Exploring the 'Nahda', a cultural renaissance in the Arab world responding to massive social change, this study presents a crucial and often overlooked part of the Arab world's encounter with global capitalist modernity, an interaction which reshaped the Middle East over the course of the long nineteenth century. Seeing themselves as part of an expanding capitalist civilization, Arab intellectuals approached the changing world of the mid-nineteenth century with confidence and optimism, imagining utopian futures for their own civilizing projects. By analyzing the works of crucial writers of the period, including Butrus al-Bustani and Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, alongside lesser-known figures such as the prolific journalist Khalil al-Khuri and the utopian visionary Fransis Marrash of Aleppo, Peter Hill places these visions within the context of their local class- and state-building projects in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, which themselves formed part of a global age of capital. By illuminating this little-studied early period of the Arab Nahda movement, Hill places the transformation of the Arab region within the context of world history, inviting us to look beyond the well-worn categories of 'traditional' versus 'modern'.

‘an important contribution to studies of the cultural and intellectual revival of the nahda … which the Arab world witnessed in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries … opens new perspectives for understanding the nahda.’

Hilary Kilpatrick Source: Journal of Islamic Studies

‘erudite and thought-provoking … a welcome contribution to post-national and materialist accounts of modernity in the Arab world.’

Samah Selim Source: Global Intellectual History

‘… an important benefit of Hill’s book is its easy adaptability to classroom settings. With clarity of language and chapters organized into distinct sub-sections, teachers and students alike will find the book easy to navigate, whether as a whole or as separate chapters. In this, [the book] offers a great service to future scholars of the cultural history of the Arab world, and not only for its timely scholarly interventions.’

Ziad Dallal Source: Journal of Arabic Literature