Includes bibliographical references (p.195-219) and index.

A North African Land and Its Ottoman and colonial legacy -- Husayn : an Ottoman reformer and a product of Ottoman reforms -- Husayn's wealt h : how to build and protect an estate between empires -- A world of "a ffairs" : litigation as a tool for negotiation -- The conflicts over Hu sayn's estate : Ottoman and Italian interventions -- Sovereigns, mother s, and creditors : The agency of Husayn's potential heirs -- Husayn's l egacies in colonial Tunisia : an epilogue -- Conclusion : local and imp erial histories of the Maghreb

"In June 1887, a man known as General Husayn, a manumitted slave tur ned dignitary in the Ottoman province of Tunis, passed away in Florence after a life crossing empires. As a youth, Husayn was brought from Cir cassia to Turkey, where he was sold as a slave. In Tunis, he ascended t o the rank of general before French conquest forced his exile to the no rthern shores of the Mediterranean. His death was followed by wrangling over his estate that spanned a surprising array of actors: Ottoman Sul tan Abdülhamid II and his viziers; the Tunisian, French, and Italian governments; and representatives of Muslim and Jewish diasporic communi ties. A Slave Between Empires investigates Husayn's transimperial life and the posthumous battle over his fortune to recover the transnational dimensions of North African history. M'hamed Oualdi places Husayn with in the international context of the struggle between Ottoman and French forces for control of the Mediterranean amid social and intellectual f erment that crossed empires. Oualdi considers this part of the world no t as a colonial borderland but as a central space where overlapping imp erial ambitions transformed dynamic societies. He explores how the tran sition between Ottoman rule and European colonial domination was felt i n the daily lives of North African Muslims, Christians, and Jews and ho w North Africans conceived of and acted upon this shift. Drawing on a w ide range of Arabic, French, Italian, and English sources, A Slave Betw een Empires is a groundbreaking transimperial microhistory that demands a major analytical shift in the conceptualization of North African his tory"-- Provided by publisher.