ABSTRACT
Economic historians working on the Middle East—and more so perhaps on its modern period—have been submitted, for a generation or a little more, to the impact of the complex range of factors of change which has been remoulding the hitherto remote fields of the social sciences (including economic history) and regional studies, understood as the study of the underdeveloped ‘Three continents’ (including the Middle East). From the methodological viewpoint—which can only be of a generally valid, scientific, type, not of the more restricted regional one—we have to question the uses and limits of economic history, not per se, but within the general framework of the social sciences; this analysis will have to bear upon the field under study—i.e., the modern Middle East, with special reference to Egypt—with its specific features, yet within the broader framework of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
