Peter Gran – författare

This paperback edition has an updated first chapter, resituating its main argument for today’s readers. New historical data on eigh­teenth- and nineteenth-century Egypt makes an extremely persuasive argument for the eighteenth-century roots of Egyptian modernity. The similarity, too, of Egyptian history with other Mediterranean countries is much more clearly demonstrated today than when Islamic Roots of Capitalism first was published.

Employing the approaches of Gramsci and Foucault, Gran proposes a re-conceptualisation of world history. He challenges the convention of relying on totalitarian or democratic functions of a particular state to explain relationships of authority and resistance in a number of national contexts.

'The rise of the West' has long been the accepted doctrine for framing analyses of world history. Privileging a Eurocentric approach, this traditional paradigm obscures the significance of the indigenous rich in non-Western regions and fails to recognize the contributions of the Orient. In this book, Peter Gran seeks to reframe current historical debates, presenting a model of analysis based on the rise of the rich. Gran outlines the structure of this new paradigm, building upon metanarrative concepts from Marxism to liberalism.Rather than a history of clashing civilizations, he identifies a history of resolving conflicts through negotiations among the wealthy classes of various regions. Fundamental to his theory is evidence demonstrating the existence of non-European ruling classes with power in interregional affairs. Far-reaching in its historical scope, Gran's work lays the foundation for a critical rethinking of world history and offers a vital contribution to the field.

In Egypt, the landowning class first arose in the early part of the nineteenth century from land grants given to extended family members and friends of the ruler Muhammad ‘Ali. The development of capitalism and, with it, the evolution of law and social practice allowed these land grants gradually to take on the attributes of private property, a process that culminated in 1891 in land becaming a form of property like any other. From these developments a class of large landowners emerged and began to defend their interests, both economic and political. In two seminal Arabic works published in the 1970s, the authors Abbas and El–Dessouky traced the formation of this class, exploring the multiple factors that influenced the rise and power of landowners. Combined into one volume and translated into English for the first time, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of landownership and its effects on Egyptian society. The authors draw from extensive archival sources, successfully integrating in their work the competing forces of the state, the landlords, and the peasants. By moving beyond much of the familiar scholarship on landholders, this book presents a new interpretation of Egyptian politics and society.

Why is the 1798 Napoleonic invasion of Egypt routinely accepted as a watershed moment between premodern and modern in general histories on the Middle East? Although decades of scholarship, most-notably Edward Said's Orientalism, have critiqued traditional binaries of developed and undeveloped in Arab studies, the narrative of 1798 symbolizing the coming of the modern west to the rescue of the static east endures. Peter Gran's The Persistence of Orientalism is the first book to take stock of this dominant paradigm, interrogating its origins and the ways in which scholarship is produced to perpetuate it. Gran surveys the history of American studies of Modern Egypt, examining three central issues: the periodization of modern professional knowledge in the US in the 1890s, the contemporary identity of orientalism and its critique, and the close connection between Oriental Despotism and the dominant formulation of American identity found in American Studies and in American life. Reinvigorating the conversation on the historiography of modern Egypt, this volume will influence a new generation of scholars studying the Middle East and beyond.

Why is the 1798 Napoleonic invasion of Egypt routinely accepted as a watershed moment between premodern and modern in general histories on the Middle East? Although decades of scholarship, most-notably Edward Said's Orientalism, have critiqued traditional binaries of developed and undeveloped in Arab studies, the narrative of 1798 symbolizing the coming of the modern west to the rescue of the static east endures. Peter Gran's The Persistence of Orientalism is the first book to take stock of this dominant paradigm, interrogating its origins and the ways in which scholarship is produced to perpetuate it. Gran surveys the history of American studies of Modern Egypt, examining three central issues: the periodization of modern professional knowledge in the US in the 1890s, the contemporary identity of orientalism and its critique, and the close connection between Oriental Despotism and the dominant formulation of American identity found in American Studies and in American life. Reinvigorating the conversation on the historiography of modern Egypt, this volume will influence a new generation of scholars studying the Middle East and beyond.

History as a discipline faces a crisis of identity as Eurocentrism fades in a world where globalized visions compete to explain historical processes. Facing the challenge squarely, this volume—comprising specialists on Asia, Africa, and Latin America—explores the state of historical analysis in various world regions and appraises current views on what defines and challenges historical knowledge. It is widely accepted that Eurocentrism no longer seem acceptable in a world where others are reasserting their own notions of past and future. The post–World War II spatialities that guided both historical analysis and the division of labor in historical work are in the process of disappearing into more globalized visions. Constituencies left out of history in the past are making demands for the recognition of their historical presence. History as epistemology is under attack as a marker of Eurocentric modernity from non-historical ways of thinking, as well as from ideologies of postmodernism that deny to history its claims to truth. Indeed, the current situation in the field has been described by one distinguished historian as a “cacophonous confusion.” The challenge historians face is how to imagine new ways of writing history that overcome this confusion without falling back upon ideological and methodological prejudices that reproduce the problems of the past in new guises. The contributors discuss how these challenges are voiced and met in their different areas of specialization. Unsurprising in a volume that addresses a variety of regions and issues that are not only technically historiographical but also deeply cultural and political, the authors differ in their appraisal of the challenges presented by globalization, postmodernism, or postcolonialism. Yet they are united in their recognition of the validity of historical ways of knowing and their reaffirmation of the importance of history in grasping contemporary cultural and political problems. It is because history is entangled in a Eurocentric modernity