Review by Choice Review
Drawing from a range of archival sources, including court records and tax offices, Abbas and El-Dessouky, both prominent scholars known for their numerous articles and books on the social history of Egypt, offer a fascinating study of the economic changes that ultimately led to the 1952 revolution in Egypt. Their two seminal Arabic-language books, now edited and translated into English in a single volume, are a sophisticated study of the relationship between class and state and the complex ways in which a distinct Egyptian capitalism emerged with the development of legal and social practices built around landownership in the late 19th century. Here, unlike the European form of capitalism, rural rather than urban regions played a critical role in the formation of a distinct Egyptian private property system in the form of landownership. The notion of "agricultural capitalism" also implies how class conflict mostly took place in the countryside, where workers as agricultural laborers played an integral role in the economic development of the country. For those who want to better understand the economic and political sociology of Egypt from the 19th to the mid-20th century. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. B. Rahimi University of California San Diego
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
