The Coming Age of Nationality: Jews and National Belonging in the 19th Century Mediterranean
Professor of Religion at USC Jessica Marglin presented her research on the “informal imperialism” of the 19th century at Spring 2018’s only Modern Mediterranean Identities series event. In her research, Marglin specifically focuses on how Europeans living in the Islamic Mediterranean (North Africa and the Middle East regions) shaped the political climate of the area. Extraterritoriality refers to Westerners having privileges, including exemptions from the law, within the Ottoman Empire. She argues that as a result, the common narrative of history focuses entirely on the goals of Western imperialism and the separation between Muslims and non-Muslims within in the Mediterranean. Marglin complicates this linear, “the West imposed extraterritorial practices on others” framework by referring to modernization as “simultaneous but uneven forces unfolding.” She uses specific examples of legal practices at the time to make it clear how nationality and religious identity have become inseparable. It is not as simple as “secular Europeans brought modernity to the religious Middle East.” 
Marglin argues that nationality in the 19th century was much more about the rights of expats living abroad than those living in their “naturalized” country. The result then was that a given person could have a layered citizenship status that totally differed from their neighbor’s. For instance, free black Americans prior to the Civil War or French subalterns weren’t full citizens in their home countries, but abroad they had the protections of American or French nationals, respectively. Differences religion, race, and social class played a role in how they were treated, and Marglin explains that the “protected nationals” of Western imperialism lived on a spectrum of belonging or not belonging to their home country.
Another example of this nuanced understanding of nationality that Marglin cites is Russia protecting Orthodox Christians living within the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century, and the beginnings of Christian independence movements in places like the Balkans which Europe supported. She concludes that “nationality” as scholars understand it today coalesced as the world moved into the 20th century, and that it is important for those who study nationalism to remember the impact of extraterritoriality. Her model offers Mediterranean history a “more connective” and less linear idea of the progress into modernity.
Harvard professor of Jewish Studies Derek Penslar offered a response to Marglin’s work, connecting his own study of nationalism (specifically political Zionism) to this framework of how 19th century people thought about national belonging.