Industrial Archaeology of the Nile Delta

This project intends to capture the history of modernity in Egypt by building knowledge around the history of modern technology, its introduction and development across the country from the 1820s to 1961. 

A modest amount of research have been conducted on Egypt’s history of technology in modernity so far, and it shows the significance of historicizing technology to better understand labour history (Beinin and Lockman, 1987), rural-urban relations (Owen, 1984), and colonialism (Barak, 2020). However, only very recently, with the turn to studying material history, history of infrastructures, and the history of energy transitions in the 2010s - with rising concerns over global warming - did historical research bring insights that show the promise of such a research programme for better understanding lineages of modernity in Egypt. 

Conducted in the form of a preparatory survey, this project aims to collect data on Egypt’s technological history in production and mobility. In doing so, it will help establish industrial archaeology at Ifao and link it to key fields of historical research, from energy and technology to imperialism, labour, and environmental and economic change.

It focuses on the industrial archaeology of the Delta, which witnessed abrupt modernisation and industrialisation starting in the 1860s and it remained central to the national economies and ecologies of production and mobility across the 20th century, as the producer of the country’s leading cash-crop; cotton. The cotton industry single-handedly changed agricultural practices, introduced factories and a working class, and brought an extensive railway network. As such, the Delta is a potential rich zone for reconstructing  material archives for the social history of technology, and the history of anthropization of the Delta rural and urban spaces during times of abrupt transitions and upheavals .

Ongoing Fieldwork

Kafr al-Shaykh, Tanta and Gharbiyya governorates.