Until relatively recently, scholars of Egyptian history understood the modern period to begin with the movement of European people and ideas to Egypt's northern shores precipitated by Napoleon's invasion in 1798. From this perspective, modern Egyptian history was defined by the diverse and sometimes contradictory ways in which Egyptians responded over time to colonial power and modern forms of knowledge. This handbook, featuring twenty-five originally commissioned essays by leading scholars in the field plus an introduction, adds to a growing literature that complicates the facile colonizer/ colonized and modern/tradition binaries undergirding this view. It shows modern Egyptian history to be a continuous process of translation and adaptation, invention and reinvention.

The handbook is intended to map this dynamic and influential field, highlighting the most promising avenues of research and laying new ground upon which future generations of scholars may build. The contributors address both long-persisting themes, though in new ways, and new themes reshaping how we understand modern Egyptian history, and thus Middle Eastern and global history. These include culture, disease, environment, family, infrastructure, intellectuals, labor, law, literature, medicine, mobility, politics, the state, and technology. The historical questions explored in the handbook touch on many of today's most pressing global concerns and debates.