Janet Klein. The margins of empire: Kurdish militias in the Ottoman tribal zone (2011)

Janet Klein. The margins of empire: Kurdish militias in the Ottoman tribal zone. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011, XII+275 p. ISBN 9780804775700, ISBN 9781503600614, ISBN 9780804777759

Contents

Acknowledgments … IX
Introduction: The Hamidiye Light Cavalry in the Ottoman Tribal Zone … 1
1. A Manifold Mission … 20
2. The Hamidiye Under Abdülhamid II, 1890–1908 … 52
3. The Tribal Light Cavalry Under the Young Turks, 1908–1914 … 95
4. The Hamidiye and the “Agrarian Question” … 128
5. The Hamidiye and Its Legacy … 170
Appendix: Map of Hamidiye Regiments, ca. 1900 … 185
Notes … 187
Bibliography … 249
Index … 263

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Ottoman state identified multiple threats in its eastern regions. In an attempt to control remote Kurdish populations, Ottoman authorities organized them into a tribal militia and gave them the task of subduing a perceived Armenian threat. Following the story of this militia, Klein explores the contradictory logic of how states incorporate groups they ultimately aim to suppress and how groups who seek autonomy from the state often attempt to do so through state channels.

In the end, Armenian revolutionaries were not suppressed and Kurdish leaders, whose authority the state sought to diminish, were empowered. The tribal militia left a lasting impact on the region and on state-society and Kurdish-Turkish relations. Putting a human face on Ottoman-Kurdish histories while also addressing issues of state-building, local power dynamics, violence, and dispossession, this book engages vividly in the study of the paradoxes inherent in modern statecraft.

About the author

Janet Klein is Associate Professor of History at The University of Akron.