North Caucasian Refugees and the Late Ottoman State | Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky

Ottoman History Podcast

E566 | During the late 19th and early 20th century, tens of millions of migrants crossed the seas, settling in the Americas and beyond in a mass migration event that reshaped politics and economies throughout the world. In this episode, we focus on one of the most ignored groups within the history of those momentous events: North Caucasian Muslims. As our guest, Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, explains, North Caucasian refugees fleeing Russian expansion became a large segment of the Ottoman migrant (muhacir) population and in turn, became a major new demographic component, constituting about 5% of the empire's citizens by WWI. Under the Muhacirin Commission created to facilitate their movements, they settled in remote provinces, from the edges of the Syrian desert to the plateaus of Central Anatolia, founding what would become major cities like Amman (modern-day Jordan) and constructing new diasporic identities in the process. As we discuss, these migrations not only changed the millions of people who became Ottoman refugees during the empire's last decade and their communities back home. They changed the nature of the Ottoman state itself. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/08/hamed-troyansky.html Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky is Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines Muslim refugee migration and its role in shaping the modern world. He is the author of Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford University Press, 2024). Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century. Can Gümüş is a doctoral candidate and researcher at Boğaziçi University's Atatürk Institute. Her dissertation examines the intersections of public health and urbanization in the late Ottoman Empire. CREDITS Episode No. 566 Release Date: 29 August 2024 Sound production by Chris Gratien Music: Aitua; A.A. Aalto Bibliography and images courtesy of Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2024/08/hamed-troyansky.html