‘The Child of a Transitional Epoch’ and Imperial Schizophrenia: Enver Pasha, Transnational Muslim Unrest, and British Intelligence after 1918

Abstract

This thesis centers on the post-WW1 activism of Enver Pasha, who was the Minister of War of the Ottoman Empire before going into voluntary exile in autumn 1918. Enver Pasha had a unique claim to influence over the 'Muslim world,' and this thesis analyzes the ideological flexibility with which Enver used his specific political capital to furnish support for his postwar activism on behalf of Turkey and the broader 'Muslim world.' Alongside this intellectual history of Enver's 'Muslim world,' this thesis draws from British documents to analyze how Enver was tracked and analyzed within the British imperial bureaucracy and its various intelligence agencies. Enver, who seemed to threaten to harness the anti-imperialist energy of the 'Muslim world' against the British Empire, became the paradigmatic object of 'imperial schizophrenia.' 'Imperial schizophrenia' refers to the tendency of political intelligence analysts to misconstrue intelligence and draw overblown and conspiratorial conclusions from fragmented pieces of information. This thesis analyzes this tendency and contextualizes this analytical proclivity within the context of interdepartmental friction, informational asymmetry, and the imperial imagination. Although there would be debates in the summer of 1919 which contemplated how to manage the 'Muslim world,' or if this conceptual approach was appropriate at all, the British bureaucracy and its intelligence apparatus failed to resolve its various deficiencies which gave rise to 'imperial schizophrenia.' This thesis argues that Enver's projected brokerage of the 'Muslim world' and British intelligence's 'imperial schizophrenia' were connected by the acceptance of the idea that the 'Muslim world' constituted a political reality and a political unit, and that British paranoia in fact augmented Enver's perceived claim to control the 'Muslim world.'