The Oxford Handbook of Modern Egyptian History

Until relatively recently, scholars of Egyptian history understood the modern period to begin with the movement of European people and ideas to Egypt's northern shores precipitated by Napoleon's invasion in 1798. From this perspective, modern Egyptian history was animated by the diverse and sometimes-contradictory ways in which Egyptians responded over time to colonial power and modern forms of knowledge. This handbook, featuring 26 originally commissioned essays by top scholars in the field, adds to a growing literature that complicates the facile colonizer-colonized and modern-tradition binaries undergirding this view.

Modern Egyptian history is a continuous process of translation and adaptation, invention and reinvention. Bringing together a dynamic and accomplished group of historians of Egypt, the book maps the present state of modern Egyptian history, highlighting the most promising avenues of research, and laying new ground upon which future generations of scholars may build. The contributors address both long-persisting themes in the field, though in new ways, as well as new themes reshaping how we understand modern Egyptian history, and thus Middle Eastern and global history. These include environment, family, infrastructure, intellectuals, labor, law, literature, medicine, politics, popular culture, and slavery. Within these categories, they explore issues of gender, race, and class. The questions these scholars consider reflect pressing contemporary concerns and debates, including medical sovereignty and bodily autonomy; the management of the environment; the rights and movements of workers; courts and legal struggles; cultural expression, production, and reception; and the relationship between the army, state, and society.