Egypt Ignited

A gripping history of nineteenth century Egypt reveals how steam, debt, and animal viral disease powered capitalism’s spread—turning the Nile Valley into an early front in the global war over energy and empire.

Egypt Ignited offers a gripping global history of how fossil capital—and the warming it unleashed—spread far beyond Europe. Beginning in the 1820s, Egypt became one of the first non-European countries to pursue steam-driven industrialization after Britain. This radically new account of 19th-century Egypt traces how fossil capital took root in the Nile Valley, entangling imperial ambition, forced dependency, debt, and colonialism. From European engineers and financiers to Pashas, peasants, and plantation workers, Khairy follows the human and environmental toll of industrial modernity—boilers exploding, oxen dying in polluted canals, rebels executed for resisting machines they believed were powered by underground demons demanding their children’s futures.A sweeping story of empire, extraction, and resistance, this is a vital history of capitalism’s global spread—and the climate catastrophe it set in motion.