Desert Borderland: The Making of Modern Egypt and Libya

Ellis, Matthew H.

ISBN 10: 1503605000 / ISBN 13: 9781503605008

Published by Stanford University Press, 2018

About this Item

HARDCOVER Very Good - Crisp, clean, unread book with some shelfwear/edgewear, may have a remainder mark - NICE Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M1503605000Z2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Desert Borderland: The Making of Modern Egypt and Libya
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication Date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1503605000
• ISBN 13: 9781503605008
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Desert Borderland investigates the historical processes that transformed political identity in the easternmost reaches of the Sahara Desert in the half century before World War I. Adopting a view from the margins―illuminating the little-known history of the Egyptian–Libyan borderland―the book challenges prevailing notions of how Egypt and Libya were constituted as modern territorial nation-states.

Matthew H. Ellis draws on a wide array of archival sources to reconstruct the multiple layers and meanings of territoriality in this desert borderland. Throughout the decades, a heightened awareness of the existence of distinctive Egyptian and Ottoman Libyan territorial spheres began to develop despite any clear-cut boundary markers or cartographic evidence. National territoriality was not simply imposed on Egypt's western―or Ottoman Libya's eastern―domains by centralizing state power. Rather, it developed only through a complex and multilayered process of negotiation with local groups motivated by their own local conceptions of space, sovereignty, and political belonging. By the early twentieth century, distinctive "Egyptian" and "Libyan" territorial domains emerged―what would ultimately become the modern nation-states of Egypt and Libya.

About the Author

Matthew H. Ellis is the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation Chair in Middle Eastern Studies and International Affairs at Sarah Lawrence College.