Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Studies in Environment and History) [Hardcover]

Alan Mikhail (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 11, 2011 | Series: Studies in Environment and History

In one of the first ever environmental histories of the Ottoman Empire, Alan Mikhail examines relations between the empire and its most lucrative province of Egypt. Based on both the local records of various towns and villages in rural Egypt and the imperial orders of the Ottoman state, this book charts how changes in the control of natural resources fundamentally altered the nature of Ottoman imperial sovereignty in Egypt and throughout the empire. In revealing how Egyptian peasants were able to use their knowledge and experience of local environments to force the hand of the imperial state, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt tells a story of the connections of empire stretching from canals in the Egyptian countryside to the palace in Istanbul, from the Anatolian forest to the shores of the Red Sea, and from a plague flea's bite to the fortunes of one of the most powerful states of the early modern world.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book adds an important new dimension to the historiography of Ottoman Egypt. The author makes very intelligent use of Ottoman administrative documents and Muslim court records from a variety of Egyptian locales in order to situate this critical region within the new cutting-edge scholarship on the role of the environment and natural resource management in history." - Jane Hathaway, Ohio State University, author of The Arab Lands under Ottoman Rule, 1516-1800

"Alan Mikhail deploys an impressive array of environmental history insights. He asks new questions and comes up with startling answers." - Richard W. Bulliet, Columbia University

"Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt offers a history of the Ottoman world like no other. The force of environmental processes, the lived detail of peasant life, and the emergent forms of modern governmental power interact in this highly original account of early modern Egypt." - Timothy Mitchell, Columbia University

Book Description

Based on both the local records of various towns and villages in rural Egypt and the imperial orders of the Ottoman state, this book charts how changes in the control of natural resources fundamentally altered the nature of Ottoman imperial sovereignty in Egypt and throughout the empire.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 380 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (April 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 110700876X
• ISBN-13: 978-1107008762
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #414,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid environmental history, December 17, 2011

By 

E. N. Anderson (Riverside, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Studies in Environment and History) (Hardcover)

After reading a series of dull and uninsightful monographs on environment and on the Near East, I found this book with enormous relief. It's a really good, solid, documented study of Ottoman Egypt. Mikhail covers irrigation and food in particular, and is well aware of the important recent literature on irrigation management in traditional societies, not only in the Near East (think Dan Varisco) but in Peru (Paul Trawick...), Spain, and even California (Elinor Ostrom and others). Egypt supplied grain to the Empire; the Ottomans supplied wood, from Syria and Anatolia. This somewhat ran down the forests, but Mikhail knows from J. R. McNeill's work (and presumably other sources) that a surprising amount of forest survives in Anatolia. Meanwhile, the Ottomans made a brave try to grow native trees in Egypt--a fascinating section of the book describes this. As Karl Butzer showed for ancient Egypt, early-modern Egypt could not be an "Oriental despotism" with a monarch controlling the water; irrigation has to be locally managed to work. The Ottoman regime could, however, build long canals, maintain peace, and do surveying.
There is also an excursion herein into bubonic plague history; the plague occurred on average every nine years, a horrific burden for society and economy. The Ottomans did what they could, but, in the absence of bacteriology, they could not do much.
Mikhail sees a steady progress of bureaucratization during the period in question, and sees it getting rapidly worse after Egypt became (nominally) independent. This he deplores, finding that it progressively distanced the people from their land and their traditional management strategies. True, but I am ever the optimist, and might note that at least the Ottomans kept the place peaceful and prosperous (outside of famine years) for a couple of hundred years, no shabby achievement.
My only complaint is that I would have liked more statistics--maybe there aren't many more, but at least the levels of flood of the Nile should have been covered, with some comparative material from early periods; also more on food, foodstuffs, food production. I have always wondered where and how Egypt raised all those beans (the national dish) and the spices for them.
Minor problems, considering that this is a pathbreaking book--there is amazingly little literature available on the environment of the eastern Mediterranean in the early modern period. One must welcome a good book that ventures into this amazingly uncharted water.