Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East

How should the working class be evaluated as a subject of history, with the transition from the age of empires to the nation-state? How did state-supported development efforts, populist nationalisms, and dominant authoritarian regimes show similarities in later periods? How did workers and farmers resist imperialism?

In Workers and Peasants in the Modern Middle East, Joel Beinin tells the history of farmers, urban artisans, and the modern working class in the Ottoman Empire and its successor states in Muslim-majority Balkan countries, Turkey, the Middle East, and North Africa, starting from the mid-18th century. He offers a new perspective on the political, economic, and social lives of ordinary people, inspired by the Indian Subaltern Studies school.

Beinin, who dedicates significant attention to the transition from the Ottoman Empire to the Republic of Turkey, interprets this process for the working class not as a rupture but as a narrative of continuity. He examines how the working class in the Middle East was positioned within the newly developing capitalist world order until the late 20th century, partly through his own experiences and research in relevant countries (especially Egypt), and partly through secondary sources.

- Joel Beinin, Professor of Middle East History at Stanford University.