Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914 (California World History Library)

California World History Library

by Ilham Khuri-Makdisi

In this groundbreaking book, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi establishes the existence of a special radical trajectory spanning four continents and linking Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria between 1860 and 1914. She shows that socialist and anarchist ideas were regularly discussed, disseminated, and reworked among intellectuals, workers, dramatists, Egyptians, Ottoman Syrians, ethnic Italians, Greeks, and many others in these cities. In situating the Middle East within the context of world history, Khuri-Makdisi challenges nationalist and elite narratives of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern history as well as Eurocentric ideas about global radical movements. The book demonstrates that these radical trajectories played a fundamental role in shaping societies throughout the world and offers a powerful rethinking of Ottoman intellectual and social history.

Genres: History, Politics, Middle East, Nonfiction

293 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

Reviews

[Sara Salem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating account of the radical intellectual trends in Cairo, Alexandria and Beirut in the late 1800s and how these were tied to socialism and anarchism.

[Kelvin Yudianto · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this will come down as a classic work

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work has a lot of problems, but one can't avoid lauding the author for taking on such an amazing topic: the rise of radical political ideas and movements in the Levant in Egypt during the half century leading up to WWI, specifically anarchism, in the classical sense. The amount of research done for this work is staggering and impressive, but there are a few structural and definitional problems. First of all, when dealing with issues of readership and literacy in the ME, historians always face the age-old problem of who was actually reading what and what they were taking away from it. The author tries to skirt this issue but doesn't convince. Secondly, given her very inclusive definition of what anarchism actually meant is nice, but she doesn't take into account a much more amorphous and inclusive definition that governments gave to the same term, a matter that muddies her conclusions somewhat. She only briefly addresses the parallel movements occurring in the ME around this time.

[Anas Taleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best history books I have ever read it really changed my way of looking at the Nahda as a project.