This book seeks to disentangle the complexities of Middle Eastern borderlands by proposing both a decentered and dialectic approach. Taking its cue from the burgeoning field of borderland studies and a variety of historical sub-disciplines, Jordi Tejel pays attention to the circulation of people, goods, diseases and ideas as well as to the everyday encounters between a wide range of state and non-state actors in the borderlands laying between Turkey, Syria and Iraq. His aim is to provide a much more holistic - yet finely grained - understanding of the formation of the territorial state in the interwar Middle East, informed by theoretical and methodological debates in borderlands and mobility studies. By providing a socio-historical and transnational analysis of violence and forced displacement in the borderlands of the post-Ottoman Middle East, Tejel examines the contribution of border populations to the making of teh history of subjectivity, space and time are all subject to various scales of analysis in order to identify the ruptures and continuities evoked by the delineation of new boundaries.

Networks of violence in the shatterzones of the post-Ottoman Middle East --Refugees, borders and identity boundaries -- Cross-border infringements : smugglers, criminals and fugitives -- Interstate cooperation against diseases and plagues and it limits -- Railroads, uneven mobilities and frail states -- Irredentism in a context of global uncertainty -- De-bordering a re-bordering Middle Eastern States.