Capitalism and Belonging in Late Ottoman Iraq | Camille Cole

From Ottoman History Podcast · 00:49:22

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E602 | At the turn of the twentieth century, Basra was a provincial center on the southeastern edge of an Ottoman Empire undergoing a paradoxical process of fragmentation, expansion, and centralization. Yet as our guest in this episode, Prof. Camille Cole, shows in a new book, it was not marginal in the remaking of the late Ottoman Empire or the story of capitalism in the modern Middle East. In Basra, local elites utilize what Cole describes as "technologies of the state" — bureaucratic instruments, discourses, and symbols — to attain imperial status, harness resources, and accumulate capital. In this episode, we explore how the port of Basra became an important center for the business ventures of families straddling the modern borders of Iraq, Kuwait, Iran, and beyond, and how their legal, financial, and ecological entanglements chart a new history of Ottoman belonging in the Gulf region during the empire’s last century. More at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2026/11/cole.html Camille Cole is Assistant Professor of History at Illinois State University, where she teaches classes on global capitalism, microhistory, and the Middle East. Her book, Accumulating Power: Capitalism, Belonging, and the Late Ottoman Order (Stanford, 2026) explores the intertwined histories of capitalism, empire, and belonging through the lives of six elites living in and around the late Ottoman port city of Basra. She is currently working on a project on the global history of concessions. Ayah Aboelela is a PhD Candidate in World History at Northeastern University. Her dissertation explores the environmental history of Muslim pilgrimage in the Hijaz, Levant, and Egypt in the late Ottoman period, tracing interactions between pilgrims, urban and Bedouin locals, state officials, and spirituality. She is also Managing Editor at Digital Humanities Quarterly. Chris Gratien is Associate Professor of History at University of Virginia, where he teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East. His first book, The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier, explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th century. His current project, provisionally titled The Book and the Sword: Civil War and Reconstruction in Late Ottoman Syria, offers a global microhistory of the Tanzimat period, centered on the unsolved murder of an American missionary in the Ottoman Empire. Episode No. 602 Release Date: 13 November 2026 Sound production by Chris Gratien Bibliography and images courtesy of Camile Colle Intro music: Zé Trigueiros - Sombra

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