This thesis addresses the question of how states, meaning organised political communities, were historically able to secure their sovereignty through gaining the recognition of other states. As sovereignty refers to the presence of a state’s authority, its existence is premised on states and other internal and external actors recognising claims to sovereignty. Therefore, states, such as the Ottoman Empire, which historically had a different understanding of legitimacy, faced challenges to their sovereignty following the emergence of new global understandings of sovereignty in the late nineteenth century. The Ottoman Empire was distinct in that it was the only Islamic state that was not subject to and was able to avoid completely falling under the influence of then-dominant European states. However, the Ottoman Empire still experienced European intervention and there was a desire to end forms of European extraterritorial jurisdiction. Ottoman elites, who were affiliated with the reformist Young Turks, sought to secure recognition of their state’s sovereignty by reconstituting it along novel international standards of legitimate statehood. These standards were based on the concepts of “civilised”, “militarist”, “popular” and “national” statehood, and were reinterpreted by the Young Turks in the course of their efforts to secure the recognition of European powers. These efforts included diplomacy with European powers, institutional reform and conceptual innovation. However, it also involved engaging in practices associated with sovereignty such as the control of territory. In all of these areas, the Young Turks reinterpreted aspects of the existing Ottoman legacy of statehood and international norms, to secure their claim to sovereignty. Therefore, the Ottoman state elites sought to convey an impression of governing a state that could be recognised as sovereign by other European powers. Ultimately, the remnants of the Young Turks, secured international recognition of their state, reconstituted as the nation-state of Turkey in 1923.

Reconstituting sovereignty: the Young Turks’ efforts to secure external recognition and the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, 1908 - 1923

This paper argues that while we have adopted the language of decisionmaking in our theories of international relations, we have not adequately addressed the operational problems of studying cognitive variables. After I identify the empirical challenge, I try to direct our theoretical attention to the task of drawing inferences about a subject's perceptions and definitions. I advance a preliminary theory and strategy that might guide this inference process, and then apply the basic method to a case study of Soviet perspectives on change in the Third World. The paper tries to bridge three domains: international relations theory, the psychology of social cognition, and Soviet area studies.

The Empirical Challenge of the Cognitive Revolution: A Strategy for Drawing Inferences about Perceptions

As in much of the late modern world, Muslim societies in recent years have seen an unprecedented resurgence of religious issues and organizations into public affairs. The resurgence has given special urgency to the question of whether this revitalized Islam is compatible with democracy and civic pluralism. Drawing on comparative materials and an in-depth discussion of recent events in Indonesia, the world's largest majority-Muslim country, this article presents a preliminary analysis of the relationship of Islam to democratization. The article argues that most Muslims continue to look to their religion for principles of public order as well as personal spirituality. The political ideals Muslims derive from their tradition, however, are not immutable, but vary in a manner that reflects competing views as to how Muslims should respond to the challenges of the late modern world. Some Muslim activists invoke the idea of Islam as religion and state to justify harshly coercive policies and the fusion of state and society into an unchecked monolith. But there is also an emerging democratic or civil-pluralist tradition in the Muslim world that seeks to recover and amplify Islam's democratic endowments. Its supporters argue that, by concentrating vast power in rulers' hands, the Islamic state only increases the likelihood that their religion's high ideals will be subordinated to authoritarian intrigues. As events in Indonesia illustrate, this clash of cultures between promoters of a Muslim civil society and democracy and supporters of an anti-pluralist Islamic state is likely to remain a key feature of Muslim politics for some time to come

Public Islam and the Problem of Democratization

The Price of Freedom Denied shows that, contrary to popular opinion, ensuring religious freedom for all reduces violent religious persecution and conflict. Others have suggested that restrictions on religion are necessary to maintain order or preserve a peaceful religious homogeneity. Brian J. Grim and Roger Finke show that restricting religious freedoms is associated with higher levels of violent persecution. Relying on a new source of coded data for nearly 200 countries and case studies of six countries, the book offers a global profile of religious freedom and religious persecution. Grim and Finke report that persecution is evident in all regions and is standard fare for many. They also find that religious freedoms are routinely denied and that government and the society at large serve to restrict these freedoms. They conclude that the price of freedom denied is high indeed.

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The Price of Freedom Denied: Religious Persecution and Conflict in the Twenty-First Century

From the mid-19th to the early 20th centuries, the forces unleashed by the age of European imperialism and its rapid encroachment on dār al-Islām increasingly brought the hajj under the scrutiny and regulation of non-Muslim powers. The driving force behind these dramatic changes in administration of the hajj was the expansion of the British Empire. As Britain's power in the Indian subcontinent grew, so too did its maritime supremacy throughout the Indian Ocean basin. Looking to secure its access to India, ward off its European competitors, and expand its commercial interests in southwestern Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden, Britain's role in the region was intensified by the transit opportunities that emerged with the development of regular steamship routes between the Mediterranean and India from the 1830s to the 1860s and the eventual opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. With the exponential growth of maritime traffic that accompanied these technological advances came a similarly dramatic rise in the oceangoing pilgrim traffic from and through British India. Owing to this expansion in the number of seaborne pilgrims, the hajj soon came to be recognized as the primary conduit for the globalization of epidemic diseases, such as cholera and plague.

/pdf/empire-and-the-hajj-pilgrims-plagues-and-pan-islam-under-s4lz7w4116.pdf

Empire and the hajj: pilgrims, plagues, and pan-islam under british surveillance, 1865–1908

"Keddie has rendered a valuable service ...Afghani merits the attention of Western students of the contemporary international scene and the Muslim renaissance since he made the first significant attempt to answer the modern Western challenge to the Muslim world." (Eastern World). "Sayyid Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897), the well known religious reformer and political activist, led a busy and complex life full of obscure and clandestine ventures...[Keddie] draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources. In part I an attempt is made to provide an accurate biography and a consistent analysis of Afghani. Part II contains translations of some of his most important writings...Although Afghani was concerned with the wide ranging need for Islamic reform, he devoted most of his life to the more urgent political problems confronting Muslims - problems arising out of their weakness in dealing with the Western Christian powers. Hence the tide of this book. The picture that emerges here confirms Afghani's long standing reputation as a defender of Muslim interests - not against borrowing European advances in science and technology, but against foreign political, economic, or military encroachment." (Middle East journal). "Jamal ad-Din was a mysterious figure and most of the mysteries were of his own making ...it has been left to Professor Keddie to apply the methods of the critical historian to the matter...This book shows how successful she has been ...there has emerged for the first time a credible picture of Jamal ad-Din's life ...The second part contains translations of works by Jamal ad-Din himself, and these are valuable because most of them were written in Persian and have either not been easily available at all or else have been available only in Arabic translation. This is particularly true of the Refutation of the Materialists." (International journal of Middle East Studies). "For the first time a significant collection of the writings of al-Afghani are now available in English, and so, for the first time, this controversial figure has had more life breathed into him." (American Historical Review).

Nikki R. Keddie

Papers

An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din "al-Afghani"