Harvests of Liberation: Cotton, Capitalism, and the End of Empire in Egypt
A Book Talk by Ahmad Shokr
Join the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Department of History for an important book talk by Dr. Ahmad Shokr, an Associate Professor of History at Swarthmore College. In his new book, Harvests of Liberation, Professor 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. Amidst 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.