000			02657nam a22002417a 4500
003			ZW-GwMSU
005			20230926123158.0
008			230926b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
040			_aMSU _cMSU _erda
100			_aFAHMY, Ziad
245			_aJurisdictional Borderlands _bExtraterritoriality and “Legal Chameleons” in Precolonial Alexandria, 1840–1870
264			_aCambridge _bCambridge University Press _c2013
336			_2rdacontent _atext _btxt
337			_2rdamedia _aunmediated _bn
338			_2rdacarrier _avolume _bnc
440			_aComparative Studies in Society and History _vVolume , number ,
520			_aThis essay highlights the role of thousands of nineteenth-century Alexandrian residents with multiple extraterritorial legal identities. The manner with which extraterritoriality was practiced in Egypt effectively gave Western consulates legal jurisdiction not only over their citizens but also over all those able, through whatever means, to acquire protégé status. Many Alexandrians acquired legal protection from multiple consulates, shifting their legal identities in order to maximize their immediate social and economic interests. These legal realities present historians with the dilemma of how to account for and “classify” this highly flexible and syncretic society. I strive to answer this question through the use of a borderland lens. Realizing that the heart of Egypt's borderland society was legal has led me to consider the concept of “jurisdictional borderland” as a productive method for examining the complexity of Egypt's nineteenth-century heterogeneous population. I define a jurisdictional borderland as a significant contact zone where there are multiple, often competing legal authorities and where some level of jurisdictional ambiguity exists. Jurisdictional borderlanders have their own unique and independent agenda that often conflicts with many of the competing “national” or imperial positions. Without an allegiance to any single government—be it Egyptian, Ottoman, or Western—and living in a peripheral environment with multiple, separate, and often competing “national” institutions, these borderlanders thrived in the jurisdictional spaces created in between multiple authorities. I conclude by suggesting how a jurisdictional borderland lens is useful for globally investigating other colonial and precolonial cities, many of which had similar extraterritorial legal systems.
650			_ajuristictional borderlands
650			_aextraterritoriality
650			_aprecolonial Alexandria
856			_uhttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417513000042
942			_2lcc _cJA
999			_c163367 _d163367