Research Matters and The New School for Social Research congratulate Assistant Professor of History Aaron Jakes, who has been awarded a 2017-18 fellowship by the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies at the MacMillan Center. Professor Jakes will spend the 2017-18 academic year at Yale, where he will work on his book State of the Field: Colonial Economism and the Crises of Capitalism in Egypt, 1882-1922.

According to its website, The Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale constitutes an “interdisciplinary effort to reshape how a new generation of scholars understands rural life and society.” The program appoints three fellows annually who are chosen for the promise of their research.

“The scholarship that has come out of Yale’s Program in Agrarian Studies has been a major source of inspiration since I started working on this project over a decade ago,” said Jakes. He added, “I am tremendously excited about the opportunity to spend the year working with and learning from my new colleagues at Yale.”

Leveraging more than ten years of archival research in Egypt, England, India, Pakistan, and the United States, State of the Field reexamines the political economy of foreign rule and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles over the character and status of the British occupation of Egypt after 1882. During the period that Jakes researches, Egypt not only solidified its role as a global powerhouse in the production of cotton (exporting much of it to rapidly industrializing markets in Europe), but also became a center for investment and financial expansion.