ABSTRACT
The gradual commodification of drinking water and the racialised colonial legal system emerged together as part of a process of capital accumulation in which several public utilities companies played a significant role. This chapter focuses on the legal presence of these companies through a specifically colonial yet distinctly modern legal system. It describes the jurisprudence of the Mixed Courts in cases involving large foreign public utilities companies as part of Egypt’s transition to capitalism. The chapter explores the contradictions, incoherencies, and ‘successes’ of this colonial legal system in adjudicating public utilities cases. It also focuses on the question of drinking water in the legal disputes of the Alexandria Water Company. The chapter discusses the structure and functions of the Mixed Courts, paying particular attention to the way in which they were conceived in the European international legal imagination as marking a new phase of Near East sovereignty.
