An Empire of Refugees: Muslim Migration and the Late Ottoman State

FAIN: FT-270519-20

Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky
Furman University (Greenville, SC 29613-0002)

Research and writing two chapters for a book on Muslim Refugee Resettlement in the Late Ottoman Empire (1860-1914).

Completion of research and writing for a book on Muslim refugee resettlement in the Ottoman Empire between 1860 and 1914. In the half century before World War I, over a million Muslims from Russia arrived as refugees in the Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman government resettled them throughout the empire: from the Balkans in the west, through Anatolia, to Iraq and Transjordan in the east. This book project is a social history of migration that shows how Muslim refugees transformed the late Ottoman Empire and how the Ottomans constructed a massive infrastructure to manage refugee flows. Using documents in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Russian, I argue that imperial support, in the form of financial aid and infrastructure, was critical for the economic success of refugee villages, which in turn proved fundamental to Ottoman political stability. By asserting the notion of an Ottoman refugee regime, the book marries Ottoman and Islamic history with global refugee and migration studies.