The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863-1914 (Suny Series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East)
Book Details
Author(s)John T. Chalcraft
PublisherState University of New York Press
ISBN / ASIN0791461440
ISBN-139780791461440
MarketplaceUnited Kingdom 🇬🇧
Description
Challenges existing views of crafts and service workers in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This book charts new directions in Egyptian social history, providing the first systematic account of adaptation and protest among crafts and service workers in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using a wealth of new sources, John T. Chalcraft challenges conventional notions of craft stagnation and decline by recovering the largely unknown histories of crafts workers' restructuring in the face of world economic integration, and their petitions, demonstrations, and strike-action at a time of state-building and colonial rule. Chalcraft demonstrates the economic importance of petty producers and service providers, and tells the story of widespread collective assertion couched in new discourses of citizenship and nationalism. He also gives a new interpretation of the end of the guilds in Egypt and addresses larger debates about unevenness under capitalism.
“…Chalcraft’s book makes a valuable contribution to our general knowledge of Egypt’s economic history before World War I and our specific understanding of how Egyptian workers organized themselves within a challenging political and economic environment.” — American Historical Review
"An intelligent, erudite, and original work. Chalcraft finds that while guilds collapsed in the 1890s, the handicraft/service economy did not. In contrast to the dominant literature, he argues that small providers of goods and services managed to retain shares of existing markets and, in some sectors, they remained dominant for very long periods of time." ? Ellis Jay Goldberg, editor of The Social History of Labor in the Middle East
"Chalcraft corrects a good number of errors and misunderstandings by previous scholars by concentrating on social strata that have hitherto largely been excluded from the history of nineteenth-century Egypt." ? Joel Beinin, author of Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East
This book charts new directions in Egyptian social history, providing the first systematic account of adaptation and protest among crafts and service workers in Egypt in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Using a wealth of new sources, John T. Chalcraft challenges conventional notions of craft stagnation and decline by recovering the largely unknown histories of crafts workers' restructuring in the face of world economic integration, and their petitions, demonstrations, and strike-action at a time of state-building and colonial rule. Chalcraft demonstrates the economic importance of petty producers and service providers, and tells the story of widespread collective assertion couched in new discourses of citizenship and nationalism. He also gives a new interpretation of the end of the guilds in Egypt and addresses larger debates about unevenness under capitalism.
“…Chalcraft’s book makes a valuable contribution to our general knowledge of Egypt’s economic history before World War I and our specific understanding of how Egyptian workers organized themselves within a challenging political and economic environment.” — American Historical Review
"An intelligent, erudite, and original work. Chalcraft finds that while guilds collapsed in the 1890s, the handicraft/service economy did not. In contrast to the dominant literature, he argues that small providers of goods and services managed to retain shares of existing markets and, in some sectors, they remained dominant for very long periods of time." ? Ellis Jay Goldberg, editor of The Social History of Labor in the Middle East
"Chalcraft corrects a good number of errors and misunderstandings by previous scholars by concentrating on social strata that have hitherto largely been excluded from the history of nineteenth-century Egypt." ? Joel Beinin, author of Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East
