1Because this work grew out of my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Michigan, I would like to restate my gratitude to the institution as a whole. The Department of History was my home base, and as such the object of my deepest gratitude, but the departments of Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies also figured prominently in my graduate studies, and to those units I convey my sincere appreciation for hosting and expanding my interests. At the University of Michigan, I received seemingly unlimited generosity from a number of faculty members, committees, and administrative personnel in and across those three departments and through the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the Center for South Asian Studies. My dissertation committee was chaired by Professor Juan R. I. Cole, and served by Professors Ronald G. Suny, Thomas R. Trautmann, Andrew Shryock, and Kathryn Babayan, and Professor Sir Christopher Bayly, whose distant but important contribution came from St. Catharine's College at Cambridge University. It is a pleasure to reiterate sincere gratitude to my entire dissertation committee, particularly to Professor Cole for his sustained support, unceasing encouragement, and continually productive critique. Professors Shryock and Suny were very helpful and supportive over the long term and at critical junctures of my graduate career. Professor Trautmann bestowed the gift of an editorial assistantship at the journal Comparative Studies in Society and History on me, and that experience is one I particularly cherish and continue to draw benefits from. My CSSH experience stands as a key symbol for all that I received at and from the University of Michigan.
2I am pleased to reiterate my gratitude to the organizations that funded the dissertation research on which this book depends. The list begins with a grant from the Horace H. Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, which combined with funds provided by the American Institute of Iranian Studies to allow for a preliminary canvassing of research sites in India and Pakistan. Subsequent research in South Asia was made possible through grants from the Joint Committee on South Asia of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Near and Middle East Research and Training Act, and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers in conjunction with the American Institute of Indian Studies and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies.
3During the course of my research in South Asia I incurred a great many personal and institutional debts. My research was based at the Archives of the North-West Frontier Province in Peshawar, the Archives of the Punjab Province in Lahore, and the National Archives of India in New Delhi. My research encompassed other repositories including the Tribal Affairs Research Cell in Peshawar and the Area Study Centre for Central Asia Library at Peshawar University, the National Documentation Centre in Islamabad, the Library at the Centre of Advanced Study in History at Aligarh Muslim University, and the Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Public Library in Patna, although little of those materials has found its way into this book. I am pleased to renew my gratitude to the administrators, archivists, and staff at all these institutions. I would also like to thank the staffs at the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library at the University of Michigan, at James Madison University's Carrier Library (particularly to Mrs. Patricia Hardesty), and at the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia.
4I am honored to be involved with the Gutenberg Program, through which I have been educated on a wide of array issues relating to the digital medium of intellectual production, scholarly exchange, and consumption of academic texts. In this book I consider Afghanistan primarily in terms of interregional trade patterns that are set within larger global process involving capitalism and colonialism. The Gutenberg award provided an opportunity to refine my understanding of those two symbiotic global meta-forces and to identify a number of specific connections between "Afghanistan" and the outer world. Gutenberg funds allowed me to explore a fascinating connection between Afghanistan and the wider world in 2005, when I surveyed archival records relating to the presence of "Afghans" in Australia during the nineteenth century. My brief attention to the Australian connection was framed in the context of nineteenth-century colonial labor migrations and it revealed substantial ambiguity concerning the historical and social category of "Afghan." The data trails relating to the 'settling of the outback' I followed in Australia led more toward camels than human beings in many ways. Issues relating to "Afghans" and their camels in Australia are not explored in this book, but I would like to mention my thanks to the staffs at the Gepps Cross Branch of the South Australia State Archives and at the State Library of South Australia in Adelaide, and the State Archives of New South Wales in Sydney for giving me much to consider, pursue and write up in the future. I also thank Professor Robert Darnton, a primary architect of the Gutenberg Program, for his encouragement to cease exploring the many connections between Afghanistan and the larger world I had originally, and overzealously, planned to incorporate into this book. At Columbia University Press Kate Wittenberg has been enormously attentive and accommodating throughout my Gutenberg experience, and I am grateful to her for sustained commitment to the program and support of my work. I thank Nathaniel Herz, Risa Karaviotis and Merran Swartwood for their careful oversight of this book's production, and Laura Lawrie for the improvements she made to the text itself. I have enjoyed my interaction with the 2004 cohort of Gutenberg authors, and learned much from the books that have appeared in the series as a whole. The bonds of solidarity that have developed across the "generations" of Gutenberg authors is encouraging, and I am pleased to mention my gratitude to Drs. Tonio Andrade, Anne Hardgrove, Sarah Lowengard, and Laura Mitchell for taking the lead in a number of important areas. I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Arnita Jones and the American Historical Association more broadly for all forms of support for the Gutenberg program. Dr. Robert Townsend at the AHA has been engaged and helpful throughout my tenure in the Gutenberg program, and I am especially grateful for his critical "last-minute" assistance to me while he was finishing his own doctoral thesis. I am also grateful to the American Council of Learned Societies for its support of the Gutenberg-e series by incorporating it into the ACLS Humanities E-Book website (http://www.humanitiesebook.org/).
5It is a pleasure to express my sincere gratitude to a large number of individuals for a wide range of help regarding the images contained in this book. Mr. Steve McCurry has been very kind in allowing me to use one of his many wonderful images as the cover for my book, and Mrs. Bonnie V'soske and Mr. Michael Schulman at Magnum Photos helped in important ways to make that happen so my gratitude on this important front is designed to cover them as well. Mr. Luke Powell is another important photographer of modern Afghanistan who has allowed me to use some of his work in my own. The exchange of images with Mr. Powell has led to a lively exchange of ideas about Afghanistan that I have also enjoyed. I am extremely grateful to Mr. David Rumsey for allowing me to use a considerable number of his historic maps of Afghanistan in this book. My communication with Mr. Omar Khan about the use of some of his early photographs of Afghanistan and North-West Frontier of British India has led to some exchanges of images and information that I also very much appreciate. I am grateful to Mr. Clayton Esterson who has allowed me to use a number of Afghanistan images from the Dr. Bill Podlich Collection that is under his care. I am pleased to thank Mrs. Krystyna K. Matusiak, the Digital Collections Librarian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, and Ms. Jovanka Ristic at the American Geographical Society Library, who have handled my requests to use images from the Harrison Forman Collection and AGSL Digital Photo Archive for Afghanistan in the most pleasant and efficient of ways. My gratitude extends to Mr. Wim Brummelman and Mr. Andrew Grantham for use of the train image. Dr. Thomas J. Barfield allowed me to use images from his architecture book, and I am grateful for that and all other forms of assistance he has provided to me. Dr. David B. Edwards granted me permission to use Williams Afghan Media Project images, and I am happy to record my gratitude to Dr. Edwards while also noting my thanks to the WAMP technical assistant Mr. Jonathan Leamon for the provisioning of high resolution versions of those images. Dr. May Schinasi has been very generous in making images of the mashin khana from her photography library available to me, and my regret at not being able to include more images from the Schinasi Collection in this book is partially ameliorated by the knowledge of Dr. Schinasi's enthusiasm for making the photographic and textual resources she has relating to Afghanistan available to scholars. Mr. Norman J. M. Cameron at the Royal Society for Asian Affairs (formerly the Royal Central Asian Society), and Miss Szilvia Szabo at the National Army Museum in London have been exceedingly helpful in making images available for this book and I am grateful for the generosity and kindness they bestowed upon me on behalf of their respective institutions. I thank Dr. John W. Whitney at the American Geological Survey and Mr. Royce Wiles at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit for granting me permission to use images under their charge in this book. I also thank Mr. Ruben Blaedel at Rhodos International Science and Art Publishers, for use of the many images from the books authored by Dr. Birthe Frederiksen and Dr. Gorm Pedersen that appear in the Carlsberg Nomadic Research Project series. I will take this opportunity to extend my appreciation to Dr. Homa Katouzian, Editor of the Iranian Studies journal, for allowing me to reproduce portions of my article "Impoverishing a Colonial Frontier" that appeared in Iranian Studies in 2004 in chapters three and five of this book.
6At James Madison University, Dr. Michael Galgano in the History Department has consistently supported my work on this and many other projects. I am grateful for all forms of support that Dr. Galgano has provided to me as I have sought to connect my research interests and intellectual growth with classroom and administrative activities. I am pleased to thank Dr. David Jeffrey for his support of my research in the form of his administration of the Edna T. Schaeffer Humanist Award Program and by his generous provision of funding for international travel to formally present my "Kabul Hypothesis" in London for the first time. I extend gratitude to Dr. Lee Sternberg and the Office of International Programs for the same international travel assistance and for support of JMU's external affiliations with scholarly organizations including but not limited to the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies. Dr. Sternberg and Dr. Rustin Greene made it possible for me to spend a summer with my family teaching in London, and for that opportunity I express my own and my family's gratitude to these two colleagues and to all the students in the 2006 London Summer Institute. Drs. Melissa Aleman, Keo Cavalcanti, Giuliana Fazzion, Bill Hawk, David Hollenberg, Stephen Poulson, Maureen Shanahan and a number of other colleagues have supported my efforts to construct an undergraduate interdisciplinary minor geared towards the Middle East, the wider Muslim world, and the global diasporas in and from those regions. I am grateful to all my colleagues who helped form and continue to sustain the Middle Eastern Communities and Migrations Program, as their assistance carried the dividend of allowing me more time to work on this book. Many of the JMU students who have produced Senior Honors and Master's theses under my direction or served as my teaching assistants have heard and/or read portions of this book and have contributed "back" to it in some form. Those students include Sarah Friedfeld, Brian Heyward, Claire Metcalfe, John Miller, Roger Strother, and Billy Warner, and it is a pleasure to offer my thanks to each of them.
7During the course of this book's production, I have benefitted from large and small expressions personal and professional support from many people. I am very grateful to Dr. Shukri Abed at the Middle East Institute who has provided substantial assistance to me and JMU in the context of program building and professional support. Also at the MEI Dr. John Calabrese has my gratitude for his support of a conference held in 2004 in conjunction between the MEI and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that was the context I first began to think seriously about migration as route to understanding Afghanistan. I offer my thanks to Mr. Clay Wescott for the research opportunity he provided under the auspices of the Asian Development Bank's Technical Assistance Program that allowed me to pursue my migration-centered concerns with Afghanistan, and to Dr. Jennifer Brinkerhoff for her handling of the final results of my ADB research and for her role in bringing together a conference at George Washington University that culminated the project.
8At the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University College London I am happy to thank Drs. Benjamin Fortna and Nelida Fuccaro for allowing me to present some of my work at the SOAS Near and Middle Eastern History Seminar in December 2006 and Dr. Shabnum Tejani for the support she extended to me and my students in the summer of that year. Still in London, for various forms of personal and professional support offered during the course of this book's production, I have words of gratitude to leave at the British Museum for Dr. Ben Burt, at the University College London's Institute of Philosophy for Dr. Tim Crane, at the House of Parliament for Dr. Jon Cruddas, and at the Journal of Global History for Dr. William Gervase Clarence-Smith and Ms. Pauline Khng.
9For professional encouragement and support in the United States I thank Dr. Robert McChesney, Professor Emeritus at New York University, and the late Professor John R. Richards of Duke University. I am grateful to Derwin Johnson, John McAuley and Dr. Lawrence Norris for their long-term friendships that have been a source of sustenance for me. Dr. David Akin has contributed a great deal of his time and energy to a large number of projects I have been involved with as a student in Michigan and teacher in Virginia and I thank him for all that he has done in support of my professional growth generally and as a writer specifically. I sincerely appreciate the interest in and support of my work demonstrated by both James Edward Huiskamp and Edward Henry Huiskamp whose combined wisdom has taught me a lot about the worlds of and beyond books. I have also learned much from Dr. Eric Montgomery whose own work and probing questions about mine always pique my comparative interests. The production of this book has involved the development and expansion of friendships with Brian Louie, Jamal Millner, and Sidney Santos, and I thank each of them for their interest in my work. I am also pleased to note my thanks to Godfrey Branche and Steve Momorella, two good friends who provided critical technical support during the final stages of this book's production. I am very grateful to Dr. Alessandro Monsutti for the interest he has shown in my work and for all forms of personal and professional support he has provided to me and my family during the writing of this book.
10My parents, Dr. M. Jamil and Marietta Hanifi, have shown me the grand complexity, the beautiful simplicity, and the general productivity of cross-cultural interaction that energizes this book in many ways. My father has shaped and challenged my thinking at every stage of my development and this book is fundamentally a product of his cultural and intellectual influence on me. I would rather be no other physical place or socio-cultural position than "in my father's Way." My mother has taught me about dedication and perseverance and how to enjoy every moment even when the work-at-hand seems overwhelming. In doing so she has epitomized selflessness, generosity and tolerance. To my wife Martie, son Qais Jabar, and daughter Ariana Aliya I cannot say enough. You have contributed in tangible ways to this book through many dosages of help with images, citations and a large number of other technical and labor-intensive issues, but your constant encouragement and support over the long term is what allows this book and me to be. Martie, the efforts and sacrifices you have made for me involve exponentially more than any single book. Together we have successfully navigated many challenging segments on the road of life and your superhuman commitment to me and my work has and will always energize and motivate me. Qais Jabar and Ariana Aliya, your names carry the burden of Braudel's longue duree, but this book has compromised many 'not-so-"mere" events' in your lives. Always remember you are my world's most amazing treasures, that I cherish every single moment in your presence, and that when we are apart thoughts of you swell my mind and heart with incalculable joy and pride. I dedicate this book to my immediate family because of their collective and unwavering support for my labors on it.