Locusts of Power
Borders, Empire, and Environment in the Modern Middle East

New environmental history of borders and empire in the Middle East that centers locusts and people in motion from c1858–1939.

Samuel Dolbee (Author)

9781009200356, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 May 2023

0 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.495 kg

'In this deeply empirical and eloquent book, Samuel Dolbee offers a history of a part of the Middle East that scholars have missed (or ignored)-the Jazira. Following Dolbee following locusts across this landscape opens up modes of political and environmental analyses that point the way for future studies.' Alan Mikhail, Yale University

In this highly original environmental history, Samuel Dolbee sheds new light on borders and state formation by following locusts and revealing how they shaped both the environment and people's imaginations from the late Ottoman Empire to the Second World War. Drawing on a wide range of archival research in multiple languages, Dolbee details environmental, political, and spatial transformations in the region's history by tracing the movements of locusts and their intimate relationship to people in motion, including Arab and Kurdish nomads, Armenian deportees, and Assyrian refugees, as well as states of the region. With locusts and moving people at center stage, surprising continuities and ruptures appear in the Jazira, the borderlands of today's Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. Transcending approaches focused on the collapse of the Ottoman Empire or the creation of nation states, Dolbee provides a new perspective on the modern Middle East grounded in environmental change, state violence, and popular resistance.

Introduction
1. Sultans of the open lands (1858–1890)
2. 'Savage swarms' (1890–1908)
3. 'Weren't we a lot like those creatures?' (1908–1918)
4. 'Like swarms of locusts' (1918–1939)
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Historical geography [HBTP], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], Asian history [HBJF], European history [HBJD]