Egypt's Occupation : Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism

The history of capitalism in Egypt has long been synonymous with cotton cultivation and dependent development. From this perspective, the British occupation of 1882 merely sealed the country's fate as a vast plantation for European textile mills. All but obscured in such accounts, however, is Egypt's emergence as a colonial laboratory for financial investment and experimentation. __Egypt's Occupation__ tells for the first time the story of that financial expansion and the devastating crises that followed. Aaron Jakes offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles that raged over the occupation. He traces the complex ramifications and the contested legacy of colonial economism, the animating theory of British imperial rule that held Egyptians to be capable of only a recognition of their own bare economic interests. Even as British officials claimed that "economic development" and the multiplication of new financial institutions would be crucial to the political legitimacy of the occupation, Egypt's early nationalists elaborated their own critical accounts of boom and bust. As Jakes shows, these Egyptian thinkers offered a set of sophisticated and troubling meditations on the deeper contradictions of capitalism and the very meaning of freedom in a capitalist world. Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Cover) 1 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(CONTENTS) 8 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Acknowledgments) 10 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Note_on_Transliteration) 16 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(INTRODUCTION._Colonial_Economism) 20 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(1_Infrastructures_of_Occupation) 51 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(2_Egypt’s_Colonial_Interior) 77 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(3_Fields_of_Finance) 103 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(4_Gilded_Speech) 132 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(5_The_Many_Agents_of_Azmah) 160 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(6_Unions_of_Mass_Mobilization) 186 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(7_Punjab_on_the_Nile) 212 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(8_The_Material_Occupation) 238 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(CONCLUSION._Economism_Militarized) 265 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Notes) 274 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Bibliography) 324 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Note_on_Illustrations) 352 Egypt's_Occupation_Colonial_Economism_and_the_Cris..._----_(Index) 354 "This book reexamines the political economy of foreign rule and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles over the character and status of the British occupation of Egypt after 1882 through its independence in 1922. The book traces a complex history of economism, a term that refers to the reduction of social phenomena to the play of economic forces, and the intermingling of economics and politics in the colonial Egyptian context. It overturns long-standing assumptions of Egypt during the period of British occupation, and deepens our understanding of global capitalism's contradictions and the way that it defines and delimits notions of freedom, with implications that extend to the present day"-- Provided by publisher