Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921

Abstract

"Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921" by Eugene L. Rogan is reviewed.

Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire: Transjordan, 1850-1921, by Eugene L. Rogan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiv + 255 pages. Bibl. to p. 266. Index to p. 274. $64.95.

Eugene L. Rogan's impressively-researched book is a welcome addition to the burgeoning field of Ottoman provincial history-a field that is redefining Ottoman historiography by substituting detailed and nuanced archival-based studies for the essentialized formulations that had all too often marked earlier Ottoman scholarship. That which distinguishes Rogan's book from other histories of the provinces is the combination of time period and locale he has chosen for his study. Concentrating on the Ottoman Transjordanian frontier during a period of imperial reassertion enables Rogan to explore such issues as state-formation and territorial integration and acculturation with a single-mindedness reminiscent of Eugen Weber's pursuit of similar themes in his ground-breaking Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914. Indeed, by taking advantage of a full range of imperial and local sources, Rogan avoids the snares of nationalist historiography and situates the history of the Transjordanian frontier squarely within the context of an Ottoman state which, over the course of the 19th century, catalyzed the transformation and redefinition of local social, economic, and political structures.

But while Rogan's book calls Weber's to mind, and while Rogan cites selections from the current spate of frontier studies in his introduction, it is the spirit of Charles Tilly which truly pervades this book. Following Tilly, Rogan presents a narrative that traces the extension of market relations and "modern" instrumentalities of governance into the Transjordanian frontier. As Rogan details, the 19th-century Ottoman state adopted a number of strategies to stabilize and establish a permanent presence in the territory of Transjordan: it coopted and violently subjugated bedouin tribesmen and recast them as agriculturalists; it resettled Circassian, Turkmen, and Chechen immigrants to the empire in strategic locations; it constructed transportation and communication infrastructure that linked the Transjordanian frontier to the imperial center; and it expanded educational institutions and deployed religious missionaries for the purpose of standardizing cultural and religious practice. As the state increasingly asserted its control over the region, soldiers and government agents were joined by merchants, pioneers, and foreign missionaries (whom Ottoman authorities initially regarded as allies in a common effort to advance "civilization" on the frontier), attracted by opportunities unleashed by the activation of market forces, the standardization of legal norms, and the imposition of civil order. Thus, what had begun as a quest by the state to extend the domain of its authority and extractive capabilities sparked a social revolution as old loyalties dissolved, land and labor were commoditized, urban centers expanded, and an urban-based merchant and landowning "elite emerged at the apex of local society. While Rogan is careful to differentiate among the three districts of Transjordan when assessing this social transformation, the overall picture he paints is one of a steady (if sometimes inadvertent) advance of a reinvigorated Ottoman social order.

This is not to say that this advance was uncontested, however. In a particularly illuminating chapter, Rogan details the Karak revolt of 1910, which was sparked by the heavy-handed attempt of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress to register the land and population of the district. For Rogan, the revolt illustrates the limits of Ottoman power in Transjordan: since Karak was the southernmost district of the Transjordanian frontier, its integration into the Ottoman system was less advanced than that of the northern districts and could still be openly challenged by its inhabitants as late as the second decade of the twentieth century. But just as Rogan is skeptical of those who would read some sort of nationalist meaning into the revolt (he aptly recalls that the revolt was appropriated into the Arab nationalist narrative by the same stratum of urban elites who had once vilified the "`arab" rebels for their barbaric ways), he is equally wary of those who would use the revolt as evidence of the inefficacy of Ottoman rule and the ex nihilo construction of Jordan by the British and their Hashemite clients in the aftermath of the First World War. As Rogan argues, the postwar Jordanian state-builders owed an unacknowledged debt to the nineteenth-century Ottoman state, for they could not have succeeded in their endeavors but for its legacy. It is this legacy that Rogan so skillfully brings to life in Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire.