Dear H-Levant members,

It is a great pleasure to announce the publication of my new book:

Thomas Kuehn, Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference. Ottoman Rule in
Yemen, 1849-1919 (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2011).

(http://www.brill.com/empire-islam-and-politics-difference)

From the publisher:

"Historians of the Middle East in the long nineteenth century have often
considered empire-building the preserve of European powers. This book
revises this picture by exploring how the Ottomans re-conquered and ruled
large parts of present-day Yemen between 1849 and the end of World War I,
after more than two centuries of independence under local dynasties.
Drawing on a wide range of sources and on recent scholarship on empire and
colonialism Empire, Islam, and Politics of Difference shows how the
concepts and practices of Ottoman imperial rule were shaped through the
encounters between Ottoman officials, their European rivals, and local
communities. The result is a fresh look at the nature of governance in the
late Ottoman Empire more generally."

Reviews:

"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
New York University
co-author of Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference





Thomas Kuehn, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of History
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, B.C. V5A 1S6
Canada
E-mail address: thomas_kuehn@sfu.ca

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