This panel seeks to rethink the role of urban, regional, and global networks in the modern Middle East and North Africa through the lens of a diverse set of merchants, political activists, and intellectuals. We ask the following questions: do the networks established by radical activists on the one hand and merchants on the other share any structural similarities? Did one type of network lend itself to being more "open" or "closed" than the otherh To what extent did each network allow for the collaboration of participants from different class, ethnic, religious, or national backgroundsk Can looking at the circulation of ideas, the printed word, merchandise, and various individuals through (and beyond) Middle Eastern and North African landscapes help us to reconsider larger patterns of Middle Eastern modernity in global contextsc The geographical scope of the panel is intentionally broad, covering networks reaching across Oran, Tunis, London, Paris, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Sao Paolo, Istanbul, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Jerusalem.
"Commercial Networks and Colonial Communities in Nineteenth-Century Algeria" follows the checkered career of a North African Jewish merchant during the transitional period of early French colonial rule in Oran. "On the Move between Beirut, Cairo and Sao Paulo" traces a network of Syrian intellectuals who played a central role in the dissemination of radical ideas across various cities and continents in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. "Late Ottoman Jewish Merchant Networks" analyzes a group of Levantine merchants who became part of new global networks in the late nineteenth century by selling "oriental" items on three continents. "Reconceptualizing Social Ties and Communal Boundaries" investigates the formation of business and social relationships between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish merchants in Late Ottoman Palestine. Finally, "Global Networks of Late Ottoman Era Intellectuals" pursues the international influences and connections of Young Ottoman and Young Turk intellectuals in the late Ottoman period.
Although the forms of economic globalization that emerged in the nineteenth century "coincided with the global diffusion of nationalism and colonialism," to quote Arif Dirlik, the Middle Eastern networks and the individual participants featured here often transcended, rejected, or existed despite national and colonial boundaries. The panel is thus concerned with the ways that the networks under study allowed individuals across the Maghrib and the Levant to challenge the new global world order even as they participated in it.
-
Dr. Joshua Schreier
My paper examines commercial networks in early colonial Algeria, while simultaneously questioning the meaning of Jewish "communities" in pre-colonial Algeria. It explores the career of a wealthy merchant by the name of Jacob Haim Lasry through the first decades of French rule. It argues that a coherent Jewish "community" was largely a product of French colonial policy, but pre-colonial commercial networks allowed certain merchants to profit from France's new religio-administrative order.
Like other Sephardic merchants of the time, Lasry's networks were hardly limited to one faith, and he grew quite rich with the help of Tunisian beys, British consuls, and others. With the French occupation of Oran in 1831, however, Lasry lost considerable sums. The new governors cancelled his contracts with French-sponsored Tunisian bey installed in Oran, so he lost the right to export cattle. In the early 1840s, French "civilizing" efforts threatened his private synagogue (a form of investment) in Oran. In response, Lasry made explicit efforts to make the new masters of Algeria understand that he, as a Sephardic Jew, did not belong to the local (largely Arabic-speaking) Jewish community of Oran, so his property should be spared. He underlined his Spanish-Moroccan merchant identity to protect his interests.
Lasry, however, soon found new opportunities in the colonial order. His considerable wealth led the French to invest him with a newly-created leadership position over the Jewish community of Oran (itself a newly-imagined body). Colonial policy brought Lasry, a man whose wealth derived from his position in non-sectarian trans-Mediterranean networks, to a leadership position of a community to which he adamantly denied belonging earlier in the conquest. His story allows us to interrogate not only how colonial policies affected pre- and early-colonial Jewish community structure, identity, and loyalties, but how one merchant tactfully "changed" his identity to secure his place in French Algeria's emergent racial hierarchy.
-
During the second half of the nineteenth century, as the global market for "oriental" items expanded, Ottoman merchants began to reorient their business to buyers abroad, repackaging such wares as carpets, tapestries, jewelry, lamps, divans, pillows, tables, armor, and later, "Turkish" tobacco and coffee, as oriental curiosities and luxury items. Trips to Ottoman concessions at world's fairs as well as a growing tourist industry in Ottoman lands increasingly brought these merchants into direct contact with their foreign clientele. Among the various individuals involved in the selling of things "oriental" in the late Ottoman world were a number of Sephardic Jewish merchants (of Iberian descent) resident in the Ottoman capital, as well as the Ottoman port cities of Izmir and Salonica.
This paper takes as its subject these late Ottoman Sephardic merchants, following them from their native cities to various European and American destinations. While many initially travelled to represent their empire and sell their wares during international exhibitions, some decided to strike roots in cities such as Paris, London, Philadelphia, Chicago, and New York. As was true for Ottoman long-distance traders of various faiths in the same period, late nineteenth-century Ottoman Jewish merchants of eastern objects became part of new global networks, with family members and business partners now stationed in different continents, all selling Middle Eastern products.
The object of the paper is twofold. First, it seeks to elucidate the nature of the networks under study in order to understand the forms of trust, social capital, communication, and partnerships they engendered with an eye on how "open" or "closed" they became at different historical junctures and in different geographical contexts. Secondly, it aims to probe the effects that these networks had on their individual members. How did the products they sold, their business connections, and their engagement with and marketing of Orientalism affect the self-image these merchants projected, both within the empire and abroad
-
Scholars have generally acknowledged that there were business and real estate ties between and across religious groups in Palestine. However contrary to the predominant scholarly view that treats business interactions as simply "transactions," I argue that they may indicate more complex social relationships that are not limited solely to the economic sphere. Loan guarantees and business partnerships, for example, are significant measures of interaction and interdependency since they are predicated on a high degree of trust and mutual accountability. Moreover, geographic proximity, organizational ties, educational background, and extended networks often overlap with business ties and suggest a multi-dimensionality of social networks that has not yet been studied in depth.
This paper looks at bank loan guarantees and business partnerships between Muslims, Christians, and Jews in late Ottoman Palestine as sites of constructing and reinforcing social ties, of kin, of co-religionists, and at times, of trans-confessional partners and 'brothers'. In addition to studying the specific social networks established, the paper also seeks to identify broader patterns. Did the existence of other ties (neighborhood co-residence, co-membership in a Masonic lodge, etc.) predict the ability and/or willingness to appeal outside the family for economic involvemento What factors determined how 'closed' or 'open' a network was?
I seek to link some of the insights of social science on issues like trust, friendship, and social networks, with broader observations that would reconcile the spotty anecdotal memoir literature with the empirical data from my research. In other words, how can a reconsideration of the depth and relevance of social networks change our understandings of "community" as a social process rather than just a social structuret How does space enter as a relevant category of historical contingency rather than simply as a backdrop of history
-
Global Networks of Late Ottoman Era Intellectuals
The ideas of Young Ottoman and Young Turk intellectuals of the Ottoman Empire reflected an acute awareness of the ideological currents in Europe and the rest of the world, as well as a clear consciousness of dominant global trends in political and social thought. In fact, late Ottoman Empire intellectuals illustrate the intellectual crisis of late 19th and early 20th century globalization as a self-reflective process. Yet, this globalization of intellectual life had uneven dimensions: For example, German materialist thought, Orientalists writings on Islamic civilization, or French positivists seemed to have more impact on Young Turk intellectuals than Kantian philosophy, theosophy or anti-modernist German romantics. Some of the networks that Ottoman intellectuals joined in showed contradictory motives and ideas: Even though Ottoman Muslim intellectuals were interested in keeping the Ottoman polity as an empire, they soon became part of a network of anti-imperialist Muslim intellectuals. Or, irrespective of the personal piety of some of the Ottoman Muslim intellectuals, they preferred to be connected to anti-Christian (and thus anti-religious) intellectual networks with strong positivist or scientistic ideals. More importantly, despite the anti-Ottoman implications of Orientalist scholarship in Europe, the Orientalists were often the closest intellectual partners of Ottoman intellectuals in exile.
By discussing the main networks of late Ottoman intellectuals, this paper will argue that the globalized world of Ottoman intellectual life was always mediated by various networks shaped by the agency of the intellectuals, their language capabilities, travel opportunities, educational institutions, trade routes as well as newspaper and journal outlets. Paying attention to the importance of the networks that shaped their global intellectual links can help in better understanding of the globalization of Ottoman thought and the agency of Ottoman intellectuals in their ideological orientations. A network approach to late Ottoman intellectual life will also clarify the role of non-Western actors in the trajectory of global intellectual history.
