ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book recognizes the global dimensions of imperial histories and the critical role of intermediaries in knowledge production using trans-imperial networks. The fear of sharia courts and sharia law invading Western nation-states as a form of Islamic legal imperialism harkens back to the nineteenth-century European legal imperialism traced throughout the book. Italo-Levantine identification was imbued with a new extraterritorial value through its imperial associations and their legal entanglements influenced legal reform in nineteenth-century Egypt. In Istanbul they did not have the same influence or affluence so their cases had more typical results such as expulsion from the empire. Extraterritoriality alone did not guarantee that legal imperialism could gain a stronghold, or stranglehold, in the empire. Debt dependence, European imperialism, and the rise of the nation-state provided the full historical context. This was true in Egypt, but not in Istanbul at the turn of the century.
