Between the 1890s and 1920s, cities in the vast region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean were experiencing political, social, economic, and cultural changes that had been set in motion at least since the early nineteenth century. As the age of pre-colonial empires gave way to colonial and national states, there was a sense that a particular liberalism of culture and economy had been irretrievably lost to a more intolerant age.

Avoiding such dichotomies as East/West and modernity/tradition, this book provides a comparative analysis of contested versions of the concept of modernity. The book examines not only the "high" culture of scholars and the literati, but also popular music, the visual arts, and journalism. The contributors incorporate discussion of the way in which the business in both commodities and ideas was conducted in the increasingly cosmopolitan cities of the time.

Between the 1890s and 1920s, cities in the vast region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean were experiencing political, social, economic, and cultural changes that had been set in motion at least since the early nineteenth century. As the age of pre-colonial empires gave way to colonial and national states, there was a sense that a particular liberalism of culture and economy had been irretrievably lost to a more intolerant age.

Avoiding such dichotomies as East/West and modernity/tradition, this book provides a comparative analysis of contested versions of the concept of modernity. The book examines not only the "high" culture of scholars and the literati, but also popular music, the visual arts, and journalism. The contributors incorporate discussion of the way in which the business in both commodities and ideas was conducted in the increasingly cosmopolitan cities of the time.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Connected World of Empires, by C. A. Bayly and Leila Fawaz
Section 1. Trade Routes and Patterns of Exchange from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Centuries
Trade and Port Cities in the Red Sea - Gulf of Aden Region in the Sixteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, by Michel Tuchscherer
A Divided Sea: The Cairo Coffee Trade in the Red Sea Area during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, by André Raymond
The Red Sea Ports during the Revolution in Transportation, by Colette Dubois
Section II. Cities as Centers of Exchange
Port Cities as Nodal Points of Change: The Indian Ocean, 1890s - 1920s, by Kenneth McPherson
Haifa at the Crossroads: An Outpost of the New World Order, by May Seikaly
Islamic Universalism and Regional Identity in Turn-of-the-Century Basra: Sheikh Ibrahim al-Haidari's Book Revisited, by Hala Fattah
Section III. Survival of the Inland Cities
Damascus and the Pilgrim Caravan, by Abdul-Karim Rafeq
Aspects of Economy and Society in the Syrian Provinces: Aleppo in Transition, 1880-1925, by Peter Sluglett
Section IV. Cultural Production and Diffusion
Representing Copts and Muhammadans: Empire, Nation, and Community in Egypt and India, 1880-1914, by C. A. Bayly
Izmir 1922: A Port City Unravels, by Resat Kasaba
Negotiating Colonial Modernity and Cultural Difference: Indian Muslim Conceptions of Community and Nation, c. 1878-1914, by Ayesha Jalal
Section V. Politics Race and Community
The Tangled End of Istanbul's Imperial Supremacy, by Engin Deniz Akarli
Racial Readings of Empire: Britain, France, and Colonial Modernity in the Mediterranean and Asia, by Susan Bayly
Section VI. Representing the Modern
Alexandria: A Mediterranean Cosmopolitan Center of Cultural Production, by Robin Ostle
Between Politics and Literature: Journals in Alexandria and Istanbul at the End of the Nineteenth Century, by Elisabeth Kendall
Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890-1920, by Juan Cole
Section VII. Comparisons and Connections
Space and Time on the Indian Ocean Rim: Theory and History, by Sugata Bose