Channelling Mobilities
Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869–1914

This book examines the people using and passing by the Suez Canal to reassess the history of globalisation before 1914.

Valeska Huber (Author)

9781107595385, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 26 November 2015

380 pages, 24 b/w illus. 1 map
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.56 kg

'Channelling Mobilities takes up a host of binaries related to historical and analytical values and puts them under rigorous historical examination. The result, which is a highly readable and thought-provoking book, is therefore majorly recommended for historians working on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century 'imperial' and/or 'global' history.' Nitin Sinha, The International Journal of Maritime History

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Transport: general interest [WG], Industrialisation & industrial history [HBTK], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], General & world history [HBG]