« Motor Transport and Mobilities across Iraq and Syria: Transdesert Passengers, Imperial Interests and the Business of Travel, 1923-1945»

My PhD project examines how motorized transport emerged in the interwar Middle East by making a social, economic, and political history of the so-called ‘trans-desert routes’ that opened up between Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq in the 1920s. As a matter of fact, the development of motorized transport in the region was concurrent with the emergence of new states under French and British mandates. In this context, I am examining how the increasing movement of people and goods influenced or challenged the process of state formation; conversely, how the introduction of new borders affected mobility on the trans-desert routes. In addition, this project seeks to explore what travel practices, forms of economic enterprise, and regional interactions emerged with motorized transport. By focusing on these trans-desert routes and the different experiences of automobility that straddled across the borders, the project moves away from the methodological nationalism that has long characterized the historiography of Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. In this project, in short, the automobile is both a subject of research and a lens through which the dissertation’s chapters will address historical questions pertaining to mobility, globalization, and state formation in the interwar Middle East.