Events

CHAIRPERSON

Prof Ted Hopf, Asia Research Institute, and Department of Political Science, National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

In this talk I will discuss the history and remembered impact of seven Pashas and their families, who were exiled to Ceylon in 1882 after the British Invasion and establishment of its protectorate in Egypt. While attention has often focussed on the heroic role of Ahmad Urabi in the revolution against the Ottoman viceroy, and his inspiration for the Muslims of the island, I am also interested in exploring the attempts made by some of his colleagues to return to Cairo, and indeed those launched by their wives, to better understand the exilic condition and just which empire claimed their loyalties at the end of the 19th century.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Michael Laffan is Professor of History at Princeton University, where he teaches courses on the history of Southeast Asia and Islam across the Indian Ocean. A native of Canberra, Australia, he is the author of Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia (Routledge 2003) and The Makings of Indonesian Islam (Princeton, 2011), and more recently the editor of Belonging Across the Bay of Bengal (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). He is now turning his attention to South Africa and Sri Lanka in the hope of learning more about the broader history of Islam under the hardly-benevolent rule of the Dutch East India Company and its successors.

REGISTRATION

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