University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2016 Commandeering Empires: Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis in the Age of Revolution, 1774-1835 Mukaram Hhana University of Pennsylvania,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Islamic World and Near East History Commons Recommended Citation Hhana, Mukaram, "Commandeering Empires: Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis in the Age of Revolution, 1774-1835" (2016). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 1761. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1761 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/1761 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Commandeering Empires: Egypt, Tripoli, and Tunis in the Age of Revolution, 1774-1835 Abstract This dissertation interrogates our conceptualizations of space, our understanding of the topographical borders of regions, and our historiographical depiction of the margins between imperial administration and local autonomy the Ottoman Maghreb. It does so by juxtaposing the history of corsairs, Bedouins, desert caravans and empires in turn-of-the-nineteenth-century North Africa. Further, it examines the horizontal connections among the North African provinces and their corresponding systems of governance. The central premise of this dissertation is that one cannot fully understand the policy and affairs of turn of the nineteenth century Egypt, or the Porte, without a firm grasp on the historical context of neighboring Ottoman Tripoli and Tunis. Approaching this project with a regional lens allows this research to challenge the historiographical perception that North Africa was a periphery of the Ottoman world, and that its coastlines were the southern periphery of the Mediterranean region.