Articles

A Camel Story: Hadji Ali and the Transimperial Routes of Labor, Identity, and Enterprise

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Abstract

This paper revisits the journey of Hadji Ali, an Ottoman subject recruited by the United States military in the 1850s to work with the U.S. Camel Corps. By examining his story through the lenses of migration studies, transimperial labor flows, early U.S.-Middle East relations, and entrepreneurial adaptation, the paper argues for a reframing of Hadji Ali as a historical actor navigating labor regimes, racialized identity categories, and improvised survival strategies in the imperial periphery. Rather than being a passive subject of an eccentric American military experiment, Ali emerges as a figure of inquiry, negotiating empire and frontier conditions with tactical agency and entrepreneurial vision. The paper further situates his story within the broader socio-political conditions of the declining Ottoman Empire, the fractured racial and political landscape of the U.S. during the Civil War, and the theoretical debates in migration and empire studies, particularly regarding peripheral agency, imperial labor regimes, and hybrid subjectivity.

Keywords: migration studies, transimperial history, Ottoman Empire, U.S. Camel Corps, frontier labor, Hadji Ali, colonialism

How to Cite:

Topal, M., (2026) “A Camel Story: Hadji Ali and the Transimperial Routes of Labor, Identity, and Enterprise”, Footnotes: A Journal of History 8, 70-84.