Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda

Hill, Peter (2020) Utopia and Civilization in the Arab Nahda. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 9781108491662, 9781108666602

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Abstract

Exploring the 'Nahda', a cultural renaissance in the Arab world responding to massive social change, this study presents a crucial and often overlooked part of the Arab world's encounter with global capitalist modernity, an interaction which reshaped the Middle East over the course of the long nineteenth century. Seeing themselves as part of an expanding capitalist civilization, Arab intellectuals approached the changing world of the mid-nineteenth century with confidence and optimism, imagining utopian futures for their own civilizing projects. By analyzing the works of crucial writers of the period, including Butrus al-Bustani and Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, alongside lesser-known figures such as the prolific journalist Khalil al-Khuri and the utopian visionary Fransis Marrash of Aleppo, Peter Hill places these visions within the context of their local class- and state-building projects in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, which themselves formed part of a global age of capital. By illuminating this little-studied early period of the Arab Nahda movement, Hill places the transformation of the Arab region within the context of world history, inviting us to look beyond the well-worn categories of 'traditional' versus 'modern'.

Item Type:	Book
Subjects:	V100 History by period
Department:	Faculties > Arts, Design and Social Sciences > Humanities
Depositing User:	Paul Burns
Date Deposited:	25 Sep 2019 11:19
Last Modified:	16 Apr 2020 08:05
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/40840

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