Maadi

Annalise J.K. DeVries is an assistant professor of world history at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Her scholarship explores the impact of global influences on modern Egyptian history with particular attention to spatial analysis, economic networks, and women’s and gender history. She has previously worked as a writer and editor, giving her an added interest in how digital storytelling can connect humanities scholarship to broader, public audiences.

"[A]n important addition to the literature on suburbs in Egypt."—Urban History"Maadi is a fantastic dive into Egypt at the beginning of the 20th century. . . . brought to life by the gallery of portraits of builders and residents and by its narration over time, the work will appeal to fans of colonial and global history as well as specialists in modern Egypt and the residents of Cairo."—ESMA (Égypte Soudan Mondes Arabes)"Provides a rich picture of the Cairo suburb of Maadi from its foundation to nationalization"—Al-Ahram Weekly“This richly researched, engagingly written social and economic history of a single Cairo suburb deftly captures the central role that foreign capital and the laws governing it played in driving Maadi’s development from its founding at the turn of the twentieth century until the end of the Delta Land Company’s stewardship of the suburb in the 1950s. DeVries sheds fascinating light on the major players, including foreign business owners and former colonial civil servants, many of whom came out of the colonial administration of Egypt, who were the engine of that growth, while dealing intelligently with the relationship of Maadi and its founders to the developments in the political, economic, and social history of Egypt in the first half of the twentieth century.”—Robert L. Tignor, Princeton University"Annalise DeVries’s wonderfully detailed Maadi is a gift for all those who love the history of the changing face of modern Cairo."—Robert Vitalis, University of Pennsylvania"Annalise DeVries has given readers a lively world history of an Egyptian village’s transformation into a cosmopolitan-, colonial-, status-, race-, religious-, and nationalist-inflected locale in all its complexity. Over the course of less than a century, Maadi was a rich focal point of individual lives and aspirations, while it was also enmeshed in the development of local and international capitalism and the politics of empire and decolonization. The amazing cast of characters alone will hold readers in its grasp."—Bonnie Smith, Rutgers University