1st Edition
Foundations of Modernity Human Agency and the Imperial State
@contents:Introduction. Relocating the Great Transformation in the Balkans and Arabia 1. The Local Scramble for Ascendancy and the Demise of the "Era" 2. Demarcating Imperial Boundaries and the Rise of Difference 3. Beyond the Frontier: Subduing the Agents of Change 4. Diasporic Agency and the Shifts in the Possibilities of Empire 5. Capitalizing Empires and the Political Economy of Reform Conclusion
Biography
Isa Blumi, PhD (2005 NYU), is currently a Fellow at the Centre for Area Studies at Leipzig University. He teaches Balkan, Middle Eastern and world history at Georgia State University. His previous books include Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire (2003); Chaos in Yemen (2010 with Routledge) and Reinstating the Ottomans (2011).
"Blumi clearly knows the ins and outs of local conflicts…and produces a prodigious amount of archival research to document them. The juxtaposition of developments in places as seemingly disparate as Albania and Yemen, Macedonia and Kuwait, makes us question many of the categories we are comfortable with and helps us see modernity
in a new light."-Adeeb Khalid, Carleton College, USA"This is a welcome addition to scholarship on Ottoman administration and political economy in the 19th century. His theoretical discussion and review of the literature present a…clear and comparative framework influenced by a variety of anthropologists, philosophers, and historians. This is a dense study that can be used to encourage discussion in graduate courses." -M. Safa Sarac¸O˘Glu, Department of History, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, USA
"Isa Blumi’s new book is a remarkable attempt to deconstruct currently-held – if not universally accepted – ideas about the birth of modernity, relating the emergence of the modern world to the developments of nineteenth-century imperialism. ..the reader is led to a refreshingly new understanding of the history of empire and a reconsideration of the compelling, liberal narrative of nationalism….Blumi’s book is an extremely welcome addition to reading lists on empire, states and nations, and on historical approaches to modernity, even as the interpretation forces us to continue seeking answers to questions which defy most forms of cohesive responses." -Isabel DiVanna, University of Cambridge, UK
