‘The Little Brother of the Ottoman State’: Ottoman technocrats in Kabul and Afghanistan's development in the Ottoman imagination, 1908–23

By charting the activities of Ottoman experts in Afghanistan from 1908–23, this article demonstrates how their arrival precipitated a series of state-building practices rooted in the particular historical experience of Ottoman reform projects. The country thus became the object of an Ottoman mission...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern Asian studies 2016-11, Vol.50 (6), p.1846-1887
Main Author: O’SULLIVAN, MICHAEL B.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Afghanistan
Commissioned works
Committees
Engineers
Expatriates
Experts
Islam
Islamism
Middle Eastern history
Modernity
Muslims
Political science
Public health
Public health education
Reforms
Royalty
Technical assistance
Transnationalism
World War I
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Summary:By charting the activities of Ottoman experts in Afghanistan from 1908–23, this article demonstrates how their arrival precipitated a series of state-building practices rooted in the particular historical experience of Ottoman reform projects. The country thus became the object of an Ottoman mission civilisatrice and the beneficiary, in the eyes of certain figures within the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress, of an avowedly Ottoman-Turkish modernity. Sharing this conviction were members of the Afghan royal family and its chief ministers, especially Maḥmūd Ṭarzī, who first invited the Ottoman advisers to Kabul. The provision of Ottoman technical assistance took a variety of forms, but is most evident in military, educational, and public health reforms enacted in Kabul in this period. Through the study of previously unexamined Ottoman, Afghan, and British sources, the aim here is to incorporate these events into discussions of Ottoman informal empire, Afghan developmentalism, and pan-Islam.
ISSN:0026-749X
1469-8099
DOI:10.1017/S0026749X15000244