http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/390659

The Middle East in the world economy 1800-1914

During the nineteenth century the Middle East economy was transformed by the growing impact of European trade and finance and the internal reforms of the rulers of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. In this book, author Roger Owens looks closely at this process, presenting and analysing evidence of previous studies, discussing the merit of rival interpretations and drawing conclusions about the development of the Middle East economy. Owens begins from a reconstruction of economic structure at the end of the eighteenth century and a consideration of the forces of change which affected the region as a whole. The main body of the book traces the impact of these forces in four central areas of the region--Anatolia, Egypt and the provinces of Greater Syria and Iraq. Owen argues in his final chapter that everywhere the outcome was a fixed pattern of agricultural, industrial and financial activity which the successor states of the Ottoman Empire have had the greatest difficulty in trying to alter in their attempts to promote a less dependent form of development.

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