"The Trees Will Remain": Empire and Oranges in Palestine and the Post-Ottoman World

Samuel Dolbee (Vanderbilt University) is an assistant professor and an environmental historian of the Ottoman Empire and the modern Middle East. His book Locusts of Power was published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press, and received the 2024 Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association Book Award. His articles have appeared in American Historical Review, Past & Present, and International Journal of Middle East Studies. His current project, tentatively entitled “Ottoman Roots: Agriculture and Displacement at the End of Empire”, is an environmental history of trees, fruits, and refugees at the end of the Ottoman Empire and in its aftermath. Portions of it will appear in early 2025 in Comparative Studies in Society and History and Environmental History.

This talk is also part of Stanford Global Studies' Imperial Environments Workshop.