Nations, Maps, and Drawing the Boundaries of Post-Ottoman Nation-States

Episode 15. Redrawing the Map of the Middle East

with Nicholas Danforth

While maps create the illusion that borders are static, fixed, inviolable boundaries surrounding sovereign space, borders are in fact much more fluid than they appear on modern maps and are constantly being reconfigured. In this episode, Nicholas Danforth explores the ways in which the drawing of borders of the Modern Middle East in the post-Ottoman colonial order was variously arbitrary, haphazard, and even destructive.



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Nicholas Danforth is a PhD student studying the history of modern Turkey at Georgetown University (see academia.edu)
Emrah Safa Gürkan is a PhD candidate studying Ottoman 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:


Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 2006.

Poulton, H. (1997). Top hat, grey wolf, and crescent: Turkish nationalism and the Turkish Republic. Washington Square, N.Y: New York University Press.

Weber, E. (1976). Peasants into Frenchmen: The modernization of rural France, 1870-1914. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.

Navari, L. (1998). The Ottoman world. London: Bernard J. Shapero.

Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.