Inter-Imperiality

A Country of White Lilies: Inter-Imperial Nation-Making and Development from the Russian Empire’s Periphery to Post-Ottoman Turkey

“…This constant redefinition alerts us to the fact that these categories themselves should be analyzed rather than applied as analytical categories at the outset. Viewing global politics from outside the East-West dichotomy and through the lens of inter-imperial positionality (Doyle 2014) reveals overlooked networks of relationships and knowledge diffusion. In this sense, we are seeking not to provincialize any location (Chakrabarty 2008), but rather to trace knowledge networks and trans-imperial and trans-historical political connections.…”

“…In our analysis of the book's enduring popularity in the Turkish republican imaginary, we have built on the bourgeoning work of Doyle's theoretical model of inter-imperiality, and Göçek's and Krause's calls to produce sociological knowledge that does not simply reproduce the "model cases" of major theoretical paradigms. Doyle (2014) argues that scholars of empire can build upon the insights of postcolonial approaches while also bringing inter-imperial fields of action into focus by adopting an "inter-imperial model" and centering the "inter-imperial positionality" of actors. She develops the theoretical framework of "interimperiality," defined as "a political and historical set of conditions created by the violent histories of plural interacting empires and by interacting persons moving between and against empires" (ibid.…”

“…Despite this critique, “we continue to make the oddly Eurocentric assumption that western European imperialism accounts for all recent imperialism, with the concomitant misperception that all territory is either a European (post)colony or uncolonized” (Doyle 2014: 162). This approach fails to account for non-Western imperial formations and their production of imperial difference, as well as to address the anti-imperialism and inter-imperial imaginations of the new Turkish Republican intelligentsia.…”

“…We then introduce relevant theoretical and methodological debates within the sociology of empires and nation-building and develop our inter-imperial approach based on the case of The Country of White Lilies. We build on Laura Doyle’s (2014) concept of “inter-imperiality” and Monika Krause’s (2021) call for conducting research outside of paradigmatic “model cases.” We conclude the paper by suggesting an alternative temporal, spatial, and political approach to post-World War I knowledge diffusion and nation-building projects that does not analytically privilege Western imperial spaces and avoids reifying entrenched binary categories such as East versus West, tradition versus modernization, and empire versus nation.…”

“Unusual returns”: Transnational whiteness and the dividends of empire

“…It points not simply to rights afforded white workers through national citizenship, but to shared solidarities and investments in colonial exploitation that stem from their position in different (even if competing) imperial formations. As a form of transnational whiteness, the dividends of empire arise out of a geopolitical formation that Laura Doyle calls “inter‐imperiality,” the political and historical dynamics “created by the violent histories of plural interacting empires and by interacting persons moving between and against empires” (Doyle, 2014, 160). In what follows, I explicate Du Bois's notion of the dividends of empire in two texts 5…”