Channelling mobilities: migration and globalisation in the Suez Canal region and beyond, 1869-1914

摘要

The Suez Canal is a subject which has captured the imaginations of both academic and popular historians, often being presented as part of a narrative of technological progress in the nineteenth century. Valeska Huber's book eschews this simplistic view of an engineering success story, however, and instead attempts a more novel global approach, analysing the Canal's unique place as a 'nodal point and lynchpin of various forms of mobility' in an increasingly connected world. The central argument of the book is that there were multiple mobilities in this region, and contends that it was not just the journeys of privileged Europeans that changed because of the Suez Canal. By assessing the mobility of many others, including nomadic tribesmen, those employed in the maintenance of the Canal, stowaways, criminals, and pilgrims, the study is able to demonstrate that the construction of the Canal did not create an era of unhampered acceleration for all global mobilities. Instead, it is shown that it was a period of 'differentiation, regulation and bureaucratisation of different kinds of movement'.