Success, Failure, and Other Historical Crafts

Abstract:The author of Afghanistan Rising responds to our critical review essays by six scholars of diverse historical expertise, from the late Ottoman and Habsburg Empires to Southeast Asia, and Islamic legal history to the political economy of the British Raj and Indo-Afghan frontier. Centering administrative and constitutional developments in Afghanistan within broader regional and global currents connecting the Balkans to Indian Ocean at the turn of the twentieth century, Ahmed reflects on what it means to write "a history that most people do not think exist."