Thesiss

This thesis examines how the unbound world of the Don steppe frontier became a borderland of the Russian empire. It connects the rivalry of the Russian and Ottoman states in the Black Sea basin to the social history of the Don Cossacks, who evolved from an open, multiethnic, fra…

This dissertation analyzes the dynamics of modern empires. It asks why some empires were able to maintain control of their territories for long periods of time, while others were not. Why was the Communist Party able to restore and even expand the former Russian Empire, whereas …

The Limits of Secular Criticism: World Literature at the Crossroads of Empires offers a colonial history of literature at the intersections of the French and British empires, nineteenth-century moral education and reforms in Qur'anic instruction. My argument is that literature, …

This dissertation investigates the impact of incorporation into the Neo-Assyrian empire (ca. 900-609 BC) on the domestic economies and social organization of provincial subjects on its northwestern periphery. Three seasons of excavation at Zincirli Höyük, Turkey (ancient Sam'al)…

Within the framework of the increasingly imperial world of the early modern period, the Deccan Plateau of South India stands out as somewhat anomalous. From their emergence in the 1490s and until their submission to the Mughal Empire in 1636, the sultanates of Ahmadnagar, Bijapu…

Augustine, a 5th-century African Christian, and Autocrat, a 20th-century Turkish nationalist, both addressed the end of an empire by crafting a successful new vision of social order. Augustine's City of God defined medieval Europe. Atatürk's Six Day Speech (Nutuk ) transformed t…