad Al-Sham Under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul Karim Rafeq. Leiden: Brill, 2010.

Reilly, James A.A Small Town in Syria: Ottoman Hama in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Oxford: P. Lang, 2002.

Russel, Alex.The Natural History of Aleppo, and Parts Adjacent: Containing a Description of the City, and the Principal Natural Productions in Its Neighbourhood; Together with an Account of the Climate, Inhabitants and Diseases; Particularly of the Plague, with the Methods Used by the Europeans for Their Preservation. 1756.

Shafir, Gershon.Land, Labor, and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

Tabak, Faruk.The Waning of the Mediterranean, 1550-1870: A Geohistorical Approach. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

White, Sam.The Climate of Rebellion in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Al-Atrash, Rim Mansour. Al-Harir fi Suriya. Damascus: Wizarat al-Ma’arif, 1996.

Gaze: Eyes, Seeing, and Being Seen in History and Society with Daniel Pontillo

40. The Eyes of Others.

Human beings live their lives under a state of constant observation that is both perceived and real. Widespread folk traditions such as the notion of the "evil eye" (Turkish: nazar) reflect a belief in the profound power of the mere act of looking, which psychoanalysts such as Lacan have developed into theories of gaze (French: le regard) and the gaze effect that have gained resonance within the humanities and the social sciences. In this episode, Dan Pontillo joins us to discuss the gaze from the perspectives of psychoanalysis, the social sciences, and the scientific approaches of vision study and eye tracking.


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Daniel Pontillo is PhD student studying cognitive science (see Linkedin)
Chris Gratien is a PhD student studying the history of the modern Middle East at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)

Select Bibliography:

Lacan, Jacques. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-Analysis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1998.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books, 1995.
Derrida, Jacques, Marie-Louise Mallet, and David Wills. The Animal That Therefore I Am. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Scott, James C. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
Najmabadi, Afsaneh. Women with Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. New York: Orion Press, 1965.