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ALAN MIKHAIL, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011). Studies in Environment and History. Pp. xxv, 347, maps, illustrations, tables, bibliography, index. $ 95.00 Cloth
This is the first book-length attempt at an environmental history of Egypt, one of very few in the Middle Eastern field. In this ambitious study Alan Mikhail is not merely opening a new field of inquiry in historical studies of Egypt, but also advancing a critique of the modern regime, the roots of which he locates in the late decades of the "long" eighteenth century (1675-1820). In a nutshell, he maintains that Ottoman Egypt in the early modern era was characterized by a system of balanced and sustainable resource management, in which the authorities relied on peasant experience and knowledge (and even, it seems, their initiative) in managing water, cultivation, and timber usage. The first three chapters set forth this part of the argument with discussions of the maintenance of the irrigation system, grain production and exports, and the importation and use of wood. The final three chapters narrate the transition to a more centralized and coercive state that adopted a less sustainable approach to resource usage, reduced the autonomy of peasants, and interfered in the relationship of Egyptians with their environment. The chapters that carry this part of the argument treat changes in the organization of labor, the introduction of quarantine to control plague, and the Mahmudiyya Canal project. The rule of the viceroy Mehmet (Muhammad) Ali marked the full emergence of the new order of things, which has continued to the present, though it had its beginnings under his predecessors. What drove these changes was Egypt's separation from the imperial system of resource allocation-in conventional histories, its move toward autonomy or independence: the need to achieve self-sufficiency in resources led to despotism.
In addition to presenting these theses the chapter-length introduction includes a brief but useful discussion of environmental history as a field, including recent work in Ottoman and Mediterranean history, which would be a starting point for anyone wishing to read further in this area. Taking on some familiar historiographical issues, the author rejects a center-periphery model of resource allocation in the Ottoman Empire, in which resources were siphoned to...