21 May 2024
The American Center of Research has added a new recorded lecture to its YouTube channel. In it, Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, an historian of global migration and forced displacement and an assistant professor of global studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, —talks about his newly published book, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford University Press, 2024). In this compelling work, he discusses an historical narrative spanning the late Ottoman era, focusing on the influx of approximately one million Muslim refugees from Russia between the 1850s and World War I. These refugees, settling across the Ottoman Levant, Anatolia, and the Balkans, played a pivotal role in shaping the demographic landscape of the region. The contributions of Circassian and Chechen refugees extend beyond mere resettlement; they were instrumental in the founding of numerous villages, as well as three of the four largest cities in Jordan, among them Amman. Dr. Hamed-Troyansky’s research, drawing from extensive archival materials in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Russian sourced from Jordan, Turkey, Russia, and beyond, sheds light on this often-overlooked aspect of Ottoman history.
Empire of Refugees offers a fresh perspective, challenging conventional narratives surrounding migration and displacement in the Middle East. Through his analysis, Dr. Hamed-Troyansky illustrates how the Ottoman government established a sophisticated refugee regime that preceded the formal frameworks developed later by the League of Nations and the United Nations. This pioneering work not only enriches our understanding of the late Ottoman period but also provides valuable insights into broader historical and contemporary issues of migration and refugee governance.
