Overview

The history of globalisation is usually told as a history of shortening distances and acceleration of the flows of people, goods and ideas. Channelling Mobilities refines this picture by looking at a wide variety of mobile people passing through the region of the Suez Canal, a global shortcut opened in 1869. As an empirical contribution to global history, the book asks how the passage between Europe and Asia and Africa was perceived, staged and controlled from the opening of the Canal to the First World War, arguing that this period was neither an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Instead, it was characterised by the channelling of mobilities through the differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of movement. Telling the stories of tourists, troops, workers, pilgrims, stowaways, caravans, dhow skippers and others, the book reveals the complicated entanglements of empires, internationalist initiatives and private companies.

Full Product Details

Author:   Valeska Huber (German Historical Institute)
Publisher:   Cambridge University Press
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.70cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.680kg
ISBN:  

9781107030602

ISBN 10:   1107030609
Pages:   365
Publication Date:   01 August 2013
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction: mobility and its limits; Part I. Imperial Relay Station: Global Space, New Thresholds, 1870s–90s: 1. Rites de passage and perceptions of global space; 2. Regimes of passage: troops in the canal zone; 3. Companies and workers; Part II. Frontier of the Civilising Mission: Mobility Regulation East of Suez, 1880s–1900s: 4. Bedouin and caravans; 5. Dhows and slave trading in the Red Sea; 6. Mecca pilgrims under imperial surveillance; Part III. Checkpoint: Tracking Microbes and Tracing Travellers, 1890s–1914: 7. Contagious mobility and the filtering of disease; 8. Rights of passage and the identification of individuals; Conclusion: rites de passage and rights of passage in the Suez Canal region and beyond; Bibliography.

Reviews

Valeska Huber's richly detailed study of the Suez canal confounds a view of history as ever-increasing connections across space. She shows that the canal was a choke point as well as a connector, a decelerator as much as an accelerator of movement, and a site where governing elites sought to control migration and to elaborate and enforce distinctions among people, not simply to facilitate their mobility and interaction. -Frederick Cooper, co-author of Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference

Author Information

Valeska Huber is a Research Associate at the German Historical Institute in London.

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