This paper examines the forms of colonial authority along the external frontier of British India, looking specifically at the Frontier Crimes Regulation which was the basis of administration along the North-West Frontier. This Regulation, first promulgated in 1872, laid the groundwork for a distinct form of governmentality the colonial state deployed along the limits of the imperial project. There, as elsewhere along the extremity of British rule including mandatory Iraq and Palestine, colonial Nigeria and Kenya, as well as South Africa, indigenous inhabitants, which were invariably characterized as ‘independent’, were ruled by their own ‘customs and traditions’. Such forms of rule excluded them from the modernizing influences of the colonial state. As such, their story complexifies our understanding of the colonial project. Rather than simply being a copy of the Westphalian states then being constructed in Europe, the colonial state was a hybrid, deeply entwined with the local political topography and culture but at the same time productive of new forms and norms of politics. Many of these originated along the frontier and were reingested into the heartlands of colonial authority – and onward to the metropolitan center. The margins made the metropole.

The aim of this paper is to reconsider the legacy of one of the most daring, polarizing, and arguably misunderstood Afghan rulers in modern history—Shah Amanullah Khan Muhammadzai (r. 1919-1929)—through the lens of a rare source attributed to his reign: a transcript of sermons he delivered in Qandahar in 1925. By providing a microhistory to the Amani period based on this largely unexamined text, I ask: what was Amir Amanullah seeking to accomplish in delivering these khutbehs? What new perspectives can they impart about his style of rule, the social and legal reforms embodied in his reforms, and how the amir framed them to the people of Qandahar at the midpoint of his decade-long reign? Finally, what can they tell us about Amanullah’s model of leadership and rule as compared—and contrasted—to Kemalism? While the Amani reforms of 1919-1929 have long been attributed to Kemalist mimcry in light of Amanullah’s friendship with the Turkish Republic’s founder, this paper attempts to uncover a neglected feature of Amanullah’s reformist project: how he presented them to his own people. It argues that while Amanullah Khan advocated social change through top-down legal engineering, he was adamant to stress his reforms were a legitimate interpretation of the shari‘a, and specifically within Hanafi jurisprudential perimeters, thereby tackling modern state-building challenges from a purportedly authentic (and certainly nationalized) Afghan juridical corpus. In contrast to developments in Republican Turkey, Amani Afghanistan’s version of a Muslim nation-state and monarchy stressed continuity with predominantly Hanafi religio-legal orthodoxy in the country, rather than blistering rupture.

King Amanullah’s rise to power ushered Afghanistan into a period of independence, which led to the adoption of an autonomous foreign policy. Afghan embassies were set up, and diplomatic representations sent abroad. This international exchange opened Afghanistan to state-led modernization projects, and invited German educators and technocrats to Kabul. Among these projects was the attempt to send young Afghan boys and men to Germany and train them at Germany technical school. Upon their return these young men replaced the German technocrats and became the next generation of engineers, chemists, and educators. This paper examines the life and studies of an Afghan student and scholar, A. Ahmad Fofolzai, who deviated from the technical profession of his peers, and studied the human sciences. Fofolzai arrived at the University of Jena, Germany, in 1937 and studied philosophy and pedagogy. In the context of the Second World War the majority of Germans were expelled from Kabul, and Fofolzai filled one of these positions by serving as the new director of the Amani High School. Fofolzai later became Afghanistan’s Minister of Education. This paper has two aims: first to situate Fofolzai’s dissertation and his later publications in Kabul into a wider historical context of Afghanistan’s relationship to Nazi Germany, which in turn will highlight the intellectual dimension of Afghan-German exchange. The second aim is to emphasize that Afghan students did not merely adopt new German pedagogical methods from abroad, rather carefully reworked these ideas before implementing them into Afghanistan’s curricula. Fofolzai’s life offers us insight into how the Afghan students’ time abroad shaped their cultural and social views and what kind of ideas they were most attracted to.

Inspired by dynamic flows of people and ideas through Afghanistan and the rich history of its capital city, Kabul, as an important site of cultural production and intercultural exchange, my research brings attention to the history of the radio as a medium that connected Afghans to a wider transnational network in the latter half of the 20th century. In so doing, it highlights ways in which popular culture functioned as a site where significant patterns of contemporary movement, regional exchange and connectivity intersect. Although radio broadcasting in Afghanistan began in the early 1920’s with the purchase of two broadcasting systems that functioned out of Kabul and Qandahar, it was not until the acquisition of German transmitters in the early 1960’s that a national radio station was established. For the first time, local broadcasters could offer their listeners programming on politics, daily news including world events, society, arts and culture, and music featuring artists in and beyond Afghanistan. The study of the radio allows insight into the diverse forms of content material as well as the broad range of participants that transcended gender, ethnic and age divisions. I argue that the radio provided a space, in which Afghans showcased their cosmopolitan sensibilities and actively engaged in global currents as well as the changing social and political dynamics within the country throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s.   In addition to investigating the transnational flow of cultural ideas through the radio, this paper deliberates on how this technology allowed for expressions of social and cultural resistance and encouraged processes of radical deliberation. Music played a significant role in allowing for these acts of implicit defiance to be projected to the wider Afghan public. As the shifting landscapes of revolution and counterrevolution continued to impact the country throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s, these expressions serve as important frameworks for understanding how Afghans both experienced and understood themselves as well as others. Sources for this paper are drawn from sound recordings, newspapers and other print media, memoirs, historical photographs and a collection of interviews with employees of Radio Afghanistan.