CRG seminar: Histories of AfroGlobal Politics of Conflict: Ottoman Expansion, the Lake Chad Borno Empire and the Trans-Saharan Trade in enslaved Africans in the 19th Century
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The expansion of the Ottoman Empire into the Central Sahara and the Lake Chad regions during the second half of the nineteenth century intersected with the global ambitions of merchants and rulers from the area, creating a space of AfroGlobal political interactions.
This presentation examines the traces of these interactions between the Ottoman and Borno Empires as recorded in Libyan and Turkish archives. These sources illustrate the global nature of Afro-Ottoman relations, indicating the importance and the longue-durée effects of the trans-Saharan trade in enslaved Africans in the late 19th century.
The seminar is chaired by: Prof. Rijk van Dijk and organised by the Collaborative Research Groups (CRG’s) ‘Conflict Continuities’ and ‘Africa in the World: Rethinking Africa’s Global Connections’.
Image: French language map of Central and Eastern Africa (1862), by Pierre Trémaux. Original from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons
Speaker
Dr. Kerem Duymus is a guest researcher at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and graduated in 2025 on the PhD Thesis, entitled Afroglobal History of the Central Sudan during the 19th Century (Supervised by Prof. Dr. Dmitri van den Bersselaar).
Among Dr. Duymus’ publications are
- Duymus, K. (2025). Relations entre l’Empire Ottoman et Sultanat Ouaddaï au 19 ème siècle: une alliance oubliée. Annales de l’Université de Moundou, Série A-FLASH, 12 (1), 45-59.
- Şaul, M., & Duymus, K. (2024). Commodity production and African migration to Turkey, now and in the modern past. Sketches: Stories in Global Contexts , 31 (57), 257–271.
Date, time and location
21 April 2026
15:30 - 17:00
Herta Mohr Building / Faculty of Humanities, Witte Singel 27a, 2311 BG Leiden
Room 0.31
Registration
Posted on 23 March 2026, last modified on 23 March 2026