Environment and Empire in the Ottoman Jazira | Sam Dolbee

E548 | What can we learn about the late Ottoman Empire from the histories of its would-be margins? In this episode, we explore that question in multiple senses through a conversation with longtime Ottoman History Podcast contributor Sam Dolbee about his book "Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East." The book studies the dynamic history of the Jazira region, which straddles the modern borders of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. From the Tanzimat-era reordering of the Ottoman provinces to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of new nation-states, we discuss how the environment of the Jazira region and its people were both actors and objects in the remaking of the Middle East. Building out from the changing lives of locusts, grasshoppers that intermittently imposed themselves on the Jazira's history by devouring agricultural crops, Dolbee casts light onto communities of nomads and migrants often excluded from the empire's modern history. In the process, he shows how the people of Jazirah both made and resisted new administrative and national borders of the period. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2023/05/dolbee.html Samuel Dolbee is Assistant Professor of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches classes on environment, disease, and the modern Middle East. His is author of Locusts of Power: Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East. Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century. Reem Bailony is an Associate Professor of Middle East history at Agnes Scott College and formerly an American Druze Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Her book “Syria’s Transnational Rebellion: Diaspora Politics and the Revolt of 1925-1927" explores how the Syrian-Lebanese diaspora shaped the anti-French rebellion. CREDITS Episode No. 548 Release Date: 31 May 2023 Recording Location: Nashville, TN Sound production by Chris Gratien Music: Zé Trigueiros Images and bibliography courtesy of Samual Dolbee