Awards 2020
The AGAPS 2020 Winners
AGAPS Gwenn Okruhlik Dissertation Award
Dr. Camille Lyans Cole, Yale University
“Empire on Edge: Land, Law, and Capital in Gilded Age Basra”
Commendation of the Award Evaluation Committee:
We have selected Camille Cole’s Empire on Edge for the AGAPS Dissertation Award for 2020. Empire on the Edge interrogates how a small group of capitalists in Basra appropriated specific tools of governance such as land deeds and plantation agriculture, and produced new forms of wealth stratification and conspicuous consumption in the region and beyond. Drawing on a broad range of scholarship in history and adjacent disciplines, as well as a wide array of archival sources in multiple languages, this dissertation contributes to analyses of global capital in the Middle East in the 19th century. It is also a colorful environmental history of agriculture in the region, paying attention to the materialities of blank forms and date and rice alike. We find this dissertation important because it places Basra in the Gulf world, while communicating to the larger field of Middle East Studies. Beyond showing us what elite worlds looked like in Basra in the 19th century, this timely manuscript is able to foreground the links between capitalism and the environment, leading to productive questions on how and why these relations may have transformed. We also believe that this dissertation will be an important book, which will spotlight the role of Basra in the region, and challenge unidirectional narratives on the production of capitalist ethics, norms and practices.
AGAPS Graduate Paper Award
Emilio Ocampo Eibenschutz, Cornell University
“19th-Century British Imperialism and the Transregional Geopolitics of an Omani Patricide”
Commendation of the Award Evaluation Committee:
We would like to award the AGAPS graduate student paper prize to Emilio Ocampo Eibenschutz for his paper titled “19th Century British Imperialism and the Transregional Geopolitics of an Omani Patricide.” By unpacking the British reaction to the murder of Sultan Thuwaini bin Sa’id of Oman by his son Salim in 1866, the paper analyzes the emergence of an administrative crisis among colonial officers, and thereby examines the changing nature of imperialism. A close analysis of British colonial archives allows Eibenschutz to show how this seemingly domestic event had far reaching consequences in the empire, forcing colonial officers to rethink regulations around slavery, piracy, commerce and the status of British Indian subjects. As Eibenschutz demonstrates, the British imperial officers carved out new ways of legitimizing their presence in the region, but remained unable to mask the broader ambivalences characterizing British imperialism at the time. The paper is a welcome contribution to a growing body of scholarship on the Indian Ocean, and offers evidence regarding the critical role of the Arabian Peninsula in major political debates involving maritime trade. It is well-written and well-argued, and presents inspiring directions for future research. The committee is excited to see how these arguments will shape Eibenschutz’s dissertation project.