Levantine Joint-Stock Companies, Trans-Mediterranean Partnerships, and Nineteenth-Century Capitalist Development

Bibliographic Data

ID2109075
AuthorsKristen Alff (0000-0002-8137-9125, Stanford University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume60
Issue1
Pages150-177
Publication date2018-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417517000445
OpenAlexW2781724689
LanguageEN
Citations received12
References cited44

The Levantine business community-the Sursuqs, Bustruses, Tuenis, Khuris, Debbases, Trads, Tabets, Naggiars, and Farahs-created large agricultural estates in the Levant and established company branches in Beirut, Alexandria, Haifa, London, Liverpool, Paris, and Marseille in the mid-nineteenth century. Against both culturalist and new institutional paradigms, I argue that the trajectories of the Levantine firms were much like those of their European counterparts; Dutch and English capitalism-what came to be recognized as modern forms of capitalism-developed out of long-distance trade and relied on forms of coerced and semi-coerced labor as well as other so-called 'non-capitalist' or 'precapitalist' elements. Beirut-based companies relied on tenant contracts, sharecropping, and other forms of labor control rooted in the Ottoman social formation. Drawing upon the unexplored private papers of these business families in Beirut and a diverse collection of documents from Istanbul, Beirut, Jerusalem, London, Liverpool, and Marseille in Arabic, German, Ottoman Turkish, and French, this paper examines the parallels and the links between the business practices of the Levantine joint-stock companies and their European partners. It contends that the development of nineteenth-century capitalism relied on several different institutions and relations of production formulated and articulated on both sides of the Mediterranean and in the competition between them. Only after World War I, because of settler-colonialism, the settlement of nomads, and large-scale European capital investment backed by imperial power, did Levantine capital accumulation begin to take a form that was subordinate to Europe

Ancient history · Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Capitalism · Colonialism · Economic history · Economics · Economy · German · Joint-stock company · Parallels · Political science · Politics · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Multiculturalism, Politics, Migration, Gender

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