Modern Afghanistan

Catalog description

This course addresses how the geographical space defined by the Hindu Kush section of Himalayan Mountain range and bordered by the Amu Darya or Oxus River in the north and Indus River in the east-southeast became known as Afghanistan. It examines repeated attempted imperial transformations of this decentralized frontier space to a bordered, centralized territorial state format from the eighteenth through the twenty-first centuries. It explores successive Mughal, Safavid, British, Russian and American policies, wars and occupations, as well as local adaptation, collaboration and resistance to those repeated imperial initiatives and agendas. Thematically, it engages questions about empire, state formation, social change, cultural resilience, warfare, technology and the environment.