This chapter details Herodotus’ Egyptian narrative, which has long been a topic of scholarly controversy. I argue that Herodotus presents Egypt as living culture dedicated to the active preservation of the past, in line with Egyptian self-presentation. This real cultural difference furthers Herodotus’ comparative political theory; the Hellenes appear jejune and conceited in comparison. The culturally mediated conception of the past cultivated by Egyptian conventions also offers a foil to Herodotus’ own historical inquiry. Through tracing the way that the Egyptians actively archive and reenact a hallowed past, Herodotus traces the way that attitudes toward the status of the past affect human flourishing in the present. The Egyptian narrative thus furthers his philosophical inquiry into the relationship between nature and convention.

Before Susanna Wheatley’s death in March 1774, Phillis had used personas to address the subject of slavery covertly. Once free, Phillis became the unofficial prophet and poet laureate of the new United States, turning toward more secular and political subjects, using an increasingly patriotic and self-confident tone in her writings. In 1778 Phillis married the formerly enslaved John Peters, an ambitious entrepreneur. Phillis Wheatley Peters’ life and career seemed secure. Despite the optimism and joy Phillis expresses in Liberty and Peace, her 1784 poem celebrating the conclusion of the American Revolution, by then she and John had fallen on hard times in the post-Revolution depression. He was probably in jail for debt when Phillis Wheatley Peters died in relative obscurity on December 5, 1784, three months after her last attempt to find subscribers for a second book. The manuscript of Phillis’s proposed second book, which was to include correspondence, remains unfound.

The Seventh Crusade – the forces of which left Europe in 1248 and would go on to wage campaigns in Egypt, 1249–50, and Palestine and Syria, 1250–54 – stands out from other crusades as the product of the singular efforts of King Louis IX of France (r. 1226–70). He could take primary responsibility for the achievements of this project and, certainly in his own mind, an equal responsibility for the miserable failures for which it is primarily remembered. In Latin Christendom, news of the collapse of the Seventh Crusade in Egypt was greeted with distress, and the failure would mark a turning point in both the crusading movement as a whole and in Louis’ reign. It would also prove, when Louis was canonised in 1297, to be a central episode in narratives of his sanctity. For the Muslim world, Louis’ campaign in Egypt marked a far-reaching change, since the Seventh Crusade was a crucial factor in the overthrow of the Ayyubid sultanate of Egypt, and the establishment of the Mamluk regime.

Historical sociology (HS) is not a typical approach to International Relations (IR). Rather, it is a fascinating scholarly tradition that offers rewarding conceptual, theoretical, and methodological tools to the student of IR. HS explores how past events, formations, and developments shape contemporary political units, actors, and ideas. It examines how and why actors – such as regimes, political movements, or individuals – interact within constraining contexts to generate intended and occasionally unintentional consequences. HS frees the analysis from seemingly timeless concepts such as ‘state’ or ‘anarchy’. This chapter explores HS in two main sections. Section 2.1 explores the sociological origins and main tenets of HS by engaging key founding theorists in this tradition. Section 2.2, the case study, examines the social origins of the 1952 revolution in Egypt and its impact on its foreign policy. The section illustrates how social factors, which originated in the eighteenth century, and colonialism coupled with changes in the international balance of power in the post-World War II period contributed to the revolution and, subsequently, a revision of Egyptian foreign policy in the period 1952–1970.

Abstract: The history of Egypt has always had strong Mediterranean characteristics. Traditionally, however, scholars have neglected or set apart the Mediterranean face of Egyptian society. The aim of this article, therefore, is to illustrate and analyse their entangled historical development. To that end we provide a longue durée overview of the relations between Egypt and the Mediterranean, from the Bronze Age to the Roman period. A history of approximately two millennia has been divided into seven different periods that appear meaningful in terms of the changes that occurred in these mutual relations and influences. Linking with recent debates on the impact of increasing connectivity, or globalization, in the ancient world, our Braudelian overview shows how the ecology of connectivity patterned socio-cultural and political history, throughout this entire period, as a history of joining up.

Abstract: This chapter reviews the meaning of ‘deserts’ both in modern and ancient terms, while emphasizing the uniqueness and complexity of local conditions within the deserts in close proximity to the Mediterranean. It argues that although geographically speaking arid spaces may not seem sustainable environments for inhabitation, exchange, and contacts, local conditions vary considerably, and larger deserts such as those of North Africa, the Near East, or the Arabian Peninsula must be analysed carefully. In fact, archaeological work in the past two decades has effectively shown the extent to which the deserts were thriving in Antiquity.

This chapter reopens the archive of so-called romantic Arabic poetry to ask “how romantic,” both as a question of definition (how was it romantic, exactly?) and as a question of degree (how romantic was it, really?). Drumsta offers a few microscopic glimpses at the archive of interwar Egyptian poetry and criticism that illustrate how dramatically aesthetic theories, poetic terminology, and critical “frames of reference” – to borrow a term from Einstein’s special theory of relativity – were shifting in this period, and not necessarily or always in the direction of the romantic. First, Drumsta analyzes the second of two essays by the poet and critic ʿAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʿAqqād (1889–1964) titled “Shawqī in the Balance” (Shawqī fī al-Mīzān) from the 1920–1921 periodical al-Dīwān. Although al-ʿAqqād does not specifically invoke Einstein or relativity in al-Dīwān, his willingness to strike so decisively at the basic foundations of Arabic poetry and aesthetics mirrors Einstein’s approach to his period’s widely accepted principles of physics, and in this, the chapter suggests, al-ʿAqqād is a decidedly modern thinker.

This chapter argues for custom as the predominant historical and experiential form in 1859 and looks at its treatment in J. S. Mill’s On Liberty, Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, and Eliot’s Adam Bede. In Dickens, custom acts as a measure of the violence of the revolution; in Mill and Eliot, it is at the heart of their examination of identity and culture. Mill sees the ‘despotism of custom’ as essentially opposed to progress and individual liberty, but for Eliot, it is at the heart of community and needs to be recognised and accommodated by her most exemplary characters; it is a historical category that is commonly available and universally participated in. It enables all citizens equally to access the discourse of the historical and the experience of ‘society as incarnate history’. Eliot argues implicitly in Adam Bede that custom is fundamental to all human experience.

Chapter 7 explores Egypt, a consolidated autocracy. Historically colonized by the French and British, Egypt also received substantial financial support from the United States. Egypt was initially less involved with Europe’s external migration approach throughout the 1990s and 2000s in comparison to neighboring countries, but in 2017 the EU and Egypt signed an agreement under the EUTF worth €60 million. The funding was divided among seven projects, ranging from institutional capacity building to job generation and entrepreneurship. The majority of EUTF funding went toward infrastructure improvement in line with the current President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s domestic priorities. In this way, migration management aid reinforced Egypt’s authoritarian rule through substitution (pathway II) and by channeling funding through patronage networks (pathway III). The EUTF’s predominant spending on local infrastructure projects tied beneficiaries to government networks, and also allowed the government to redirect its funding toward mega infrastructure projects built through military contracts, thereby further capacitating the regime’s repressive apparatus.

Introduction: In this book, we evaluate the ancient testimonia; investigate production materials from Greek and Roman casting debris; look at bronzes inside and out; apply modern technology to reconstructing the ancient industry; and assess the impact of technique on the way in which we understand classical bronze statuary. Furthermore, recognizing post-antique features in restoration, patina, and display can help to correct long-held misconceptions.

In Chapter 5, we explore the implications of our argument for the prospects for conflict resolution in Islamist civil wars. Using new global data on negotiations coupled with existing data on peace agreements, we demonstrate that conflict resolution efforts in the form of peace negotiations are rare in Islamist civil wars, whereas we find no robust support for our expectation that peace accords are less likely in Islamist civil wars. In this chapter, we not only compare Islamist civil wars with other conflicts but also focus on Islamist conflicts to explore whether there are any differences when comparing transnationalized Islamist civil wars with other types of Islamist civil wars. We find support for our claim that those Islamist conflicts that appeal to a transnational global agenda are less open to negotiations and peace agreements. Examples from Thailand, Egypt, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Pakistan validate the distinction between transnationally oriented and domestically focused conflicts and the potential of negotiations and peace agreements in Islamist civil wars.

This chapter presents an overview of the diversity of archaeological and textual sources available for studying Egypt’s vast and fertile countryside, whose typology of settlements can also be understood from the papyrological and architectural remains. Three brief case studies provide tangible examples of typical characteristics of rural sites, as well as examples of the variety of settlements found in the countryside of Egypt.