In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Adam Mestyan about the post-Ottoman Middle East. They discuss nation states, recycling empire, international imperialism, and sovereignty. They talk about political order rather than governance, local states, nation states or federations, republics or monarchies, constitutive fictions, British and Ottoman involvement in Egypt, Egyptian sovereignty and the Muslim Brotherhood, the kingdom of Syria, and many more topics. Adam Mestyan is Associate Professor in the History Department at Duke University. He has previously taught at Harvard University and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His main interests are in natural history and Islamic law, urban history, the history of taxation, and Arab state formation (especially federations) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is the author of a handful of books including the most recent book, Modern Arab Kingship: Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East. Website: https://adammestyan.com/Twitter: @adammestyan Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe