Stockholms universitet

Isa BlumiUniversitetslektor, docent

Om mig

Isa Blumi är docent/docent i turkiska och Mellanösternstudier vid Stockholms universitet inom Institutionen för Asien- och Mellanösternstudier. Han har en doktorsexamen i historia och Mellanöstern/Islamiska studier från New York University (NYU-2005) och en Master of Political Science and Historical Studies (1995) från The New School for Social Research, New York.

Dr. Isa Blumi började på Stockholms universitet i slutet av 2015 efter att ha tillbringat de senaste 12 åren med undervisning och forskning vid universitet i Tyskland, Belgien, Turkiet, USA, Förenade Arabemiraten, Schweiz och Albanien/Kosovo.

Undervisning

Dr Blumi undervisar i kurser på institutionen för asiatiska och Mellanösternstudier. Kurser inkluderar Mellanöstern:

Religioner och tidig historia Mellanösterns

tidigmoderna historia, 1500-1920

Mellanösterns samtida historia, 1820-2020

Mellanösternstudier: Källor Mellanösterns politik och utveckling

Perspektiv på Mellanösternstudier

En introduktion till Mellanöstern Mänskliga rättigheter i Mellanöstern

Forskning

Isa Blumi forskar om samhällen i social, ekonomisk och politisk transformation. Tidigare jämförde han hur österrikisk-ungerska, ryska, italienska, brittiska, holländska, spanska och franska imperialistiska projekt i den islamiska världen korsades med, och därmed informerades av, händelser inom det osmanska riket. Hans senaste arbete täcker den sena osmanska perioden och efterföljande regimer, och hävdar att händelserna på Balkan och Mellanöstern är motorerna för förändring i den större världen. I detta avseende undersöker han på ett jämförande, integrerat sätt hur (post-)ottomanska samhällen som finns i till exempel Albanien/Jugoslavien, Turkiet, Gulfen och Jemen passar in i vad som är en global övergångshistoria. Detta informerar i sin tur historien om den atlantiska världen, särskilt framväxten av den moderna europeiska imperialismen och Amerika.

Publikationer

I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

  • Imperial Equivocations: Britain's Temperamental Mobilization of the Caliphate, 1912-1924

    2021. Isa Blumi. Rivista italiana di storia internazionale 4 (1), 149-173

    Artikel

    The British Empire adopted an array of contradictory policies towards Muslim subjects scattered throughout the world. As it managed its post-World War I goal of dominating the former Ottoman territories, London-based policies considered varying policies. Since the British Empire managed its affairs with different Muslim subjects through different administrations based in Cairo, Bombay, and occupied Istanbul after 1918, such policies clashed, reflecting the distinctive issues facing administrators of these unique regions. This article makes the observation that there proved to be a range of policies adopted by competing entities of «His Majesty’s Government» (HMG) toward the Caliphate, requiring a rethinking of British imperialism vis-à-vis the Muslim world. Seeking to use the Caliphate from 1912 to 1924 for different objectives, the following reads these policies within the larger context of an empire facing disparate and contradictory challenges from different Muslims demands. In the process, this chapter asks why local events regularly upset such schemes that sought to mobilize the Caliphate, questions answered by returning focus to a multiplicity of factors contributing to the modern world’s (dis)order

    Läs mer om Imperial Equivocations
  • Ottoman Albanians in an era of Transition: An Engagement with a Fluid Modern World

    2021. Isa Blumi. Narrated empires, 191-212

    Kapitel

    During a critical period of transformation prior to World War I, a generation of Ottoman-Albanian activists whose engagements with ‘modernization’ not so much marked an end of the Ottoman Empire but a phase of its more complicated adaptation. Known in subsequent generations as heroes of Albanian nationalism, the Ottoman-Southern Albanian (Tosk) activists studied here demonstrate how a self-selective constituency challenged the Ottoman government to adapt to a changing world. In the end, the Frashëri family (Sami, Abdyl, and Naim Frashëri) mobilized the ecumenical possibilities embedded in the era’s iteration of ‘nationalism’ and expected the Ottoman state to do the same. In this respect, Ottoman subjects like the Frashëris instrumentalized the empire’s diverse cultural, political, and socio-economic heritage to support their political and economic aims to save the empire from the ethno-nationalism awaiting it from 1900 onwards.

    Läs mer om Ottoman Albanians in an era of Transition
  • Speaking above Yemenis: a reading beyond the tyranny of experts

    2021. Isa Blumi. Global Intellectual History 6 (6), 990-1014

    Artikel

    Although rarely making the headlines, concerned employees of international organizations privately admit that since March 2015, Yemen has been the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.1 Year by year the situation gets worse as a coalition of financially-strapped regional powers and their US and UK facilitators continue a siege of the entirety of the North of the country while fighting it out among themselves over control of the resource-rich South. The result of this multipolar war of attrition is that upwards of 18 million Yemenis face starvation and disease.

    Läs mer om Speaking above Yemenis: a reading beyond the tyranny of experts
  • Yemen, Imperialism in

    2021. Isa Blumi. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism, 2905-2915

    Kapitel

    To better appreciate modern imperialism inYemen, the following charts how relations withEurasian powers like the Ottomans and Britainshifted from humble alliance making to outright(almost always failed) attempts at military conquest. As argued, it is crucial to reflect moreclosely on the manner Eurasian agents securedtheir initial foothold in the Western Indian Oceanworld by way of such alliances. By the time Ottoman surrogates like Muhammad Ali and crewslinked to venture capitalists in London establisheda presence in the Red Sea, the political orientations of a growing set of new political-spiritualmovements were on the rise. The subsequentadaptations by Ottoman and British officerswould directly impact how their respectiveempires evolved over the following nineteenthand twentieth centuries.

    Läs mer om Yemen, Imperialism in
  • An Ottoman Story Until the End: Reading Fan Noli’s Post-Mediterranean Struggle in America, 1906-1922

    2020. Isa Blumi. Journal of Balkans and Black Sea Studies 3 (5), 121-144

    Artikel

    As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by availing themselves to the evolving Ottoman state with the hope of fusing efforts of reform with the emerging political-cultural structures of the larger world that was explicitly geared to tear the multi-ethnic Ottoman Balkans apart. By exploring the manner in which some members of the Balkans’ cultural elite adapted as their worlds transformed, this article introduces new methods of interpreting and narrating transitional periods such as those impacting men like Fan S. Noli. His itinerary itself reveals just how complex life in the Balkans and Black Sea would be during the 1878-1922 period, but not one entirely subordinate to the ethno-nationalist agenda so often associated with him.

    Läs mer om An Ottoman Story Until the End
  • The Albanian Question Looms Over the Balkans Again

    2020. Isa Blumi. Current history (1941) 119 (815), 95-100

    Artikel

    Brussels and Washington had imposed a regime that subordinated the long-term goals of Albanians to the economic and political agendas of the Western powers.

    Läs mer om The Albanian Question Looms Over the Balkans Again
  • Albanian Slide: The Roots to NATO's Pending Lost Balkan Enterprise

    2019. Isa Blumi. Insight Turkey 21 (2), 149-170

    Artikel

    Since the end of the 1990s, Albanians in North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, and Serbia have submitted to a regime of political and economic austerity in return for access to the European Union. The heavy costs, from economic decline, deadly pollution, and political corruption have translated into years of frustrations. These frustrations have exposed a political failure that extends from the region to the United States and Brussels. The resulting political turmoil will soon turn violent as the global economic downturn puts strains on Albanians sliding further away from their untrustworthy EU/U.S. allies. These afflicted relations may also highlight enduring tensions within the larger NATO alliance as American unilateralism continues to strain the divergent interests of key European partners.

    Läs mer om Albanian Slide
  • Navigating the Challenge of Liberalism: The Resurrection of the Orthodox Church in Post-Communist Albania

    2019. Isa Blumi. Orthodox Churches and Politics in Southeastern Europe Nationalism, 197-222

    Kapitel

    Surviving the Balkans’ twentieth century was no simple task for Albanian Christians. Facing a regime of capitalism that absorbed the socialist Balkans in the 1990s, the efforts of Albanian Orthodox Christians to adapt seem inadequate. This chapter explores how one may read the struggles of the post-communist Albanian Autocephalous Orthodox Church that confronted the “universal” liberal enterprise in the context of the concurrent tensions within Albanian circles seeking the reaffirmation of ethno-nationalist concerns. In questioning how the rebuilding of the Church reflected an aggressive missionary approach led by Greek-born Archbishop Anastasios Yannoulatos, it will become clear how necessary it is to read this ongoing process of rebuilding on several institutional and ideological/spiritual planes.

    Läs mer om Navigating the Challenge of Liberalism
  • Destroying Yemen: What Chaos in Arabia Tells Us About the World

    2018. Isa Blumi.

    Bok

    Since March 2015, a Saudi-led international coalition of forces—supported by Britain and the United States—has waged devastating war in Yemen. Largely ignored by the world’s media, the resulting humanitarian disaster and full-scale famine threatens millions. Destroying Yemen offers the first in-depth historical account of the transnational origins of this war, placing it in the illuminating context of Yemen’s relationship with major powers since the Cold War. Bringing new sources and a deep understanding to bear on Yemen’s profound, unwitting implication in international affairs, this explosive book ultimately tells an even larger story of today’s political economy of global capitalism, development, and the war on terror as disparate actors intersect in Arabia.

    Läs mer om Destroying Yemen
  • Battles of Nostalgic Proportion: The Transformations of Islam-as-Historical-Force in Western Balkan Reconstitutions of the Past

    2018. Isa Blumi. Nostalgia, Loss and Creativity in South-East Europe, 37-71

    Kapitel
    Läs mer om Battles of Nostalgic Proportion
  • Battles of Nostalgic Proportion: The Transformations of Islam-as-Historical-Force in the Ideological Matrix of a Self-Affirming ‘West’

    2016. Isa Blumi. Althusser and Theology, 182-197

    Kapitel
    Läs mer om Battles of Nostalgic Proportion
  • Reorientating European Imperialism: How Ottomanism Went Global

    2016. Isa Blumi. Die Welt des Islams 56 (3-4), 290-316

    Artikel

    Scholars have long studied Western imperialism through the prism of pre-World War I literature and journalism. Characterizing this literature as Orientalist has become programmatic and predictable. The sometimes rigid analysis of this literature often misses, however, the contested dynamics within. This is especially the case with analyses of Ottoman contributions to the rise of a Western colonialist ethos – orientalism, imperialism, and racism – reflecting the political, structural, and economic changes that directly impacted the world. Essentially, colonial pretensions – servicing the ambitions of European imperialism at the expense of peoples in the ‘Orient’ – were articulated at a time when patriotic Ottomans, among others, were pushing back against colonialism. This article explores the possibility that such a response, usefully framed as Ottomanism, contributed regularly to the way peoples interacted in the larger context of a contentious exchange between rival imperialist projects. What is different here is that some articulations of Ottomanism were proactive rather than reactive. In turn, some of the Orientalism that has become synonymous with studies about the relationship between Europe, the Americas, and the peoples “East of the Urals” may have been a response to these Ottomanist gestures.

    Läs mer om Reorientating European Imperialism
  • Nothing New: Islamophobia by Default in Postwar Europe

    2015. Isa Blumi. IRCICA Journal 3 (6), 29-64

    Artikel
    Läs mer om Nothing New
  • Special Issue: Islamophobia in Europe

    2015. .

    Bok (red)

    In an age of extreme atrocities and breaches of fundamental human rights and liberties across the globe, one of the most adversely affected social groups is constituted by the Muslims. From Myanmar to Palestine, from East and Southeast Asia to Central and Western Europe Muslims face various forms of violence, bigotry, hatred, stereotyping and discrimination today informed by anti-Muslim extremism. In this context, it is pertinent that ircica presents the Special Issue of ircica Journal on issues of Anti-Muslim Extremism and Islamophobia in Europe to the attention of scholarly community.

    Läs mer om Special Issue
  • Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939: Migration in a Post-Imperial World

    2013. Isa Blumi.

    Bok

    In the first half of the 20th century, throughout the Balkans and Middle East, a familiar story of destroyed communities forced to flee war or economic crisis unfolded. Often, these refugees of the Ottoman Empire - Christians, Muslims and Jews - found their way to new continents, forming an Ottoman diaspora that had a remarkable ability to reconstitute, and even expand, the ethnic, religious, and ideological diversity of their homelands.

    Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939 offers a unique study of a transitional period in world history experienced through these refugees living in the Middle East, the Americas, South-East Asia, East Africa and Europe. Isa Blumi explores the tensions emerging between those trying to preserve a world almost entirely destroyed by both the nation-state and global capitalism and the agents of the so-called Modern era.READ AN EXTRACT 

    Läs mer om Ottoman Refugees, 1878-1939
  • War & Nationalism: The Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and Socio-Political Implications

    2013. .

    Bok (red)

    War and Nationalism presents thorough up-to-date scholarship on the often misunderstood and neglected Balkan Wars of 1912 to 1913, which contributed to the outbreak of World War I. The essays contain critical inquiries into the diverse and interconnected processes of social, economic, and political exchange that escalated into conflict. The wars represented a pivotal moment that had a long-lasting impact on the regional state system and fundamentally transformed the beleaguered Ottoman Empire in the process.

    This interdisciplinary volume stands as a critique of the standard discourse regarding the Balkan Wars and effectively questions many of the assumptions of prevailing modern nation-state histories, which have long privileged the ethno-religious dimensions present in the Balkans. The authors go to great lengths in demonstrating the fluidity of social, geographical, and cultural boundaries before 1912 and call into question the “nationalist watershed” notion that was artificially imposed by manipulative historiography and political machinations following the end of fighting in 1913.

    War and Nationalism will be of interest to scholars looking to enrich their own understanding of an overshadowed historical event and will serve as a valuable contribution to courses on Ottoman and European history.

    Läs mer om War & Nationalism
  • Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State

    2012. Isa Blumi.

    Bok

    Investigating how a number of modern empires transform over the long 19th century (1789-1914) as a consequence of their struggle for ascendancy in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East, Foundations of Modernity: Human Agency and the Imperial State moves the study of the modern empire towards a comparative, trans-regional analysis of events along the Ottoman frontiers: Western Balkans, the Persian Gulf and Yemen. This inter-disciplinary approach of studying events at different ends of the Ottoman Empire challenges previous emphasis on Europe as the only source of change and highlights the progression of modern imperial states.

    The book introduces an entirely new analytical approach to the study of modern state power and the social consequences to the interaction between long-ignored "historical agents" like pirates, smugglers, refugees, and the rural poor. In this respect, the roots of the most fundamental institutions and bureaucratic practices associated with the modern state prove to be the by-products of certain kinds of productive exchange long categorized in negative terms in post-colonial and mainstream scholarship. Such a challenge to conventional methods of historical and social scientific analysis is reinforced by the novel use of the work of Louis Althusser, Talal Asad, William Connolly and Frederick Cooper, whose challenges to scholarly conventions will prove helpful in changing how we understand the origins of our modern world and thus talk about Modernity. This book offers a methodological and historiographic intervention meant to challenge conventional studies of the modern era.

    Läs mer om Foundations of Modernity
  • Reinstating the Ottomans: Alternative Balkan Modernities, 1800-1912

    2011. Isa Blumi.

    Bok

    This book focuses on the western Balkans in the period 1820-1912, in particular on the peoples and social groups that the later national history would claim to have been Albanians, providing a revisionist exploration of national identity prior to the establishment of the nation-state.

    Läs mer om Reinstating the Ottomans
  • Chaos in Yemen: Societal Collapse and the New Authoritarianism

    2010. Isa Blumi.

    Bok

    Chaos in Yemen challenges recent interpretations of Yemen’s complex social, political and economic transformations since unification in 1990. By offering a new perspective to the violence afflicting the larger region, it explains why the ‘Abdullah ‘Ali Salih regime has become the principal beneficiary of these conflicts.

    Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach, the author offers an alternative understanding of what is creating discord in the Red Sea region by integrating the region’s history to an interpretation of current events. In turn, by refusing to solely link Yemen to the "global struggle against Islamists," this work sheds new light on the issues policy-makers are facing in the larger Middle East. As such, this study offers an alternative perspective to Yemen’s complex domestic affairs that challenge the over-emphasis on the tribe and sectarianism.

    Offering an alternative set of approaches to studying societies facing new forms of state authoritarianism, this timely contribution will be of great relevance to students and scholars of the Middle East and the larger Islamic world, Conflict Resolution, Comparative Politics, and International Relations.

    Läs mer om Chaos in Yemen
  • Rethinking the Late Ottoman Empire: A Comparative Social and Political History of Albania and Yemen, 1878-1918

    2010. Isa Blumi.

    Bok

    In this collection of essays, Isa Blumi seeks to reassess some common misconceptions about the history of the Ottoman Empire. Blumi, an expert on the Empire’s Albanians, takes up the question of communities on the periphery of Ottoman society, be they Albanian or Yemeni. However, Blumi still sees such people as being part of the greater Ottoman society and shows that studies of the provinces can provide valuable insights for historians. The essays of the book are tied together by Blumi’s reflections on being a history writer, but each individual essay touches on some unique and almost forgotten aspect of Ottoman history.

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  • Exceptionally normal (post-)Ottomans: How failure shaped the futures of Balkan heroes

    2022. Isa Blumi. Global Biographies, 124-142

    Kapitel

    Isa Blumi provides us with a sort of anti-biography of Fan S. Noli, a praised national hero in Albanian historiography. Blumi demonstrates that Noli was in fact the result of Tosk-Albanian elite networks, supportive of the Ottoman Empire. This is an insight that Blumi obtains by tracing Noli’s trajectory beyond Albania to Cairo, Alexandria and Boston in the United States. By dislocating Noli, and paying close attention to those around him, Blumi demonstrates that Noli was – as Blumi also puts it – exceptionally normal. He is better understood, so to speak, as a fairly normal member of networks whose representatives were by no means as sure of their support of and membership in future nations as historians would like them to have been.

    Läs mer om Exceptionally normal (post-)Ottomans
  • Çamërian Chimera?

    2022. Isa Blumi.

    Övrigt

    It seemed as if Çamëria was yet another post-Ottoman community doomed to be “unmixed” via population exchanges. As Isa Blumi shows, however, Çamërians resisted, defending a community experts dismissed as chimerical.

    Läs mer om Çamërian Chimera?
  • Amerika'da Balkanlar'ın Kültürel Elitinin Paradoksal Dağılımı: Sona Kadar Bir Osmanlı Arnavut Hikayesi

    2020. Isa Blumi. Kebikeç 50, 261-284

    Artikel

    As the lives of so many men and women in the late nineteenth century Ottoman Balkans collapsed, many began to invest in ways to circumvent the accompanying powers of the modern state. An equal number attempted to manage the changes by availing themselves to the evolving Ottoman state with the hope of fusing efforts of reform with the emerging political-cultural structures of the larger world that was explicitly geared to tear the multiethnic Ottoman Balkans apart. By exploring the manner in which some members of the Balkans' cultural elite adapted as their worlds transformed, this article introduces new methods of interpreting and narrating transitional periods such as those impacting men like Fan S. Noli. His itinerary itself reveals just how complex life in the Balkans and Black Sea would be during the 1878-1922 period, but not one entirely subordinate to the ethno-nationalist agenda so often associated with him.

    Läs mer om Amerika'da Balkanlar'ın Kültürel Elitinin Paradoksal Dağılımı
  • Iraqi ties to Yemen’s demise: Complicating the ‘Arab Cold War’ in South Arabia

    2022. Isa Blumi. Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World 16 (3), 235-254

    Artikel

    The Cold War justifiably receives attention from scholars exploring interstate relations in the Middle East. While competition between the major nuclear powersinvariably contributed to how regional politics transpired in the twentieth century,there may be much that is missing from the narrative adapting such a focus onexternal factors. This article provides a detailed analysis of intraregional relationsthat are informed by domestic, intra-Arab concerns. With special focus on theevolving relations between Iraq and Yemen over the course of the 1920–90 period,it is possible to argue for a new approach to the study of the Middle East and itsrelationship to the larger world during the Cold War. Domestic concerns prove asmuch an animating force in global affairs as those based in British, American and/or Soviet Bloc circles usually foregrounded.

    Läs mer om Iraqi ties to Yemen’s demise

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