Islam and the European Empires (The Past and Present Book Series)

Islam and the European Empires (The Past and Present Book Series)

At the height of the imperial age, European powers ruled over most parts of the Islamic world. The British, French, Russian, and Dutch empires each governed more Muslims than any independent Muslim state. European officials believed Islam to be of great political significance, and were quite cautious when it came to matters of the religious life of their Muslim subjects. In the colonies, they regularly employed Islamic religious leaders and institutions to bolster imperial rule. At the same time, the European presence in Muslim lands was confronted by religious resistance movements and Islamic insurgency. Across the globe, from the West African savanna to the shores of Southeast Asia, Muslim rebels called for holy war against non-Muslim intruders. Islam and the European Empires presents the first comparative account of the engagement of all major European empires with Islam. Bringing together fifteen of the world's leading scholars in the field, the volume explores a wide array of themes, ranging from the accommodation of Islam under imperial rule to Islamic anti-colonial resistance. A truly global history of empire, the volume makes a major contribution not only to our knowledge of the intersection of Islam and imperialism, but also more generally to our understanding of religion and power in the modern world. "This is a welcome contribution to (Western) imperial, religious, Islamic, Western-Islamic relational, transnational, international, comparative and global historical studies....The scholarship is...of high-quality, full of insight and thought-provoking. It is highly recommended as a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in this area."--R. Charles Weller, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations "[A] highly welcome contribution to putting things into perspective and gaining a more nuanced and differentiated view of West-Eastern history... Islam and the European Empires is an impressive achievement due to its wide geographic range and the depth of research in the majority of its articles."--Rainer Brunner, Die Welt des Islams "This is a fascinating...collection of essays...I am sure that it will long serve as a point of reference for comparative imperial history. Most of the chapters are a joy to read and evidently represent the very best in modern scholarship."-- Journal of Modern History "A monumental, comprehensive, and lucid contribution to scholarship, providing the first comparative account of the engagement of the European empires with Islam. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the question of how best to govern the religious affairs of Muslims became a central concern of all imperial powers. Despite the differences among regions and empires, the European encounters with Islam in imperial contexts were in many ways similar. This detailed yet clear account is a masterly survey of the entire sweep of the European empires and Islam-a towering landmark in the subject."--Wm. Roger Louis, University of Texas at Austin "Encompassing five modern empires, and showing the multivalence of imperial debates on Islam no less than Muslim debates on empire, this much needed volume fills a long-empty place on the historian's bookshelf. Together the chapters reveal Europe's empires as a nexus of administrative, military, and epistemic forces in dynamic interplay with Muslims in the concrete and Islam in the abstract."--Nile Green, UCLA "David Motadel's volume brings together leading international scholars of Islam and empire in what is a fascinating addition to the growing literature on comparative world history."--C. A. Bayly, University of Cambridge "The scholarship is, by and large, of high-quality, full of insight and thought-provoking. It is highly recommended as a worthwhile read for anyone with an interest in this area."-- R. Charles Weller, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations The first comparative account of the engagement of all major European empires with Islam in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. David Motadel is a Research Fellow in History at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. A graduate of Cambridge, where he was a Gates Scholar, he has held visiting fellowships at Harvard, Yale and Oxford.