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Triangulating the material and cultural forces that connected the French Revolution, the French occupation of Egypt (1798-1801), and the Ottoman Empire’s New Order reforms (1792-1807) during the global Age of Revolutions (1760s-1820s), this dissertation examines portraiture’s varied and complex roles in the production of modern French and Ottoman subjectivities. As a genre of representation common to both early modern European and Ottoman pictorial traditions, portraiture emerges at this historical juncture as a vital mechanism for articulating new political subjectivities coordinated between French and Ottoman worlds. The pressures exerted on representation by the transcultural dialectics of social upheaval and empire-building that defined the global Age of Revolutions compelled portraiture across Cairo, Paris, and Istanbul to undergo radical adaptations of materials, meanings, and modalities to accommodate the demands of modern depiction. This dissertation argues that French and Ottoman portraits in this period functioned as border regimes, systems essential to calibrating, classifying, and demarcating difference and affiliation. Oriented precisely against the understanding of these artworks as “hybridized” or “cross-cultural,” which sees in them the alloy of essentially distinct cultures, the border regime takes seriously portraiture’s unique capacities to produce and inscribe cultural contours, political aspirations, and social identities across inherited borders. Most importantly, the border regime acknowledges that any transgression of established cultural, political, or social barriers necessarily entails the erection of new ones. This dissertation demonstrates that the ostensibly cosmopolitan incorporations of “others” in portraiture’s production of new “selves” in French and Ottoman portraiture primarily served the inscription of new modes of hierarchical differentiation, transimperial competition, and chauvinist ideologies.The account begins in French-occupied Cairo (1798-1801) with an examination of the ways French artists in the colony adapted subgenres of Revolutionary portraiture to represent the French and Ottoman-Egyptian subjects of the new Republican colony. The chapter focuses on a collection of painted and drawn portraits by the academic painter and draftsman André Dutertre. Dutertre came to Egypt as part of a large corps of French scientists, engineers, and artists who assisted the Revolutionary army in building France’s first sister republic in the Ottoman world. The French regime deployed portraiture alongside other colonial technologies, especially Orientalist philology, to interpellate Ottoman Egyptians and their Republican colonizers into new political and cultural affiliations serviceable to the ideology of the French colonial regime. This chapter also examines the local political and social terms on which colonized Egyptians engaged with Dutertre’s portraiture. Close analysis of Dutertre’s portraits and their Arabic inscriptions reveals that Egyptians sat for French artists to further indigenous political and social agendas. By centering the Ottoman conditions of possibility for French portraiture in Egypt, this chapter demonstrates that Dutertre’s portraits belong as much to the history of Ottoman political modernity as they do to the history of post-Revolutionary French colonialism.Following the path of Ottoman-Egyptian refugees who immigrated to France after the collapse of the occupation in 1801, the account moves to Paris for a close analysis of Anne-Louis Girodet’s Portrait of Katchef Dahouth (1804). Girodet’s large-scale and publicly-exhibited oil portrait depicts an Ottoman-Egyptian Mamluk refugee recently retired from Napoleon’s corps of “Mamelouk” soldiers. This chapter provides an identification of Girodet’s sitter for the first time and outlines his biography in order to reconstitute the historical circumstances under which Ottoman refugees posed for French artists in the reactionary social environment of Napoleonic France. Girodet’s portrait avails itself of the conceptual and pictorial freedoms offered by portraiture during the Revolutionary period in order to transform the image of an individual Ottoman subject into a complex meditation on the Revolutionary meaning of the Egyptian occupation in the shadow of its collapse. In the process, the chapter offers a new genealogy of French Orientalist painting that not only foregrounds portraiture’s unique contributions, but illustrates Orientalism’s emergence out of discrete principles of post-Revolutionary academic painting. In examining the contributions of both artist and sitter to the portrait’s final form, the chapter recuperates the role of Ottoman refugees in the elaboration of Orientalist painting in early nineteenth-century France. The account concludes in Istanbul, where in the same year that Girodet exhibited Dahouth in Paris, the Ottoman-Greek painter Kostantin Kapıdağlı completed his elaborate oil portrait of Sultan Selim III, Portrait of Selim III in His Chamber (AH1218/1803-1804). Heavily indebted to ancien régime ambassadorial portraits produced in eighteenth-century Istanbul, Kapıdağlı’s portrait creatively combines the techniques, compositional principles, and aesthetic values of European and Ottoman portraiture to produce a new cosmopolitan image of sultanic authority. The terms for Kapıdağlı’s innovative experiments with sultanic portraiture were dictated directly by the dynamics of a fluctuating Ottoman social landscape under the New Order. This chapter highlights the Islamic justifications for and debates surrounding Selim’s New Order reforms, which provoked Ottoman reformers and the clerical establishment (ulema) into stormy debates about the permissibility of adopting technologies from Europe (whether political, scientific, or artistic). As relations with France normalized after the French evacuated Egypt, Kapıdağlı’s portrait served to reinvigorate the legitimacy of Selim’s New Order reforms against mounting threats of popular unrest in the lead up to the May 1807 revolution. Selim tapped his official portraitist Kapıdağlı to capture this new ideal of Muslim rulership, which articulated Ottoman imperial superiority through explicit adaptation and recontextualization of European artistic elements.

Scholarship on St. Vincent during the Age of Revolutions has grappled with building a fuller narrative of the Black Caribs that explores their lives beyond the limitations of colonial warfare. Because the Caribs left little to no written documentation, scholars have had to rely on the biased accounts of British and French administrators to extract a wider field of possibilities. New methodologies have emerged over time that answer to these challenges of building narratives around groups that have been historically neglected in the Assembly and care of traditional archives. More recently, articles and histories of the Black Caribs have been written with a critical eye towards racialization, colonialism, and claims of genocide. However still, the Caribs are still historicized in relation to a framework of colonial warfare that considers declarations of success and defeat as finite, overlooking the potentials of a variety of experiences of the Black indigenous population, and others on the island. In this dissertation, I examine British colonial anxieties in the “interwar” periods and the points of departure from prominent logics of differentiation on the island. Specifically, I look at the political and social ruptures that occurred in between moments of official warfare and treaties, to determine what that meant for attempts at racialization and class structure for the rest of the island’s inhabitants. By exposing the colonial anxieties during times of “ceasefire,” and their panicked attempts at legislation to remedy both interior and exterior attack, I uncover a much more complex system of precarity, fear, and subversion in the British settlement. Through problematizing ideas of what it meant to win, lose, conquer, own, succeed, defeat, and petition, this work reveals the unstable modes of hierarchy that the British settlement desperately tried to enact. In this revealing, more possibilities for who the Black Caribs were, as well as other criminalized populations on the island, ultimately transpired. The research for this dissertation draws from a close reading of British Council Assembly meeting notes, property petitions, letters to parliament, newspapers, and governmental and military records from the National Archives in Kew, Britain. I examine British colonial insecurity and the Black Caribs during the final two decades of the eighteenth century, starting before the British claimed control of the island through the Treaty of Paris, up until the months following the end of the Second Carib war. I look at the condition of British militias, struggles for land holdings, precarious support from the metropole, prolonged legislation, and interior and exterior threats, and how these factors rendered frail the colonial settlement in St. Vincent. Throughout, I employ a method of “corroborated imagination” for Black Carib groups and individuals, that is grounded in evidence from primary documents, but also fills in the phantom context with details from secondary source materials and critical supposition. This dissertation argues that changing racial, gender, and class logics towards populations in St. Vincent were vital in erecting and maintaining the frail British settlement. These logics of differentiation and hierarchy were unstable, and constantly refused by the Black Caribs. These periods of social and political instability contribute towards my reframing of St. Vincent, “unmaking” the settlement and stripping it from its historicity of a unified and ideologically secure colonial state. Ultimately this dissertation explores how St. Vincent was a multi-space of possibility, not just for land surveyors and capitalists, but for Black indigenous people as well.

Resumen Este artículo analiza cómo a inicios del siglo XIX las autoridades en Nueva Granada y Venezuela percibieron las revoluciones en el Caribe francés. Para ello, rastrea la ruta de una flota francesa que partió de Martinica con el fin de vender más de doscientos prisioneros de guerra negros. Contemporáneos describieron la llegada de esta expedición con analogías entre enfermedad, epidemia y revolución. Se argumenta que las metáforas orgánicas estructuraron las decisiones de las autoridades al rechazar o aceptar la trata de estos deportados. Asimismo, con evidencia de contrabando, se ilustra cómo hicieron uso selectivo de estas metáforas al tratar de prevenir nuevas rebeliones. Abstract This article analyzes how, at the turn of the nineteenth century, officials in Nueva Granada and Venezuela perceived the revolutions in the French Caribbean. Accordingly, it tracks the route of a French fleet that sailed from Martinique to sell more than two hundred black prisoners of war. Contemporaries described the arrival of this expedition with analogies among diseases, epidemics, and revolution. It argues that organic metaphors structured the decisions officials made in accepting, or rejecting, the traffic of these deported people. By showing evidence of smuggling, the article also illustrates how authorities selectively used these metaphors while trying to prevent new rebellions.

Recent historical studies tend to confirm the antimodernist interpretation, emphasizing the strong premodern roots of nations and nationalism. However, a broad comparative analysis of the rise of the nation-state during the Age of Revolution shows that earlier notions of nationhood did not have a significant role in the creation of nation-states in Europe and the Americas. They were not the consequence of a glorious national revolt, but of a clash between the Old Regime and new ideals of political legitimacy. Many of these conflicts led to civil wars and the survival of the nation-state was mostly determined by the geopolitical constellation. The boundaries of the nation were defined in terms of civilization, whereas language and culture were largely irrelevant. Within these new nation-states, a universalist nationalization process began. In many instances, citizenship was awarded easier to foreigners than to “uncivilized” inhabitants, while Classical Antiquity was preferred over the national past.

Aquest número monogràfic investiga com els comerciants van contribuir a la construcció d’un nou ordre en temps de guerra, conflicte polític i disrupció de les pràctiques comercials durant l’Era de les Revolucions, dos segles enrere. Aquest aplec d’articles forma part d’una lectura policèntrica de transformacions històriques que –sense negar la primacia de la política i del poder militar– subratlla les negociacions complexes que hi va haver a la base de l’establiment de noves relacions de força. Analitza així les profundes conseqüències globals de la caiguda de l’Imperi Espanyol a Amèrica, particularment pel que fa al declivi del mercantilisme i a la reconfiguració del comerç atlàntic i inter-pacífic. Un element crucial d’aquesta transformació en va ser l’economia de guerra, que va tenir implicacions no tan sols a l’Amèrica espanyola, sinó també en el conjunt del món hispànic i més enllà. Homes de negocis i comerciants globals, tant estrangers com hispànics, estratègicament situats en un espai imperial en fragmentació, les xarxes i negocis dels quals unien Europa, Àsia i les Amèriques, van actuar en el buit creat per la crisi de la monarquia espanyola, en el que va ser un moment fluid i fundacional. Mitjançant l’anàlisi de les xarxes de negocis i personals que van construir, redefinir i renegociar el rol de l’Amèrica hispànica en l’economia global, els treballs d’aquest número investiguen com les Guerres napoleòniques i les Guerres d’Independència contra Espanya van accelerar l’emergència de nous actors, pràctiques, regles del joc i circuits mercantils. Aquesta prosopografia de comerciants trans-regionals i globals, per tant, mostra trajectòries a través de les quals, malgrat la dificultat, aquests comerciants apareixen com una força maièutica en el naixement del món modern., This special issue investigates how in the times of war, political turmoil, and disruption of commercial practices during the Age of Revolutions two centuries ago, merchants appear as demiurges of a new order. This is part of a polycentric reading of epochal transformations that does not deny the primacy of politics and military power in establishing relations of force, but which underlines the complex negotiations at their base. The collection of essays looks at the profound global consequences of the fall of the Spanish American empire, particularly as they related to the decline of mercantilism and the reconfiguration of both Atlantic and inter-Pacific commerce. A crucial element in this transformation was the war economy, which had implications not only in Spanish America, but in the whole of the Hispanic world and beyond. Global merchants or businessmen —foreigners and Hispanic— strategically located in the Hispanic World, whose networks and affairs linked Europe, Asia and the Americas, worked within the vacuum created by the crisis of the Spanish monarchy in what was a fluid and foundational moment. The essays investigate how the Napoleonic Wars and the Wars of Independence against Spain accelerated the emergence of new actors, practices, rules and commercial circuits, by analyzing the personal and business networks that built, redefined and renegotiated the role of Hispanic America in the global economy. This prosopography of merchants thus shows trajectories through which, despite infinite difficulties, global and transregional merchants appear as one of the maieutic forces in the birth of the modern world., Este número monográfico investiga cómo los comerciantes contribuyeron a la construcción de un nuevo orden en tiempos de guerra, conflicto político y disrupción de las prácticas comerciales durante la Era de las Revoluciones, dos siglos atrás. Este conjunto de artículos forma parte de una lectura policéntrica de transformaciones históricas que –sin negar la primacía de la política y del poder militar– subraya las negociaciones complejas que estuvieron en la base del establecimiento de nuevas relaciones de fuerza. Analiza así las profundas consecuencias globales de la caída del Imperio Español en América, particularmente en lo que se refiere al declive del mercantilismo y a la reconfiguración del comercio atlántico e inter-pacífico. Un elemento crucial de esta transformación fue la economía de guerra, que tuvo implicaciones no tan solo en la América española, sino en el conjunto del mundo hispánico y más allá. Hombres de negocios y comerciantes globales, tanto extranjeros como hispánicos, estratégicamente situados en un espacio imperial en fragmentación, y cuyas redes y negocios unían Europa, Asia y las Américas, actuaron en el vacío creado por la crisis de la monarquía española, en lo que fue un momento fluido y fundacional. Mediante el análisis de las redes de negocios y personales que construyeron, redefinieron y renegociaron el rol de la América hispánica en la economía global, los trabajos en este número investigan cómo las Guerras napoleónicas y las Guerras de Independencia contra España aceleraron la emergencia de nuevos actores, prácticas, reglas del juego y circuitos mercantiles. Esta prosopografía de comerciantes trans-regionales y globales, por consiguiente, muestra trayectorias a través de las cuales, a pesar de la dificultad, dichos comerciantes aparecen como una fuerza mayéutica en el nacimiento del mundo moderno.

The independence movements in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were all born of alliances between elites and the subaltern, most of whom were nonwhites. This article compares the roles of Brazilian nonwhites in the independence struggle to the activities of those in British and Spanish America. The focus is on three groups: slaves, free people of color, and indigenous people. Some members of these groups took the initiative to join revolutionary movements, but many were forcibly recruited. Each group had their own agendas, but few of their demands were reflected in the new constitutions that were adopted. The independence movements in the Americas in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were all born of alliances between elites and the subaltern, most of whom were nonwhites. This article compares the roles of Brazilian nonwhites in the independence struggle to the activities of those in British and Spanish America. The focus is on three groups: slaves, free people of color, and indigenous people. Some members of these groups took the initiative to join revolutionary movements, but many were forcibly recruited. Each group had their own agendas, but few of their demands were reflected in the new constitutions that were adopted.

Resumen Este artículo plantea una reflexión sobre la importancia histórica de la dimensión bélica de los procesos de desintegración y colapso de las monarquías ibéricas en América y de establecimiento de los Estados nacionales a partir del ámbito mexicano como estudio de caso. Una de sus intenciones es mostrar la pertinencia del concepto “cultura de guerra” para evaluar los múltiples impactos de aquellos conflictos en las sociedades iberoamericanas del primer cuarto del siglo XIX y las formas en que individuos, grupos y comunidades modificaron sociabilidades, organización y conductas a partir de la violencia y la movilización armada. Con el énfasis puesto en las prácticas, las experiencias y las intenciones de los sujetos involucrados en la guerra revolucionaria de Nueva España que resultaron en la independencia de México, la propuesta evalúa las perspectivas de los combatientes, los no combatientes y los impulsos institucionales de control, vigilancia y seguridad del nuevo orden. Abstract This article offers a discussion on the historical importance of the war dimension of the processes of disintegration and collapse of the Iberian monarchies in America and the establishment of national states, using Mexico as a case study. One of its intentions is to show the relevance of the concept “ war culture” to evaluate the multiple impacts of those conflicts in the Ibero-American societies of the first quarter of the 19th century and the ways in which individuals, groups and communities modified sociability, organization and behaviors through violence and armed mobilization. With an emphasis on the practices, experiences and intentions of the subjects involved in the revolutionary war in New Spain that produced the Mexican Independence, the proposal evaluates the perspectives of combatants, non-combatants and the institutional impulses of control, vigilance and security of the new order.

Resumo Este artigo versa sobre o viajante e pensador londrino John Walking Stewart (1747-1822), figura pouco estudada entre os historiadores. Quase todos os registros encontrados sobre o andarilho consideram-no, tanto em sua época como na posteridade, um “excêntrico”. De acordo com Benjamin Rush, o próprio autor teria dito que, “enquanto o centro da conduta ordinária for o erro”, ele estaria em “estado de excentricidade para sempre”. Seus textos são permeados por temas como o vitalismo, o espinosismo e o fascínio pela Índia, o que levou os historiadores a o qualificarem como um antecessor do “vegetarianismo romântico”, do “pós-estruturalismo”, do “socialismo owenita” e do “pós-humanismo”. Apoiado na escassa historiografia sobre o assunto, nos escritos do autor (em especial, Apocalypse of Nature e The Revelation of Nature) e nas diversas fontes primárias a que tivemos acesso (principalmente seu obituário, os textos de seu amigo De Quincey e de seu parente Brande), este artigo propõe-se a compreender e superar o paradigma da excentricidade na interpretação da vida e obra de Stewart, auxiliando no entendimento tanto do autor em seu próprio tempo, quanto da própria natureza do Iluminismo Tardio. Pretende-se, em resumo, oferecer outros caminhos de compreensão da vida e da obra de Walking Stewart. Abstract This article focuses on an author scarcely studied by historians: the traveler and thinker John “Walking” Stewart (1747-1822). Almost all available records (produced during his lifetime or later on) portray him as an “eccentric”. According to Benjamin Rush, the author himself would have said that “as long as the center of ordinary conduct is error”, he would remain in “eccentricity forever”. His texts are permeated by themes such as vitalism, Spinozism and a fascination with India, which led historians to qualify him as a predecessor of “romantic vegetarianism”, “post-structuralism”, “Owenite socialism”, and “Post-humanism”. Based on existing historiography on the subject, texts by the author (in particular, Apocalypse of Nature and The Revelation of Nature), and several primary sources (mainly his obituary and texts by his friend De Quincey and his relative Brande), this article aims to understand and to overcome the paradigm of eccentricity in the interpretation of Stewart’s life and works. This effort will allow us to better understand the importance of the author and the very nature of Late Enlightenment. The key intention is, therefore, to offer alternative ways of understanding the life and the works of “Walking” Stewart.

This article explores the political languages which Greek revolutionaries employed between roughly 1821 and 1828, and the multiple ways in which these languages found their way into the political projects they put into force (or sought to do so). It does so by considering the revolution as an open-ended political crisis during which revolutionaries were forced to address – theoretically and practically – the fundamental issues of political power: its source, its location and its organisation. As it shows, the frameworks for political action (or “scripts”) the revolutionaries drew on varied and fed into alternative visions of statehood (national, federal, local). By uncovering and understanding these alternatives, as well as why some predominated over others, the article aims to: propose an alternative genealogy of “the political” in the Greek revolution; shed new light on the liberalism(s) of the Revolution; and bring the perspective of the Greek world into the discussion about the importance of the revolutionary wave of the 1820s.