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  • Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History
  • Molly Greene
Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History. By Alan Mikhail (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011) 347 pp. $81.35

Mikhail’s Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt is particularly welcome in light of the fact that studies of the environmental history of the Ottoman Empire are still few and far between. The fundamental object of Mikhail’s study is the system of irrigation in Egypt during the Ottoman period, and his argument is far from the old chestnut of Karl Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power (New Haven, [End Page 155] 1957). Instead, he makes a convincing case for the Ottoman willingness to rely heavily on local knowledge in the maintenance of Egypt’s innumerable dams and canals. Mikhail is not the first to note the Ottoman openness to local custom, but this book develops that quality into a full-blown paradigm of Ottoman management of the environment.

Typically, a project such as dredging a canal was initiated from the bottom up. A local leader would approach the kadi who would, after inspection, approve the repairs. The peasants who lived in the immediate area of the work provided the labor. Mikhail argues that this arrangement suited everyone. Peasants had a direct interest in the improvements, and the state benefited from a working irrigation system. This latter point feeds into Mikhail’s second major argument—that Ottoman environmental management combined extreme localism with imperial initiative. As a granary of the Empire, Egypt needed an effective irrigation system and hence massive amounts of wood for the construction and maintenance of dams, canal embankments, and bridges. In one of the strongest chapters of the book, Mikhail demonstrates how the Ottomans worked assiduously—and mostly effectively—to make sure that Egypt received a steady supply of wood from such timber-rich areas as Anatolia. In so doing, he mounts a strong critique of the enduring “hub and spoke” metaphor of the Empire, whereby each place is analyzed only in its relationship to Istanbul. Instead, as Mikhail shows, “The harvesting and moving of wood connected disparate parts of the Empire into a working whole” (154). Indeed, so strong is his case about the centrality of wood in understanding Ottoman Egypt that his explanation of Muhammad Ali’s invasion of Syria as an attempt to get access to it becomes highly persuasive (165).

In the latter half of the book, Mikhail discusses the changes that occurred during the latter half of the eighteenth century and then under Muhammad Ali. He states emphatically that only at that point did the management of water in Egypt become despotic, thus curtailing the autonomy and space that the Ottoman regime had granted to the peasantry. This part of the book is less successful. Mikhail argues that this historical movement began sometime in the eighteenth century, that is, before the French invasion, but he is never clear about what was driving it. At other times, he seems to argue that Muhammad Ali’s methods owed nothing to the Ottomans but were derivative of French colonial policy. Mikhail’s haste to condemn Muhammad Ali also leads him into moments of weak historical proof. His assertion that Muhammad Ali “despised” the Egyptians rests on a quotation from a secondary source that simply said so without evidence (238).

Despite these caveats, Mikhail has written an important book that convincingly casts Ottoman Egypt in an entirely new light. His book should be read by every Ottomanist, as well as by environmental historians. [End Page 156]

Molly Greene
Princeton University
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