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In the first half of the twentieth century, a major change occurred in Egyptian nationalist understandings of imperialism and economic sovereignty. Where once the volatilities of foreign markets and capital were seen as the main threat, over time large landowners and their imperial allies were targeted as the principal obstacles to the country's industrial progress. The perceived locus of imperial domination shifted from the realm of circulation to the realm of production. Harvests of Liberation situates this transformation in the midcentury dynamics of agrarian capitalism in Egypt.
Ahmad Shokr tells a story of decolonization through the lens of cotton, Egypt's prized export. He follows a range of actors—colonial advisors, nationalist leaders, agrarian reformers, merchant-financiers, landowners, and rural workers—whose interactions moved the levers of the cotton trade from institutions that facilitated accumulation on an imperial scale to new sites of control within the nation-state. Amid depression and war, the transformation of Egypt's cotton economy prompted nationalists to embrace policies of land reform and industrialization and adopt a new conception of history. Ultimately, Shokr argues, these efforts set the stage for the construction of a postcolonial republic under Gamal Abdel Nasser, where national liberation became equated with national development.
"By combining a deep understanding of the material process by which cotton is planted, picked, packed, shipped, and sold, with a detailed account of its political meaning during and after decolonization, this extraordinary book takes the growing literature on global commodity chains to a new level. Harvests of Liberation will justly gain an appreciative readership in global and economic history, Middle East Studies, postcolonial studies, and the history of Egypt." —Walter Johnson, Harvard University
"This compelling study deftly traces the intellectual currents that enabled cotton's transformation from a concessionary regime dominated by foreign capital to a state-centered accumulation model that would reach its apotheosis under Gamal Abdel Nasser." —Xiaoyue Yasin Li, American Historical Review
"Harvests of Liberation challenges readers to view Nasserism through the lens of long-ranging economic transformation and imperialism rather than idealistic liberation or socialism.... Recommended." —M. L. Russell, Choice
"This is a brilliant book, the best treatment of its subject since [Roger] Owen published his classic monograph in the 60s." —Jairus Banaji, Journal of Agrarian Change
Introduction
1. Anatomy of a Global Plantation
2. Cotton Nationalism and the Crisis of Empire
3. Global Depression in the Nile Valley
4. Rural Reconstruction and the New Peasant
5. Reimagining Development
6. Growth Politics and the Officers' Republic
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index