Currency Canal

Egypt, the Sterling Zone, and the Long Road to the Suez Crisis, 1916–1956 Aaron Jakes ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MODERN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY University of Chicago Aaron Jakes is the author of the prize-winning Egypt’s Occupation: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism (Stanford University Press, 2020), which explores the relationship between financial capitalism, imperial governance, and Egyptian nationalist thought. His current research project, tentatively titled Tilted Waters: The World the Suez Canal Made, investigates how the Suez Canal has shaped global capitalism. Spanning more than two centuries, from the earliest European proposals to excavate a channel through the Isthmus of Suez to the Egyptian military regime’s current efforts to remake the waterway and its environs into a major processing hub and free trade zone, the book will explore the many and shifting roles that the Suez Canal has played in the production of global inequalities. The event is co-sponsored by the Atlantic History seminar, the Early Modern Worlds Initiative, and the Center for African Studies. For more information, please contact Niklas Frykman nef13@pitt.edu