A ‘new’ economic history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region

Abstract

This article argues that there is a need to develop a ‘new’ economic and social history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region that is based on exploiting novel sources of data, including (a) primary papyrological sources from the medieval period, (b) primary sources at the region's local archives and European (colonial) archives, and (c) primary sources from the ancient (pre‐Islamic) period. The proposed ‘new’ history of the MENA region must be inter‐disciplinary for two reasons: (a) digitizing and employing these novel data sources in research requires the collaboration of social scientists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, demographers and papyrologists, as well as the co‐operation of MENA‐based scholars who have better access to MENA's local archives, and (b) even if these novel sources are digitized, data limitations are likely to impose a constraint on the reach of quantitative analysis and thus necessitate an inter‐disciplinary methodology that combines quantitative evidence with historical analysis.

The economy by other means: The historiography of capitalism in the modern Middle East

“…As should have become apparent by now, the accumulation and refinement of knowledge about the history of capitalism that is emerging out of the conversation among historians, political theorists, and anthropologists, rarely overlaps with the debates among economists. One remedy that has commonly been suggested, especially by economists, has been the need for interdisciplinary work, by which they mean that historians would provide the general context and economists would provide the analysis through pursuing counterfactuals and establishing causal relationships (Hilt, 2017;Saleh, 2017). In other words, historians would provide the raw historical materials that economists would synthesize into systematic knowledge about capitalist processes.…”

Introduction to the Special Issue on the Economics of the Middle East and North Africa

“…Even relative short periods of exogenous price (and other) shocks thus had far‐reaching consequences for the development of local institutions in Africa and the Middle East. In his contribution to the special issue (Saleh, ), Saleh builds on the research presented, but makes a broader point, arguing for an interdisciplinary research agenda that combines quantitative analysis with historical research so to highlight and understand the persistent impact of economic shocks on institutions in the region.…”