Camille Cole

Camille Cole's picture
History

Camille Cole’s dissertation uses a group of Ottoman and Iranian notables – tribal leaders, landowners, and entrepreneurs – as nodes through which to investigate the making of multi-imperial space in what is now southern Iraq. The Ottoman, British, and Qajar states all pursued imperial expansion and consolidation in the region roughly bounded by the Tigris-Euphrates-Karun river basin south of Baghdad. In addition to jockeying for political influence with local notables, all three states carried out projects of modernity, including remaking regional trade with steamships and linking the control of people and land with new land tenure regimes. Their existence alongside powerful local actors forced the three states to adjust both the goals and the application of these projects to fit the social, cultural, and environmental characteristics of southern Iraq. In the process, they created a unique configuration of modernity: a multi-imperial space of overlapping sovereignties and power brokers.