How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt

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 ...