The Pasha's Peasants
The Pasha's Peasants
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This is a pathbreaking study of the rural origins of modern Egypt, dealing with the period of the rise of the modern state and the country's incorporation into the world economy. Professor Cuno uses previously underexploited sources - court records, fatwas, and land tax registers - to shed new light on changes in the system of peasant land tenure, urban-rural commerce, the rural social structure, and the interplay of formal law with peasant customs and attitudes. The author refutes the conventional view of modern Egyptian history, and indeed many other studies of 'modernization' in the non-Western world. The traditional thesis argues that intensified contact with Europe brought on the 'awakening' of the modern nation. Cuno, on the other hand, convincingly demonstrates that the rise of cash-crop agriculture, the commoditisation of land, the concept of private property, and the appearance of a stratified rural society were actually centuries-old features of the Egyptian countryside.
Reviews & endorsements
'This book provides the first comprehensive scholarly account of the condition of rural Egypt in the late-eighteenth century and the impact on it of Muhammad Ali's innovations and reforms. As such it addresses a complex set of historical questions which have been raised by a large number of previous authors over the past three decades and, for the first time, provides a set of well-justified, well-argued answers. It is thus an admirable example of a work of criticism and scholarly interpretation based, for the first time, on a mastery of the most important, primary historical sources.' Roger Owen
Product details
January 1993Hardback
9780521404785
295 pages
236 × 158 × 21 mm
0.56kg
32 tables
Unavailable - out of print January 1999
Table of Contents
- List of tables
- List of abbreviations
- Note on the use of dates, vocabulary, transliteration, and spelling
- Preface
- Introduction
- Part I. Rural Egypt Before the Reforms of Muhammad Ali:
- 1. The agrarian administration
- 2. The Iltizam system and the Multazims
- 3. Commercial relations in the countryside
- 4. Peasant land tenure
- 5. The rural notables
- Part II. Rural Egypt During and After the Reforms of Muhammad Ali:
- 6. Centralisation, expansion, and the limits to expansion
- 7. Taxation, the monopoly system, and the peasantry
- 8. The redistribution of land
- 9. The rural notables
- 10. The emergence of a new rural order, 1842-58
- Conclusion and epilogue
- Appendices
- Bibliography.
