From the American Society for Legal History:

Please join us for the next Making Connections: New Works in Legal History series event on Wednesday, January 21, 6-7pm Central Time. Omar Youssef Cheta will discuss his book, How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2025) with interlocutor Nurfadzilah Yahaya.

About the Book:
Egypt was the site of an aggressive modern state-building project during the nineteenth century. Later in that century, it became a domain of the British Empire. How Commerce Became Legal is an original exploration of the decades that separated these two historical realities (1840’s – 1870’s). Based on hitherto unexplored archives, it excavates Egypt’s evolving legal regime in the mid-nineteenth century, linking its Ottoman roots of its future under British rule. The book also reconstructs the trajectories of merchants and their legal aides as they navigated, reinterpreted and used the laws that governed the market during an era of free trade and extraterritorial privileges. The 1800’s were a period of legal fluidity in the Ottoman Empire. A practically autonomous province by mid-century, Egypt was also the scene of profound legal experimentation. How Commerce Became Legal offers a methodical study of how new laws redefined the commercial sphere and shaped a new mode of market governance that would persist for long after the historical forces that created it had been forgotten. The book demonstrates the fusion of Ottoman, French and Islamic legal concepts, which formed the infrastructure of laws that governed commerce. It meticulously reconstructs the day-to-day practices, business strategies and legal expertise of individuals who engaged with commercial law.

On the Program:

Omar Youssef Cheta is Assistant Professor of History at Syracuse University. Nurfadzilah Yahaya is Assistant Professor of History at Yale University. The meeting’s host, Barbara Welke, is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, and Past-President of the ASLH.

As a reminder: we will meet on Zoom, where the audience is invited to ask questions. Those who wish to attend need not have read the book in advance. Those interested in attending must RSVP; the Zoom link will be sent out to registered participants 24 hours before the event.

If you have questions, please feel free to reach out to Siobhan Barco ([email protected]) or Barbara Welke ([email protected]).