Egypt just before political eruption! Turns of the century in Africa's northeastern corner have been critical moments, ushering in overt popular activism in the hope of radical political redirection--as this volume's focus on Egypt's 19th-century fin-de-siecle demonstrates. The end of the 19th century in Egypt witnessed crisscrossing and conflicting political currents as well as fluctuating economic, geopolitical, social conditions, demographic conditions and cultural processes. Like Egypt's 20th-century fin-de-siecle, much of this ferment was a prelude to the more visible and politically eruptive events of the next decades, when Egypt's popular resistance burst onto the international scene. But its subterranean cast was no less dynamic for that.
WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist. “Masterly … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism.
The Cairo Genizah is considered one of the world's greatest Hebrew manuscript treasures. Yet the story of how over a quarter of a million fragments hidden in Egypt were discovered and distributed around the world, before becoming collectively known as “The Cairo Genizah,” is far more convoluted and compelling than previously told. The full story involves an international cast of scholars, librarians, archaeologists, excavators, collectors, dealers and agents, operating from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century, and all acting with varying motivations and intentions in a race for the spoils. Basing her research on a wealth of archival materials, Jefferson reconstructs how these protagonists used their various networks to create key alliances, or to blaze lone trails, each one on a quest to recover ancient manuscripts. Following in their footsteps, she takes the reader on a journey down into ancient caves and tombs, under medieval rubbish mounds, into hidden attic rooms, vaults, basements and wells, along labyrinthine souks, and behind the doors of private clubs and cloistered colleges. Along the way, the reader will also learn about the importance of establishing manuscript provenance and authenticity, and the impact to our understanding of the past when either factor is in doubt.
Guiding the reader through the many guises of global economic history, this book uncovers its key issues, debates and subjects. With contributions from leading scholars around the world, it delves into the economic histories of Africa, Europe, Asia and the Americas from the 16th to the 20th centuries. From the environment to The Great Divergence, finance, consumption, trade, industrialisation, commodities and labour regimes, it demonstrates the global nature of economic history, and highlights how indispensable it is and has been. Updated throughout, this new edition boasts an expanded introduction and four new chapters on capitalism and political economy, European empires and colonialism, North Africa and the Middle East, and the North American Economy. A comprehensive introduction to global economic history, this textbook provides students with a confident grasp of the field, its key debates and essential issues.
Have you ever wondered: 1. Who built the Pyramids of Egypt and who are their descendents today? 2. Why does the author challenge the great Greek historian Herodotus, by auguring that Egypt is more a gift from the Fellahin, than a gift of the Nile? 3. What great event happened in the early 1960s that completely changed the life of the peasants of Egypt? 4. Why did the peasants (fellahin) of Egypt not engage in a massive revolt in the 1990s, when the Government allowed landowners to reclaim their land that the peasants had been cultivating for over 30 years? 5. Do you know the story of the village of Dinshaway that precipitated a national crisis, and that eventually forced Great Britain to leave Egypt after over fifty years of colonial rule? 6. Are the villagers of Egypt prone to violence or to submissiveness and what does that tell us about the future of Egypt? 7. Which farmers in the world have the highest yields in wheat, rice and corn? 8. Are the villagers of Egypt favorable to the Islamic extremist or more favorable to some form of democracy based upon moderate Islam? 9. Where do villagers say they want to live, if they could live any place in the world? 10. Why did a friend email the author on September 12, 2012 and tell him: Please tell the American people that the Egyptians they see storming the American embassy do not represent the people of Egypt. They are mostly a misguided minority of people who see the world through clouded glasses of hatred and bigotry, provoked and misinformed by extremists who share an agenda that is unIslamic, violent and destructive for Egypts future. Dr. James Mayfield, professor of Middle East Studies since 1967, has been studying the villages of Egypt (as a student, professor, researcher, trainer, manager and consultant) for over 40 years. This is a very comprehensive, multi-disciplinary, study of the rural Egypt. This book presents chapters on the history, the culture, the local government system, village schools and health care systems, the agricultural systems, causes and solutions for extreme poverty, the challenge of establishing a civil society in Egypt, and what prospects there are or democracy in Egypt. Each chapter includes a short narration story that brings the existence and culture of the Egyptian villagers to life through short but rich examples of how the Egyptian peasants (fellahin) live, work and survive in a world filled with challenges, problems, but also opportunities and hope for the future.
Originally published in 1987, this book examines the consequences of the nineteenth-century economic penetration of Europe into the Ottoman Empire. Professor Pamuk makes subtle use of a very wide range of sources encompassing the statistics of most of the European countries and Ottoman records not previously tapped for this purpose. His economic and quantitative analysis established the long-term trends of Ottoman foreign trade and European investment in the Empire. The later chapters focus on the commercialisation of agriculture and the decline as well as the resistance of handicrafts. Geographically, most of the volume focuses on the area within the 1911 borders of the Empire - Turkey, northern Greece, Greater Syria and Iraq. Professor Pamuk compares the relationship of the Ottoman Empire to the world economy with that of other parts of the non-European world and concludes that the two distinguishing features of the Ottoman case were the environment of Great Power rivalry and the ability of the government to react against European pressures.
This is the first volume on the history of the Nile Delta to cover the c.7000 years from the Predynastic period to the twentieth century. It offers a multidisciplinary approach engaging with varied aspects of the region's long, complex, yet still underappreciated history. Readers will learn of the history of settlement, agriculture and the management of water resources at different periods and in different places, as well as the naming and mapping of the Delta and the roles played by tourism and archaeology. The wide range of backgrounds of the contributors and the broad panoply of methodological and conceptual practices deployed enable new spaces to be opened up for conversations and cross-fertilization across disciplinary and chronological boundaries. The result is a potent tribute to the historical significance of this region and the instrumental role it has played in the shaping of past, present and future Afro-Eurasian worlds.
Parallel with the previous volume of conference papers in 2008, Sudan’s Wars and Peace Agreements, most of these selected and thematic articles were originally presented as papers at the 31st meeting of the Sudan Studies Association (SSA) at Arizona State University in 2012. Since that time, the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005 provided for the self-determination referendum of 2011 that resulted in the independence of the new Republic of South Sudan. The previous book presaged this present volume as the, perhaps inevitable, outcome of endless conflicts with no serious effort to “make unity attractive.” As this book goes to press, the new Republic of South Sudan is itself wracked with violent conflict. The hopes to build a new, democratic and civil society in the south from the many inherited problems have now devolved to dysfunction itself. Reading this book will realistically help in understanding these “Roads” taken. The editors and authors have created a multi-faceted account which reveals the complex foundations of these conflicts between north and south, and recently within the south itself. While Khartoum struggles onward with the Islamist project, regional conflicts and grave economic problems, Juba stumbles with corruption, armed rebellion and a grave humanitarian crisis. The half-full glass of dreams of social and economic development supported by oil revenue has been replaced by a glass half empty with new varieties of political dysfunction in which both nations have grave problems in security and economic stability in a generally troubled regional “neighborhood.”
