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Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said probes migrant labor's role in shaping the history of the Suez Canal and modern Egypt. It maps the everyday life of Port Said's residents between 1859, when the town was founded as the Suez Canal's northern harbor, and 1906, when a railway connected it to the rest of Egypt. Through groundbreaking research, Lucia Carminati provides a ground-level perspective on the key processes touching late nineteenth-century Egypt: heightened domestic mobility and immigration, intensified urbanization, changing urban governance, and growing foreign encroachment. By privileging migrants' prosaic lives, Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said shows how unevenness and inequality laid the groundwork for the Suez Canal's making.
Price: $29.95
Pages: 356
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
28 October 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520424715
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"Well researched and superbly written."
Lucia Carminati is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Map of Cited Departure Points and Stepping Stones of Suez Canal Migrants
Introduction
1 • A Universal Meeting Point on the Isthmus of Suez
2 • Like a Beehive: Race and Gender on the Suez Worksites
3 • A Semilawless Borderland: The Presence of These People Could Bring Evil
4 • Entertainment in Port Said, a Sink of Immoral Filth
Conclusion: It Would Be Wonderful If It Were Not Unhappy
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Map of Cited Departure Points and Stepping Stones of Suez Canal Migrants
Introduction
1 • A Universal Meeting Point on the Isthmus of Suez
2 • Like a Beehive: Race and Gender on the Suez Worksites
3 • A Semilawless Borderland: The Presence of These People Could Bring Evil
4 • Entertainment in Port Said, a Sink of Immoral Filth
Conclusion: It Would Be Wonderful If It Were Not Unhappy
Postscript
Notes
Bibliography
Index