Mapping Space and Mobility in the Red Sea Region, c.1500–1950

Miran, Jonathan

doi:10.1111/hic3.12132

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…35 Other maritime and land-based connecting spaces between the empires such as the Red Sea, Iraq, and the Eastern Mediterranean could be added to the list. 36 Similar to the northern examples we havef ocused on above, they often havea history that goes beyond the Early Modernp eriod. As in the case of Transottomanica itself, for the present volume it is interesting to see how historical scholarship has used processes of mobility such as trade and exchange to con-ceptualize these regions.…”

Section: Setting the Stagementioning

confidence: 79%

Introduction: Movable Objects

Blaszczyk¹,

Born²,

Riedler³

2021

Transottoman Matters

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This volume analyzes historical processeso fm obility by focusing on material objects. It is our principal thesis that flows of things, objects or materialsare the key for any understanding of the nature and scope of as ocial relational space transformed, constituted and shaped through mobilities. Mobility-as ashorthand for various related processeso fm igration,t ransfer, entanglement and translation-involves human actors, immaterial elements such as ideas and knowledge, but also objects in various forms and functions. For example, as material infrastructures, they form the basis for transporta nd travel; as goods they are the object and purpose of trade or giftexchange. In all of these cases, objects are deeply entangled withhuman actors as well as immaterial elements. By focusing on the ways in which objects determined certain historical processes of mobility and how their social meaning and materiality wast ransformed in these processes, we hope to gain ad eeper insight into the question of how mobility defined trans-regional relations from along-term perspective.The case studies presented in this volume are part of acollaborative effort to reconstruct from the particular perspectiveofobjects and materiality amobility space we call Transottomanica. Rather than to denote afixed geographical entity, the term Transottomanica is used in aheuristic fashion, identifying achanging set of entanglements and transfers sustained by flows and networks between the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The name refers to the fact that, between the end of the fifteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, many of these flows and networks originated in or passed through the Ottoman Empire. But the other empires that dominated the Middle East and Eastern Europe in the early modern period such as Poland-Lithuania, Russia and the Safavid Empire in Persia are also an integralp art of this research perspective. Af ocus on this area will act as a balance to the lively scholarly interest in transfers between WesternEurope and the Orient. Moreover, where transfers between the Middle East and Eastern Europe were studied, they havebeen often conceptualizedasbilateral relations between states or empires. Examples of goods such as silk, which wast raded between Persia and Western Europe via Russia, or carpets that were exported Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0

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Section: Setting the Stagementioning

confidence: 79%

Introduction: Movable Objects

Blaszczyk¹,

Born²,

Riedler³

2021

Transottoman Matters

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Assab and the Suez Canal: Traditional Networks and Imperial Agendas in the Red Sea

Castiglioni¹

2022

Italy and the Suez Canal, From the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Cold War

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Rethinking the “Middle East” After the Oceanic Turn

Green

2014

Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East

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Models of geographical space are empowered by a hard rhetoric that, in suggesting the concrete stability of the longue durée, lends the aura of geological fixity. But while places might themselves be sheer facts, our conceptions of them both in themselves and in relation to other places are cultural constructions born in particular moments in time. A coinage of the early twentieth century to demarcate a strategic middle ground between the “Near” and “Far” East, the “Middle East” is itself a relatively new category whose history has been far less stable than its hard rhetoric might suggest. In pointing to the mutability of geographical models, Green aims not so much to historicize but to question the continued usefulness of the more formal, closed model of the Middle East. For all such geographical models are ultimately analytical categories that are meant to enable us to trace forms of connectivity and commonality. And like any other analytical categories, geographical ones deserve no special treatment once they have outlived their usefulness. This seems particularly the case when we look to the geographical frameworks that have actually enabled original scholarship over the past decade or so, particularly the shift toward maritime conceptions of space (Mediterranean, Indian Ocean), which though by no means new have breathed new life into the study of the premodern and colonial/modern history of the Middle East. The rise of global and connected history has similar implications for the closedness and fixity of the traditional area studies paradigm, which, Green contends, doesn’t help us meet the challenge and possibilities provided by the emergence of these new forms of history writing.

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Mapping Space and Mobility in the Red Sea Region, c.1500–1950

Cited by 4 publications

References 41 publications

Introduction: Movable Objects

Introduction: Movable Objects

Assab and the Suez Canal: Traditional Networks and Imperial Agendas in the Red Sea

Rethinking the “Middle East” After the Oceanic Turn

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