Description
What is a city? How did cities change in the nineteenth century? This paper tackles this question through an investigation of the date gardens of late Ottoman Basra, in what is now southern Iraq. I begin by exploring how local intellectuals and elites conceptualized and described Basra in the mid-nineteenth century, tracing descriptions of a space in which the built environment and natural environments were coterminous. Next, the paper examines how the date export boom, which began in the 1860s, fit into and intensified existing characteristics of this urban agricultural landscape. I then explore Basra’s date gardens as spaces of both work and leisure in the late nineteenth century, including date-packing, port work, and the creation of novel financial mechanisms; but also picnicking, parties, and luxury travel, tracing how the date groves became the locus of capitalist transformation. I end with a brief discussion of the scattered and fragmentary nature of the archives available to reconstruct this history.
About the Speaker
Camille Lyans Cole is Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University in Normal, IL. She is a historian of late Ottoman Iraq and the modern Persian Gulf, focusing on histories of capitalism, empire, and environment. She has published on the histories of infrastructure, environment and archives in the Journal of Social History, Middle Eastern Studies, History of Science, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. She is working on her first book, Properties of Belonging in the Late Ottoman Gulf of Basra.
Respondent
Issam Nassar, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies
About the History of Capitalism Seminar Series
The History of Capitalism Seminar provides a works-in-progress forum for work from scholars at all levels. Proposals may consider a variety of subjects, including the history of race and racism, gender and feminist studies, intellectual history, political history, legal history, business history, the history of finance, labor history, cultural history, urban history, and agricultural history. Elizabeth Tandy Shermer (Loyola University Chicago) and Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University) are the co-coordinators of the seminar.
Register
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance. Space is limited, so please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend.
Register and Request Paper