Contested Subjects: Ottoman and British Jurisdictional Quarrels over Afghans and Indians Abroad, 1878–1914

In this paper I examine the juridical contours of an intensifying geopolitical rivalry between the Ottoman and British empires from the early Hamidian era to the eve of the first world war. Utilizing archival records from Istanbul, Delhi, and London, the paper focuses on consular and jurisdictional conflicts over itinerant Afghans and Indian Muslims traveling in the greater Middle East. First, I introduce the problem of disputes between the Porte and the British Raj over Ottoman consular rights in India, particularly the sensitive issue of expanding Ottoman diplomatic sanctuaries from solely port cities (e.g. Bombay) to building Ottoman consulates in the Indian interior (e.g. Lahore and Peshawar).  Second, I examine Ottoman and British contestations over itinerant Muslims falling in the nebulous and overlapping categories of Afghans, Indian Pashtuns (“Pathans”), or Indian Muslim travelers seeking Ottoman nationality in the Sultan’s domains. At the heart of these cases was not simply an imperial contest over property, jurisdiction, and international prestige, but also a more subtle contest over the “loyalties” and bodies of human beings who did not easily fall into either Ottoman and British imperial frameworks of subjecthood.  In this way the paper raises questions of evolving notions of subjecthood, nationality, and nascent ideas of citizenship.  While the main examples introduced in this paper involve Afghans and Indian Muslims, the jurisdictional conflicts they were at the center of embodied an imperial contest between the Porte, the British Raj, but also the Amir of Kabul, over Muslims traveling across or residing in territories as far and wide as French Algeria to British India, and Ottoman Syria to Afghanistan. At the same time, the paper explores the agency of individual Afghans and Indian Muslims in “pulling in” the aforementioned states while pursuing objectives specific to their individual circumstances.