How commerce became legal : merchants and market governance in nineteenth-century Egypt / Omar Youssef Cheta.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cheta, Omar Youssef, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Commercial law--Egypt--History--19th century.

Commercial law.

Commercial courts--Egypt--History--19th century.

Commercial courts.

Merchants--Egypt--History--19th century.

Merchants.

Egypt--Commerce--History--19th century.

Egypt.

Physical Description:

pages cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2025.

Summary:

"When Egypt's markets opened to private capital in the 1840s, a new infrastructure of commercial laws and institutions emerged. Egypt became the site of profound legal experimentation, and the resulting commercial sphere reflected the political contestations among the governors of Egypt, European consulates, Ottoman rulers, and a growing number of private entrepreneurs, both foreign and local. How Commerce Became Legal explores the legal and business practices that resulted from this fusion of Ottoman, French, and Islamic legal concepts and governed commerce in Egypt. Focusing on the decades between the formalization of Cairo's practical autonomy within the Ottoman Empire in the 1840s and its incorporation into the British Empire in the 1880s, Omar Cheta considers how modern laws redefined the commercial sphere, shaping a mode of market governance that would persist for decades to come. He highlights the demarcation of a new law-defined commercial realm separate from the land regime and from civil or family-centered exchanges, and reconstructs these changes through both legal codes and state orders, as well as individual merchant voices preserved in court documents. As this book documents both individual experiences and structural explanations, it offers a rare perspective on the scope and reach of market governance over the mid nineteenth century, revealing changes simultaneously from within and without state institutions"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : "how come I have never heard of them?"

Institutions : the commercial-legal infrastructure

Butrus/Pierre : the merchant who avoided the law

Musa and Hasan : the merchants who used the law

Tito : the "avukatu" who knew the law

Concepts : the law-defined realm of commerce

Epilogue : "there was no special law for commercial activities."

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Cheta, Omar Youssef. How commerce became legal

ISBN:

9781503643390

1503643395

OCLC:

1501550892