Recenser l’Égypte

Overview & Synopsis

In the decade preceding the British occupation (1882), Egypt was placed under international financial control, in the context of the debt crisis. European emissaries, diplomats, and bankers conducted surveys with the aim of investigating the country's economic resources. The present study takes these surveys as a starting point for a broader exploration of the history of statistics and quantification in Egypt during the first phase of financial globalization.From the debates about the budget to the adjustment of taxes and the reform of weights and measures, the book examines the actors, sites and practices of numerical knowledge production. It shows how the evaluation of public resources was a contested terrain where political struggles intersected with technical and scientific debates about measurement procedures.This study provides new perspectives on the economic history of Egypt during the British colonial period, and aims to situate the Egyptian case within the transnational history of statistics and quantification.