Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt by Ahmad Shokr ISBN 9781503640085, 9781503642799, 9781503642805, 1503640086, 1503642798, 1503642801 instant download

Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt by Ahmad Shokr ISBN 9781503640085, 9781503642799, 9781503642805, 1503640086, 1503642798, 1503642801 instant download

Ahmad Shokr tells a story of decolonization through the lens of cotton, Egypt's prized export. He follows a range of actors—colonial advisors, nationalist leaders, agrarian reformers, merchant-financiers, landowners, and rural workers—whose interactions moved the levers of the cotton trade from institutions that facilitated accumulation on an imperial scale to new sites of control within the nation-state. Amidst depression and war, the transformation of Egypt's cotton economy prompted nationalists to embrace policies of land reform and industrialization and adopt a new conception of history. Ultimately, Shokr argues, these efforts set the stage for the construction of a postcolonial republic under Gamal Abdel Nasser, where national liberation became equated with national development.

"Harvests of Liberation recasts the history of decolonization in modern Egypt. Attentive to both contingency and conditions of possibility, Ahmad Shokr brilliantly assembles a panoply of actors, institutions, and ideas to center agrarian capitalism and historicize distinct scales of accumulation—imperial and national—through the prism of cotton. Essential reading for all historians of capitalism."

—Omnia El Shakry, Yale University

Ahmad Shokr is Associate Professor of History at Swarthmore College.