The High Tide of Colonialism

Abstract This article explores a seaborne genealogy of sovereignty and governmentality by drawing on the case of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt. It argues that a particular form of totalizing sovereignty emerged through the Levant Crisis and its resolution in 1841 when the Mediterranean became mare clausum. Subsequently, it demonstrates how a rivaling seaborne genealogy of sovereignty and governmentality complicates the standard Foucauldian narrative of the emergence of governmentality. In contrast to the classic land-based history of sovereignty and governmentality, a seaborne story can point to a different and earlier periodization of colonization that involves the acquisition of naval stations, outposts, and customs houses hidden under the veneer of naval science.