The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century
by Zozan Pehlivan
In this innovative, interdisciplinary work, Zozan Pehlivan presents a new environmental perspective on intercommunal conflict, rooting slow violence in socioeconomic shifts and climatic fluctuations. From the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, recurrent and extreme climate disruptions became an underlying yet unacknowledged component of escalating conflict between Christian Armenian peasants and Muslim Kurdish pastoralists in Ottoman Kurdistan. By the eve of the First World War, the Ottoman state's shifting responses to these mounting tensions transformed the conflict into organized and state-sponsored violence. Pehlivan upends the 'desert-sown' thesis and establishes a new theoretical and conceptual framework drawing on climate science, agronomy, and zoology. From this alternative vantage point, Pehlivan examines the impact of climate on local communities, their responses and resilience strategies, arguing that nineteenth-century ecological change had a transformative and antagonistic impact on economy, state, and society.
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by Zozan Pehlivan
In this innovative, interdisciplinary work, Zozan Pehlivan presents a new environmental perspective on intercommunal conflict, rooting slow violence in socioeconomic shifts and climatic fluctuations. From the nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries, recurrent and extreme climate disruptions became an underlying yet unacknowledged component of escalating conflict between Christian Armenian peasants and Muslim Kurdish pastoralists in Ottoman Kurdistan. By the eve of the First World War, the Ottoman state's shifting responses to these mounting tensions transformed the conflict into organized and state-sponsored violence. Pehlivan upends the 'desert-sown' thesis and establishes a new theoretical and conceptual framework drawing on climate science, agronomy, and zoology. From this alternative vantage point, Pehlivan examines the impact of climate on local communities, their responses and resilience strategies, arguing that nineteenth-century ecological change had a transformative and antagonistic impact on economy, state, and society.
Click Here to Purchase
Reviews
"A ground-breaking study of crisis and violence in the late Ottoman Empire, and a compelling new chapter in the environmental history of the Middle East." —Sam White, University of Helsinki
"In this pathbreaking and theoretically rich study, Zozan Pehlivan establishes a new benchmark in the historiography of the late Ottoman Empire and Kurdistan. The book transforms our understanding of the relationship between Kurdistan’s peoples and its geography, flora, fauna, and climate. Innovatively combining extensive archival material with data from climatology, dendrochronology, and veterinary science, Pehlivan demonstrates how climate change disrupted herding and agrarian economies and eventually transformed inter-communal relationships between pastoralists and peasants and triggered violence. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in global environmental studies, the late Ottoman Empire, and the histories of Kurdish and Armenian communities." —Sabri Ates, Southern Methodist University
"Pehlivan provides scholars with ostensible evidence as to not only how peasants and pastoralists differed in response to ecological disasters and Ottoman policy but also how violence developed in longer-scale cycles in Ottoman Kurdistan. These findings can be applied to similar Ottoman contexts and, as Pehlivan suggests, to various communities worldwide in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Political Ecology of Violence stands as both a welcome contribution to the craft of history and a stark reminder of human vulnerability in the face of total uncertainty."
—Andrew J. Bielecki, H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences
Zozan Pehlivan is an environmental historian specializing in the modern Middle East, the Ottoman Empire, and Ottoman Kurdistan. Her research and teaching concentrate on the history of environments, violence, comparative empires, grassland ecologies, animals, and pastoralists. She is currently the Arsham and Charlotte Ohanessian Chair on Violence.
Her first book, The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century (Cambridge University Press, 2024), examines the outcomes of recurrent global climate fluctuations in the nineteenth century and related Ottoman policies on pastoralists. By analyzing the impact of climate change on the deterioration of limited natural resources—including water, pastures, and animals—the book highlights how the scarcity of these material conditions contributed to the rise of struggles among people and ethnoreligious tensions between Muslim Kurdish pastoralists and Christian Armenian peasants on the eve of the Great War.
She is currently working on her second book, Resettler Empires: How Americans, Britons, and the Ottomans Conquered Grasslands. This project investigates imperial responses to environmental stress from 1830 to 1930, analyzing the relationships between climate change, state policies, dispossession, violence, and the criminalization of Indigenous populations. Using case studies from the Great Plains, Frontier Punjab, and Ottoman Kurdistan, the project explores how American, British, and Ottoman imperial powers consolidated control over herding territories.
Additional Resources:
New Books Network: Environmental Studies podcast
Nomads, Past and Present podcast
Turkey Book Talk podcast
Digital Sources: Istanbul University Rare Books Library Photograph Collection
Her first book, The Political Ecology of Violence: Peasants and Pastoralists in the Last Ottoman Century (Cambridge University Press, 2024), examines the outcomes of recurrent global climate fluctuations in the nineteenth century and related Ottoman policies on pastoralists. By analyzing the impact of climate change on the deterioration of limited natural resources—including water, pastures, and animals—the book highlights how the scarcity of these material conditions contributed to the rise of struggles among people and ethnoreligious tensions between Muslim Kurdish pastoralists and Christian Armenian peasants on the eve of the Great War.
She is currently working on her second book, Resettler Empires: How Americans, Britons, and the Ottomans Conquered Grasslands. This project investigates imperial responses to environmental stress from 1830 to 1930, analyzing the relationships between climate change, state policies, dispossession, violence, and the criminalization of Indigenous populations. Using case studies from the Great Plains, Frontier Punjab, and Ottoman Kurdistan, the project explores how American, British, and Ottoman imperial powers consolidated control over herding territories.
Additional Resources:
New Books Network: Environmental Studies podcast
Nomads, Past and Present podcast
Turkey Book Talk podcast
Digital Sources: Istanbul University Rare Books Library Photograph Collection
