SOAS Book Discussion with Omar Cheta, 'How Commerce Became Legal'
Schedule
Tue Oct 28 2025 at 05:00 pm to 07:00 pm
UTC+00:00Location
Room R201, SOAS, University of London (Main Building) | London, EN
About this Event
Join us at SOAS, University of London, for an exciting discussion with Omar Cheta about his recently released book, How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in 19th 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 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.
Where is it happening?
Room R201, SOAS, University of London (Main Building), 10 Thornhaugh Street, London, United KingdomEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
USD 0.00
