Joseph DeRosa

Research Topic

For Shaikh and Country: Policing the Deserts of the British Mandate of Iraq (1920-32)

Supervisor: Professor Eugene Rogan 

I am a 4th-year DPhil student in history. My research examines the policing and administration of nomads through the establishment of governmental camel corps in the British Mandate of Iraq (1920-32). The desert police forces that took shape through fits and starts in the 1920s gradually came to appropriate important aspects of shaikhly power (e.g. security, livelihood, redress), introducing new and newly intrusive forms of governance through familiar idioms and ultimately reshaping the societies they began to police. The system of desert policing that emerged in Iraq also enjoyed a long life as it spread throughout the British empire in the Middle East taking root in: Transjordan (1930s), Hadhramaut (1940s), and Trucial Oman (1950s). The project raises importation questions about nomad-state relations, colonial mediators, indirect rule, and indigenous forms of knowledge.

Before beginning my doctoral research, I spent 5+ years working in the private sector in the Middle East. I also hold an MA/MSc in international and world history from Columbia University/the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), funded in part through a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship, and a BA in history from Wake Forest University, where my undergraduate thesis received the Richard Worden Griffin Research Prize in History.