To the Edge of the Desert: Caucasian Refugees, Civilization, and Settlement on the Ottoman Frontier, 1866-1918

This dissertation investigates the Ottoman Empire’s settlement of refugees fleeing Russian persecution along the empire’s desert frontiers between 1866 and 1918. I contend that Muslim refugees from the Caucasus and the state officials who planned their settlement developed the internal frontiers of the Ottoman Empire to transform these regions’ societies, politics, and environments well into the twentieth century. The dissertation is thus an intervention in the histories of population mobility, the environment, and the project of modernity in the Ottoman Empire. It investigates the implications of Istanbul’s policies, driven by what I refer to as a “civilizing attitude,” for the refugee settlers, administrators, local populations, and the environments of the Middle East. The Ottoman state enacted a program of creating model agricultural settlements populated by refugees to sedentarize nomads, whom officials viewed as backwards. The dissertation argues for the agency of the refugees, who adapted to challenging circumstances and ultimately influenced the drawing of borders in the Middle East after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The analysis takes as its case studies settlement schemes in Benghazi, eastern Libya; Quneitra, southern Syria; and Resülayn, northern Mesopotamia to conclude that small communities of refugees at the far edges of empire altered historical trajectories on the regional, imperial, and global levels