The voices of Americans have long been absent from studies of modern Egypt. Most scholars assume that Americans were either not in Egypt in significant numbers during the nineteenth century or had little of importance to say. This volume shows that neither was the case by introducing and relating the experiences and attitudes of 15 American personalities who worked, lived, or traveled in Egypt from the 1770s to the commencement of World War I. Often in their own words, explorers, consuls, tourists, soldiers, missionaries, artists, scientists, and scholars offer a rare American perspective on everyday Egyptian life and provide a new perspective on many historically significant events. The stories of these individuals and their sojourns not only recount the culture and history of Egypt but also convey the domination of the country by European powers and the support for Egypt by a young American nation.

Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire examines the role of mercenary figures in negotiating relations between the United States and the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Mercenaries are often treated as historical footnotes, yet their encounters with the Ottoman world contributed to US culture and the impressions they left behind continue to influence US approaches to Africa and the Middle East. The book's analysis of these mercenary encounters and their legacies begins with the Battle of Derna in 1805-in which the US flag was raised above a battlefield for the first time outside of North America with the help of a mercenary army-and concludes with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882-which was witnessed and criticized by many of the US Civil War veterans who worked for the Egyptian government in the 1870s and 1880s. By focusing these mercenary encounters through the lenses of memory, sovereignty, literature, geography, and diplomacy, Americans at War in the Ottoman Empire reveals the ways in which mercenary force, while marginal in terms of its frequency and scope, produced important knowledge about the Ottoman world and helped to establish the complicated relationship of intimacy and mastery that exists between Americans in the United States and people in Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Uganda, South Sudan, and Turkey.

The Treaty of Ghent signed in 1814, ending the War of 1812, allowed Americans once again to travel abroad. Medical students went to Paris, artists to Rome, academics to Göttingen, and tourists to all European capitals. More intrepid Americans ventured to Athens, to Constantinople, and even to Egypt. Beginning with two eighteenth-century travelers, this book then turns to the 25-year period after 1815 that saw young men from East Coast cities, among them graduates of Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, traveling to the lands of the Bible and of the Greek and Latin authors they had first known as teenagers. Naval officers off ships of the Mediterranean squadron visited Cairo to see the pyramids. Two groups went on business, one importing steam-powered rice and cotton mills from New York, the other exporting giraffes from the Kalahari Desert for wild animal shows in New York. Drawing on unpublished letters and diaries together with previously neglected newspaper accounts, as well as a handful of published accounts, this book offers a new look at the early American experience in Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean world. More than thirty illustrations complement the stories told by the travelers themselves.

"The work of imperialism requires imperialists. But who were the everyday people who willingly served the traditional European empires? Why did they do things that ranged from thoughtless and amoral to criminal and unforgivable? With unblinking clarity and precision, Arwen Mohun here interrogates the life and actions of her great-grandfather Richard Dorsey Mohun, an American who abetted King Leopold of Belgium's horrific exploitation of the Congo Free State. Mohun details his careless and racist use of power, revealing him as an all-too-unreflective ambassador of American corporate imperialism. She seeks not to excuse Dorsey but to understand how individual desire and imperial lust fueled one another, to catastrophic ends"--

History lies almost forgotten among the low mountains and quaint towns of Pennsylvania's Laurel Highlands. Tales of Titanic survivors, brilliant inventors and forgotten heroes are all a part of the region's dim past. Since the 1790s, the highlands have been home to a booming glass industry that spun out early windows and flasks and, later, beautifully cut pieces of art. The wonder of the World's Fair of 1893 was none other than Westmoreland's H.C. Frick Coke Co.'s replica of a modern mine. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, lush fields and meadows produced the country's finest whiskey, Monongahela Rye. Author Cassandra Vivian travels off the beaten path to explore the hidden history of the Laurel Highlands.

The effective and efficient management of water is a major problem, not just for economic growth and development in the Nile River basin, but also for the peaceful coexistence of the millions of people who live in the region. Of critical importance to the people of this part of Africa is the reasonable, equitable and sustainable management of the waters of the Nile River and its tributaries. Written by scholars trained in economics and law, and with significant experience in African political economy, this book explores new ways to deal with conflict over the allocation of the waters of the Nile River and its tributaries. The monograph provides policymakers in the Nile River riparian states and other stakeholders with practical and effective policy options for dealing with what has become a very contentious problem—the effective management of the waters of the Nile River. The analysis is quite rigorous but also extremely accessible.

Perfect for school and public libraries, this is the only reference book to combine pop culture with science to uncover the mystery behind mummies and the mummification phenomena. Mortality and death have always fascinated humankind. Civilizations from all over the world have practiced mummification as a means of preserving life after death—a ritual which captures the imagination of scientists, artists, and laypeople alike. This comprehensive encyclopedia focuses on all aspects of mummies: their ancient and modern history; their scientific study; their occurrence around the world; the religious and cultural beliefs surrounding them; and their roles in literary and cinematic entertainment. Author and horror guru Matt Cardin brings together 130 original articles written by an international roster of leading scientists and scholars to examine the art, science, and religious rituals of mummification throughout history. Through a combination of factual articles and topical essays, this book reviews cultural beliefs about death; the afterlife; and the interment, entombment, and cremation of human corpses in places like Egypt, Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. Additionally, the book covers the phenomenon of natural mummification where environmental conditions result in the spontaneous preservation of human and animal remains.

A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims before 1975 is the first in-depth study of the thousands of white Americans who embraced Islam between 1800 and 1975. Drawing from little-known archives, interviews, and rare books and periodicals, Patrick D. Bowen unravels the complex social and religious factors that led to the emergence of a wide variety of American Muslim and Sufi conversion movements. While some of the more prominent Muslim and Sufi converts—including Alexander Webb, Maryam Jameelah, and Samuel Lewis—have received attention in previous studies, White American Muslims before 1975 is the first book to highlight previously unknown but important figures, including Thomas M. Johnson, Louis Glick, Nadirah Osman, and T.B. Irving.

The nineteenth century saw the expansion of Western influence across the globe. A consular presence in a new territory had numerous advantages for business and trade. Using specific case studies, de Goey demonstrates the key role played by consuls in the rise of the global economy.

Excavating Exodus analyzes adaptations of Exodus in novels, newspapers, and speeches from the antebellum period to the Civil Rights era. Although Exodus has perennially served to mobilize resistance to oppression, Black writers have radically reinterpreted its meaning over the past two centuries. Changing interpretations of Moses’ story reflect evolving conceptions of racial identity, religious authority, gender norms, political activism, and literary form. Black writers transformed Moses from a paragon of race loyalty into an avatar of authoritarianism. Excavating Exodus identifies a rhetorical tradition initiated by David Walker and carried on by Martin Delany and Frances Harper that treats Moses’ loyalty to his fellow Hebrews as his defining characteristic. By the twentieth century, however, a more skeptical group of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and William Melvin Kelley, associated Moses with overbearing charismatic authority. This book traces the transition from Walker, who treated Moses as the epitome of self-sacrifice, to Kelley, who considered Moses a flawed model of leadership and a threat to individual self-reliance. By asking how Moses became a touchstone for notions of racial belonging, Excavating Exodus illuminates how Black intellectuals reinvented the Mosaic model of charismatic male leadership.