Desert Borderland - 9781503605008

Desert BorderlandThe Making of Modern Egypt and Libya\nAuthor(s): Matthew H. Ellis\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Stanford University Press, United States\nImprint: Stanford University Press\nISBN-13: 9781503605008, 978-1503605008\nSynopsis\nDesert Borderland investigates the historical processes that transformed political identity in the easternmost reaches of the Sahara Desert in the half century before World War I. Adopting a view from the marginsilluminating the little-known history of the EgyptianLibyan borderlandthe book challenges prevailing notions of how Egypt and Libya were constituted as modern territorial nation-states.\n\n Matthew H. Ellis draws on a wide array of archival sources to reconstruct the multiple layers and meanings of territoriality in this desert borderland. Throughout the decades, a heightened awareness of the existence of distinctive Egyptian and Ottoman Libyan territorial spheres began to develop despite any clear-cut boundary markers or cartographic evid.