MER Article Egypt from Outside and Inside In May the group of 17 states known as the Paris Club decided to forgive (in stages) half of Egypt’s $20.2 billion government-to-government debt. Earlier, the US had agreed to write off $7.1 billion of Egypt’s military debt, and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar canceled $6 bi Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Choueiri, Arab History and the Nation-State Marxism in the United States developed on the margin of society. Shunned by organized labor, it has confronted this society as an outsider. Until the 1970s, the most successful American Marxist works of scholarship were macro studies by economists, written as if from a distance and emphasizing econo Peter Gran • 3 min read
MER Article Egyptian Political Economy Robert Bianchi, Unruly Corporatism: Associational Life in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Oxford, 1989.) Joel Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and State Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, 1988). These two important new books address some of the central questions Roger Owen • 8 min read
MER Article America's Egypt Open almost any study of Egypt produced by an American or an international development agency and you are likely to find it starting with the same simple image. The question of Egypt’s economic development is almost invariably introduced as a problem of geography versus demography, pictured by descr Timothy Mitchell • 45 min read
MER Article Beinin and Lockman, Workers on the Nile Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (Princeton, 1987). Robert Vitalis • 9 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf Egypt has been central to providing an Arab cover for the US-led military expedition to the Persian Gulf, in addition to Saudi Arabia. As of December 1990, Egypt’s 15-20,000 troops constituted the third largest force confronting Iraq, after the United States and Saudi Arabia itself. Joint military e Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Economic Impact of the Crisis in Egypt Egypt was facing a severe foreign exchange shortage when the Gulf crisis broke out. Its debt arrears were piling up and it was finding it more and more difficult to obtain new loans. The Gulf crisis threatens to make this situation even worse. Here’s how: Remittances sent home by some 1 million Egy Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 3 min read
MER Article Mubarak's Gamble Egyptians pride themselves on their historic endurance and their ability to survive under almost all conditions. But even before the Gulf crisis erupted in August, there had been a great sense of worry and uncertainty regarding the future. The juncture of a new century with a new millennium is notic Ahmed Abdalla • 10 min read
MER Article Botman, Rise of Egyptian Communism Selma Botman, The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970 (Syracuse, 1988). The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939-1970, one of several recent books that offer new insights on the experience of Marxism in Egypt before and during the Nasser era, provides an extensive account of the membership, organizat Marsha Pripstein Posusney • 1 min read
MER Article Rolling Back Egypt's Agrarian Reform The publication in 1988 of the fifth Egyptian agricultural census, conducted mostly in January 1982, provides the most accurate and comprehensive description to date of the changing patterns of landholding and ownership of agricultural assets over the 20 years following President Nasser’s land refor Robert Springborg • 7 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf During four months in Oxford last fall, I spent part of my time pursuing the charge of my editorial colleagues to seek out new and distinctively British approaches to the Middle East. My main finding is that British nostalgia for empire, which many North Americans came to know in the popular televis Joel Beinin • 4 min read
MER Article Editor's Bookshelf Dipesh Chakrabarty’s well-documented, theoretically informed, innovative history of the jute mill workers of Bengal, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), poses this central question: “Can…third-world countries like India…build democratic, Joel Beinin • 4 min read
