Call for Book Chapters: Alternatives to the Nation-State: Federalism, Autonomy, and Post-Imperial Imaginaries in the Mediterranean Long Nineteenth Century
Workshop
Date: September 24, 2026 – September 25, 2026
Location: Greece
Subject Fields: Intellectual History, Modern European History / Studies
Call for Book Chapters
Alternatives to the Nation-State:
Federalism, Autonomy, and Post-Imperial Imaginaries in the Mediterranean Long Nineteenth Century
Edited by Erkjad Kajo & Alexandros S. Balatsoukas
The long nineteenth-century Mediterranean has too often been narrated as a periphery where the nation-state arrived belatedly or imperfectly, against the grain of plural, layered, and overlapping forms of political life. This volume reverses that perspective. Rather than treating Mediterranean diversity as a residue awaiting modernization, it argues that the region functioned as a generative laboratory in which the most sophisticated nineteenth-century critiques of, and alternatives to, the nation-state were elaborated. From federalist projects to imperial decentralization schemes, from non-territorial autonomies to constitutional experiments and exile internationalisms, Mediterranean actors developed a shared idiom of post-imperial and trans-confessional political thought that national historiographies have systematically marginalized.
Building on recent scholarship that has rehabilitated empire as a durable form of political organization, recovered internationalism as a constitutive nineteenth-century project, and re-examined late-Ottoman, late-Habsburg, and post-imperial governance, the volume gathers contributions that map the Mediterranean as a connected space of political imagination. It seeks to move beyond the confines of national, institutional, or strictly Western European frames in order to recover the federations debated, the autonomies negotiated, the constitutions drafted, and the political programs circulated across imperial and confessional boundaries.
We welcome chapter proposals on themes including, but not limited to:
- Federalist political thought across Mediterranean languages and traditions (Cattaneo, Ferrari, Pi y Margall, Rigas Feraios, Sabahaddin, Iberist and Balkan federalisms, the Proudhonian reception in the South)
- Imperial decentralization as a design problem (Tanzimat, the Habsburg Ausgleich and trialist projects, Algerian decentralization debates, khedivial Egypt, the Mount Lebanon mutasarrifiyya as mixed sovereignty)
- Constitutional moments and their Mediterranean circulation (Cádiz 1812, Naples 1820, Greek 1821 revolutionary constitutionalism, the Spanish federal republic of 1873, Ottoman 1876 and 1908)
- Non-territorial sovereignty and personal-law regimes (millet, capitulations, Mixed Courts, consular jurisdictions, national-cultural autonomy)
- Diasporic and exilic political imagination, with particular attention to the multilingual exile networks of Paris, London, and Geneva and the role of international languages like French as a vehicular language
- Religious internationalisms as political alternatives (pan-Islamism, neo-Guelphism and Catholic federalism, Orthodox transnationalism, the Alliance Israélite Universelle)
- Failed and short-lived federations and autonomies (Septinsular Republic, Eastern Rumelia, the Cretan State, Albanian autonomous-vilayet proposals, IMRO’s federalist programs)
- Mediterranean anarchism and federalist labor traditions
- The “Eastern Question” reread as a sustained European debate about post-imperial political form
- Saint-Simonian and technocratic Mediterranean utopianisms
- Mountain and local autonomies (Mani, Druze, Maronite, Mirdita, Kabyle) as working models behind larger federalist projects
- Counter-revolutionary, legitimist, and corporatist federalisms
- The early-twentieth-century afterlives of these alternatives (Pan-Europa, Balkan Federation projects, Habsburg-nostalgic federalism, the post-1918 Eastern federations)
We particularly encourage contributions on the Eastern, Southern, and South-Eastern Mediterranean; on Ottoman, Maghribi, Levantine, Iberian, Balkan, and Italian contexts; and on the diasporic networks connecting them. Submissions drawing on multilingual primary sources and pursuing genuinely transnational methodologies will be prioritized.
Submission
Please send a chapter abstract of 300-500 words, together with a short academic biography (max. 150 words), to erkjad.kajo@univ-amu.fr by July 15, 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 30, 2026. Full chapters of 7,000-10,000 words (including notes) will be due by December 15, 2026.
An authors’ workshop will be held in Athens in September 24 & 25, 2026 . Further details on venue and format will be communicated to accepted contributors in due course.
Inquiries and submissions from researchers in all stages, including PhD students and ERC researchers, are warmly welcomed and encouraged.
Contact Information
Dr. Erkjad Kajo, AMidex Fellow in Global History, Aix-Marseille University
e-mail erkjad.kajo@univ-amu.fr
Contact Email
erkjad.kajo@univ-amu.fr
Attachments
cfpalternativestothenation-state.pdf