During World War I, the US consulate was the only continuously operating Western diplomatic mission in Ottoman Baghdad. The U.S. consulate in Baghdad, besides their own duties, officially managed the affairs of countries that had withdrawn their diplomats, including France, Great Britain, Spain, Sweden and Austria-Hungary. This paper utilizes an historical approach, drawing on original archival research to examine the variety of roles that the U.S. consulate played in Baghdad during World War I, and analyzing the information recorded by the U.S. State Department concerning local economic conditions, espionage, and politics. The consulate assumed a multiplicity of roles including looking after stranded foreign nationals (particularly British Indians), protesting war-time property seizures, and advocating locally for American and other Western businesses. Consulate documents also provide insight into the conditions of the local economy during wartime, as well as the variety of alleged attempts at espionage undertaken by and against the Ottomans. Another dynamic that emerges from the sources is the economic and political tug of war between the U.S. and the British, after the latter occupy Basra and ultimately, Baghdad. The British use their control to limit all non-British trade for the duration of the war. This dynamic is particularly revealing because it presages the future struggles of the U.S. and Britain for influence and oil in the Middle East during the interwar period and the immediate post World War II period. This paper situates these roles, dynamics, and activities into a larger argument about the degree of American involvement and imperialism in the Middle East before WWI and how the evolution and professionalization of the U.S. State department contributed to this growth. Overall, the paper argues that the maturation of the functions performed by the U.S. consulate in Baghdad during WWI reflect the growth of American imperialism and the professionalization of the Foreign Service in the region

I propose a presentation about the political advocacy of the first and last Grand Sheikh of the British Isles, Sheikh Abdullah Quilliam, during the 1890s. Sheikh Quilliam was appointed to this position by Sultan Abdul Hamid II in 1894. He established a Pan-Islamic movement in Liverpool during the 1890s, where he spearheaded the Liverpool Muslim Institute’s political propaganda on British-Ottoman relations. The Institute published a monthly Islamic World from 1893 to 1908, which was sent to two-hundred cities in Europe, Asia, Middle East, and the United States. The problem addressed by this presentation is the confusion regarding the nature of Sheikh Quilliam’s activities and the lack of studies on pro-Ottoman propaganda in Victorian Britain. I argue that Sheikh Quilliam was a political activist regularly engaging in the political debate about Britain's relationship with the Ottoman Empire. He particularly defended the Sultan’s regime against foreign interference and criticism of Ottoman policies. His advocacy shows that there was a political dimension to the publishing activities of the Liverpool Muslim Institute that went beyond the promotion of Islam in Britain. Although at first sight Sheikh Quilliam’s publications may look less overtly political alongside the big political papers of the period, his work was in fact very much political. To date, there are no works that illuminate his work’s ideology or contribution to the debate on nationalism and Pan-Islamism in Britain during the Victorian period. Scholars today assume that the purpose of Sheikh Quilliam’s work was to promote the Islamic faith in Britain, which is not true. By focusing on Sheikh Quilliam and his publications, we gain insight into the political concerns of the Muslim Quilliam movement in Britain during the 1890s, which went beyond the objective of converting British citizens as Sophie Gilliat-Ray, Humyane Ansari, and Ron Geaves have suggested. Sheikh Quilliam’s advocacy provides us with an example of the officially sanctioned Pan-Islamism that was supported by Sultan Abdul Hamid II, which was different from that of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s Pan-Islamism. The significance of this study reflects the relative neglect of the contribution of Sheikh Quilliam’s to the debate on Pan-Islamism, nationalism, and British Ottoman relations.

Paper proposal: MESA, Washington 2017 Plants and Stuff: About the Austrian Botanical Missions to Iran in the 1880s Through European as well as Persian travel descriptions and large amounts of photographs we have a good idea of Iran's nineteenth-century landscapes, at least about the topography, climate and some of the vegetation. Some of this information is personal-sentimental to embellish moods or convey a sense of tangible and intangible environments; some of it is pragmatic-utilitarian, about business opportunities, how to get through certain terrain and climate, how to delineate territory, recognize access or natural resources with potential commercial value, including mineral resources, animals and plants. Most of the information about nineteenth-century geology and botany in Europe has been gathered in the context of diplomatic and political interaction or archaeological expeditions, less through missions expressly tagged as botanical in purpose. Starting from this context this paper examines two of the first explicit botanical missions to Iran, organized and dispatched from Vienna, comprising the 1882 expedition, which included some highly respected figures like J.E. Polak, T. Pichler, F. Wähner and the young O. Stapf exploring the botany of the Alvand Kuh region as well as a second such research mission privately funded by J.E. Polak. Among botanists of the region a little is known about these missions, valued for their contribution to the knowledge of the plant world of a botanically understudied region. While both expeditions were driven by a sheer keenness about plants and geology, both were obviously also part of the nineteenth-century hunt for natural resources. Little attention has thus far been paid to these expeditions. This paper discusses the environmental implications, the political and academic aims of these two Austrian projects and particularly focus on a critical investigation of the personal ambitions and goals of the participants involved. The paper is based on published materials, accessible European archival repositories (i.e. BNA, IOL, HHStA, IFO) in the UK, Austria and Iran.