Islam and the European Empires (The Past and Present Book Series) Paperback – 1 Jun 2016

Review

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)

For a field in which Islam and colonialism have long been treated as diametrically opposed and intimately engaged, it is surprising that so few volumes have explicitly sought to tackle this antagonistic embrace in a global sense. David Motadel ... goes so far as to suggest ... that such 'comparative studies are missing', and I must admit that I scratched my head to think of an effective counter example. His exhaustively referenced introductory essay shows that this was hardly done on a whim. Moreover, unlike too many edited volumes, this has drawn on an impressive range of global expertise to speak to the histories of conquest, accommodation, suppression and even encouragement from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Java Sea. (Michael Laffan, Journal of Islamic Studies)

One of the great merits of this indispensable volume is to remind the reader that several different European states engaged with different parts of the Islamic world and did so in a number of parallel spheres. The editor, David Motadel, who has recently published a major monograph on Nazi Germany and the Islamic world, sets out the issues in a thoughtful introduction ... The range, subtlety and illustrative detail that these chapters offer, and the authority of their authors, will make this volume an invaluable companion to courses on empire and Islam alike. (John Darwin, English Historical Review)

About the Author

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.