The story is a familiar one. In 1882, the British invaded Egypt to secure payment on the country’s crippling foreign debts and quash the movement for fiscal sovereignty and constitutional rule that had formed under the Egyptian military officer Ahmed ‘Urabi Pasha.
The common sense in the critical American academy has long been that the decades of occupation ... Show More
Today
Mostafa Hussein, "Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in Late Ottoman and British Palestine" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In the decades before the establishment of a Jewish state in 1948, native and immigrant Jews in Palestine mediated between Jewish and Arab cultures while navigating their evolving identities as settler colonists. Hebrew Orientalism: Jewish Engagement with Arabo-Islamic Culture in ... Show More
1h 32m
Apr 23
Craig Perry, "Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History" (Princeton UP, 2026)
Slavery was a key part of pre-modern Islamic society, spanning from soldiers to concubines. And one of the most revealing repositories of evidence we have for how slavery worked in practice comes from the Cairo Geniza, a cache of hundreds of thousands of discarded documents from ... Show More
47m 11s
Apr 21
James Bultema, "Free Enough to Grow: The Turkish Protestant Movement, 1961-2016" (Springer, 2026)
In Free Enough to Grow: The Turkish Protestant Movement, 1961-2016 (Springer Nature, 2026), James Bultema identifies and investigates four central factors that gave rise to the Turkish Protestant movement in the latter half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twen ... Show More
1 h
Feb 2023
Business Secrets of the Pharaohs: Egypt’s economy, the military, and the IMF loan
This week on The New Arab Voice, we're casting a look over the Egyptian economy and its recent fiscal troubles.Earlier in January, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) signed off on a $3 billion loan for Egypt; the fourth loan the country had received since 2016. The loan was gr ... Show More
26 m
Dec 2020
Ancient Egypt & Geopolitics
One of the luxuries of living in Ancient Egypt was that you were surrounded by massive deserts, protecting you from people who wanted to cut your head off. Well, at some point between 1650 – 1550 BC (who knows really), the Kingdom is invaded by barbarian hill people. The occupati ... Show More
1h 38m
Apr 2021
Erik Grimmer-Solem, "Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875-1919" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
The First World War marked the end point of a process of German globalization that began in the 1870s, well before Germany acquired a colonial empire or extensive overseas commercial interests. Structured around the figures of five influential economists who shaped the German pol ... Show More
1h 11m
Dec 2023
Napoleon in Egypt (with Grey History Podcast)
In 1798, an army of soldiers and scientists invaded Egypt. At their head, the young general Napoleon Bonaparte. The French Expedition had an enormous impact on Egypt's political history, and Egyptology as a field of scholarly inquiry. Remarkable discoveries, and dedicated study, ... Show More
1h 46m
Jun 2023
Douglas Kerr, "Orwell and Empire" (Oxford UP, 2022)
George Orwell was born in India and served in the Imperial Police in Burma as a young man. Douglas Kerr's book Orwell and Empire (Oxford UP, 2022) is a study of his writing about the East and the East in his writing. It argues that empire was central to his cultural identity and ... Show More
42m 30s