MESA Banner
Abstract
My paper focuses on the socio-political connections among three Ottoman North African cities and their elites at the turn of the nineteenth century. It interrogates the socio-political networks and local alliances of governors and notables in Alexandria, Tripoli and Tunis. I argue that by tracing the overlapping and intermingled narratives of these regional leaders, we can observe the emergence of a new framework of political space and an associated regionalism at the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century in North Africa. My paper argues that the current historiography of Egypt and the Maghreb is overly reliant on the anachronistic delineations of the nation-state in understanding Early Modern North African space. Thus, while works by Egyptian historians, such Khaled Fahmy, and Tunisian scholars, such as Asma Moalla demonstrate political ties between the Egyptian or the Tunisian provinces and the Porte, their demarcations of space still adhere to modern nation-state boundaries and do not explore the horizontal political relationships between the North African eyalets, their rulers, or the sea to which they were so closely tied. Moreover, it does not account for the dependence that imperial powers, including the Ottomans, had on these individuals in negotiating the day-to-day imperial re-configurations of nineteenth century North African coast. By adopting a framework that focuses on the political ambitions and endeavors of this handful of geo-politically mobile and influential elites, we can not only see the broader geo-political repercussions of Bonaparte’s 1798 Egyptian invasion but that we can also re-frame Mehmed Ali’s later interest in Mediterranean in a regionally integrated North African context. This paper uses Ottoman imperial and naval sources, as well as contemporary-Arabic chronicles and local histories to retrace the historical narratives of these governors and elite whose behaviors and movement regularly underscored the horizontal connections between the cities of the North African coast. My paper shows just how connected Egypt was with its Maghrebi and Mediterranean neighbors during the Age of Revolutions. By looking at North Africa as a holistic region rather than a collection of fragmented proto-national spaces, a new narrative in North African history emerges that challenges current conceptualizations of the Early Modern Maghrebi and Egyptian worlds.
Discipline
History
Geographic Area
Maghreb
Sub Area
19th-21st Centuries