2 - Ogle

Whose Time Is It?
The Pluralization of Time and the Global Condition, 1870s—1940s

Author(s): VANESSA OGLE
Source: The American Historical Review , DECEMBER 2013, Vol. 118, No. 5 (DECEMBER
2013), pp. 1376-1402
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23784581
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Whose Time Is It? The Pluralization of Time and the
Global Condition, 1870s-1940s
VANESSA OGLE
After what must have been a hot day in August 1909, a journalist f
newspaper felt inclined to take an evening stroll. Jubran Massuh dec
would "pretend to be European," and that meant donning a tie and oth
apparel and adopting European behavior. But suddenly it occurred to him
entirely un-European to walk around aimlessly "wasting time"; after
peans said, "Time is money." Young Jubran therefore turned on his heels
behind his desk and spend his time studying something useful. The time-
European was one of several temporal identities that Jubran Massuh was j
Four years earlier, roughly twenty-five hundred miles and an entire oce
to the west, another journalist, this one anonymous, had written abou
article criticized the introduction of standard time (Greenwich Mean T
city of Bombay, where the citizens insisted on keeping local Bombay time
to the journalist, standard time had no legitimacy. It was British time
specific circumstances of British rule over much of India. The British
bureaucrats who advocated it were not representative of Bombay or o
whole.2 In consequence, after widespread protests, a pluralistic landsca
was not just maintained but enhanced throughout British India as ci
At thsAHR, I would like to thank Cris Coffey, Jane Lyle, the editorial board, Robert S
the outside reviewers for swift communication and crucial feedback on this essay. Sever
helped me formulate ideas expressed here in conversations and comments, and by provi
to discuss earlier drafts with different audiences: Sven Beckert, Charles S. Maier, Afsane
and Roger Owen at Harvard University; Stephanie McCurry, Benjamin Nathans, and
Penn; Aviel Roshwald and the Georgetown International History Seminar; David Bell, Sh
the Princeton Modern Europe Workshop; Jakob Vogel and the Centre d'Histoire at Scien
Sebastian Conrad and the Global History Colloquium at the Free University of Berlin; Dav
Erez Manela, and the Harvard International and Global History Seminar, where Heidi Two
probing written comments; Mark Bradley, Michael Geyer, Tara Zahra, and the Internat
Modern Europe Workshops at the University of Chicago, where Mark Bradley's respo
were particularly helpful; Orit Bashkin, Jacob Soil, and Robert Kohler. This article uses the
Journal of Middle East Studies transliteration system for Arabic without diacritical marks e
and hamza. Transliterations of titles of periodicals in South Asian languages are rendere
English-language sources.
1 See Jubran Massuh, "Kayfa Naqtul al-Waqt," Lis an al-Hal, August 14, 1909, 3. Mass
Arabic verb and neologism tafarnaja, derived from the Arabic word ifranjï ("Frank'TEur
scribe his temporary identity switch. "To tafarnaja" was a common expression in the pe
2 British Library, Asia, Pacific, and Africa Collections, India Office Records [here
IOR], L/R/5/160, Report on Native Papers Published in the Bombay Presidency, 1905, K
September 3, 1905.
1376

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
Whose Time Is It? 1377
Bombay (and to a lesser degree Calcu

except for a few government offices
These instances illustrate two differ
times prevailed in much of the world
1870s to the 1940s, when, under the a
presumably becoming more standar
and "uniform." As the episode from Be
social time—notions of how to use and
with others—had multiplied to the
deliberately interchangeable constru
onstrates how orders of time multipl
the goal was to impose more uniform
or unintended consequences of unifyi
cept of a worldwide grid of standardi
of social time, was largely a fiction
railway engineers and scientists.4
The unification of clock times and so
winded story, as exemplified by the i
locales, the late Ottoman Levant and B
Bombay, on the other. Today, Jubran
to time management and the Bombay
appear unrelated. But to contempora
with time that encompassed clock tim
questions of time technologies alike
Ultimately, over the course of seve
touched on localities all over the glo
cific ways of keeping time slowly dis
no means all of their flexibility. Ho
nections be conceptualized when it e
world," since all-inclusiveness is obv
processes is to conceive of global his
terplay of geopolitics and scales. In
nation-states occupied different posit
did dependent colonies and colonial
3 "Local time" (meaning sun time) is not sc

correct "local mean time" (clock time) due to
the midpoint of an hour-wide time zone. Giv
course of the year, "local mean time" correct
nineteenth century to replace "local solar tim
4 These time unification schemes have been
based studies that have examined individuals a
reform. Since these accounts draw on persona
of observatories instead of using the adminis
tracted political and social dimensions of time
that continued to exist among different, less s
of these stories. See, for instance, Ian R. Bartk
in America (Stanford, Calif., 2000); Bartky, O
(Stanford, Calif., 2007); Peter Galison, Einste
2003).
American Historical Review December 2013

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1378 Vanessa Ogle
connections and flows, moreover, s

tional, regional, and international p
of time reform and other global proc
ities and different degrees of scale,
ganizations to domestic contexts with
contexts alike. In this perspective, a p
varieties of time reform would eme
tions of scientific conferences and th
Such an account would highlight a r
of time unification, including intern
capitalism and the world economy,
ing, self-improvement, and social t
aspects within the broader story of
ments, the one located in an Arab p
situated in a full-fledged colony with
perial time, the other self-improvem
two are sufficiently different to illu
ficiently similar to be juxtaposed in t
Beirut and Bombay had important
commercial hub in a longstanding lan
from European expansionist aspiratio
the challenge and threat that Europ
mercial center in a longstanding Euro
beginning to express criticism of B
world economy had in previous decad
economy and the social fabric.7 As a
ern education, both cities were home
in contact with European ideas and pr
form of newspapers, journals, and pa
cities within a multiethnic land empi
colony, on the other, Beirut and Bom
which globalization generally and a
particular were shaped by local con
5 For such a perspective, see my forthcomin

Time: The Global Struggle for Uniformity and
University Press).
6 For other works that have recently enga
Indian Ocean region, see Nile Green, "Mar
terranean and Indian Ocean through Barcelo
523; and Leila Tarazi Fawaz and C. A. Bayly,
the Indian Ocean (New York, 2002).
7 See Leila Tarazi Fawaz, Merchants and Mig
1983); and Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The Or
and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-19
8 Manu Goswami has analyzed a similar pr
Producing India: From Colonial Economy to
Middle East, see Ami Ayalon, The Press in t
9 On the methodology of comparison, the
gen Kocka, "Historischer Vergleich: Method

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
It has become a commonplace to a

interactions between the global and
peddled by even some of the more con
globalization, besides local elements, in
role in regionalizing and localizing t
lations appear almost as a product o
localities.12 The history of time reform
particular local conditions on the gr
time took on different, nationally col
localities, and on how, in consequence,
places for much longer than has co
British India, it mattered to the loc
that this was the time of the colonize
with British politics had been stoke
mented by the colonial government, p
became a vehicle for expressing critic
mosphere, members of Bombay's mid
British time was born not out of lo
concerns about mismanagement of t
macy of British rule over India. In Be
pire was only threatening to become a
ond half of the nineteenth century, m
Levantine shores in growing numbe
cational institutions, established the
crowded out local competitors in land
railways. In nearby Egypt, foreign o
tracted phase of European influence
elites had to be alarmed at this prospe
their contemporaries not to reject E
of them as a means of self-strength
ropean challenge.
Kocka, eds., Geschichte und Vergleich: Ansatz

schreibung (Frankfurt/Main, 1996), 9-49.
10 In the social science literature on globaliz
Roland Robertson, "Glocalization: Time-Spa
stone, Scott Lash, and Roland Robertson, ed
Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Di
torical perspective on globalization, though w
tributions in A. G. Hopkins, ed., Global Histo
ingstoke, 2006).
11 In the late nineteenth and the early twe
Levant was certainly not the anticolonial nat
period or something akin to the ideology of (p
the term "nationalism" over "proto-nationali
ropean model nationalism and non-Western d
12 The social science literature on globalizatio
state than on localization. Arjun Appadurai in
on the assumption that "the very epoch of t
even for contemporary globalization, and com
Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 19.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1380 Vanessa Ogle
In the second half of the nineteenth ce

interconnected. Markets for goods, ca
colonialism; and internationalist movem
different dimensions of globalization. A
and telegraphs underpinned these cross-
annihilated, and time was accelerating
gions had certainly seen interactions
of technology and the spirit of imperia
tion to new levels of density and intens
balized world could at times appear chao
teenth-century language, or standard
middle decades of the twentieth centu
bricant for the uninterrupted flow of
agreements and institutions, such as
Telegraph Union, sought to unify pro
13 For an account of early modern global and

circumnavigators who similarly thought about th
Round about the Earth: Circumnavigation from
balization, the nineteenth-century "wave" of gl
break of World War I, which in this understandi
again in the 1960s. However, many prewar tren
as internationalism and certainly imperial ties,
or were reorganized only during and after Wo
nectedness of the world after World War I, an
very helpful "Periodizing Globalization," Histor
Nineteenth-century globalization bears a striki
consider the flow of capital, the integration of
main tenets. But that in no way implies that ea
global. On other eras of globalization such as
troduction: Globalization—An Agenda for Histo
(New York, 2002), 1-10. For a historiographic
Hopkins, "The History of Globalization—and
succinct survey so far is Jiirgen Osterhammel and
Dona Geyer (Princeton, N.J., 2005). For an econ
G. Williamson, Globalization and History: The Evo
bridge, Mass., 1999); as well as the contribution
Williamson, eds., Globalization in Historical P
Bright have argued for the need not only to writ
the writing of history: Geyer and Bright, "Wor
100, no. 4 (October 1995): 1034-1060; in a similar
Century to History: Alternative Narratives for
3 (June 2000): 807-831. "Globalization" is used h
process in which increasing interconnections ar
the many limits, frictions, and disruptions in int
and unevenness that connectedness can equall
ization as integration. On the limits of "globalizat
"Globalization," in Cooper, Colonialism in Questi
91-112.
14 For instance, Ken Alder has charted the nineteenth-century French and international quest
unify the countless units used for measurement: Alder, The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyss
and Hidden Error That Transformed the World (London, 2002). On telegraphy, see Roland Wenzlhuem
Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World: The Telegraph and Globalization (Cambridge, 2013); and Heid
Tworek, "The Creation of European News: News Agency Cooperation in Interwar Europe," Journalis
Studies 14, no. 5 (October 2013): 730-742. Tworek's forthcoming book will shed light on another aspe
of historical globalization by examining how global news networks became a contested arena for shapi
politics, economics, and culture in the early twentieth century.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
ization of a growing body of recogniz

established another, more abstract sta
number of nation-states in internatio
The unification of time was perhaps
efforts. Euro-American scientists and
rational, neutral, free from politics o
universally applicable across societies
in typical nineteenth-century idiom,
times to calendars to social time.16 Th
time was that advocating the introduc
lomats at the Washington Prime Me
of a global system of time zones bas
well as the adoption of a universal d
or, as in some non-Western societies, a
movement grew attempts to end the
light saving or summer time. Europea
the First World War but later suspend
1920s.18 Neglected by existing scholar
were another important dimension o
15 On the laws of war and especially Russ

Holquist, "The Russian Empire as a 'Civilize
Imperial Russia, 1874-1878," NCEER Working
Holquist.pdf. See also Arthur Eyffinger, The
Federation of the World" (The Hague, 1999). On
The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and
16 On missionaries and time discipline, see G
tine and Resistance in the British Empire (Manc
but rather with the Cape Colony and parts o
17 The most detailed account of the conferen
Time Fits All. On the technological and scien
Greenwich Time and the Discovery of the Lo
ed., The Quest for Longitude (Cambridge, Mas
U.S., see Bartky, Selling the True Time, and
Time (New York, 1990); see also Carlene E. S
the Clock (Boston, 2002). Charles S. Maier h
organization in "The Politics of Time: Changi
Modern Era," in Maier, ed., Changing Boundarie
the State and Society, Public and Private in E
van Rossum, History of the Hour: Clocks and
1996). Stephen Kern's work draws a broad c
philosophy, sociology, literature, and geograph
Durkheim, Marcel Proust, and Harold Mackind
and space. See Kern, The Culture of Time a
Maureen Perkins, The Reform of Time: Magi
Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,"
forty years old, continues to be the seminal ref
work. For a general approach to sociological n
Problem of Time in Sociology: An Overview o
the 'Sociology of Time,' 1900-82," Time & Soc
Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay," An
Zerubavel, "The Standardization of Time: A So
88, no. 1 (1982): 1-23. For a historiographical v
the writing of history, see Lynn Hunt, Measu
18 On summer time, see Bartky, One Time F
Michael Downing, Spring Forward: The Annu

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1382 Vanessa Ogle
out as an effort to convince the no

gorian calendar; by the turn of the t
global introduction of a culturally
endar," a project that was eventually
To some of the astronomers involve
have been a purely technical matter.
from circles of scientific experts to le
it took on far-ranging social and p
nomic measures such as summer time
as well. Summer time was promote
rising late in
idling in the morning or
or other physical recreational activiti
tions of calendar times, clock times,
to the same broader issue.20
Several intertwined factors contributed to the slow advance of time unification.
Compelling the entire globe to implement new time practices was a tremendously
ambitious task. Local populations were reluctant to let go of accustomed practices.
But among Europeans seeking to implement unification schemes, it was a lack of
imaginary flexibility that posed obstacles to uniform time. When British, French, and
German journalists, government officials, and railway personnel discussed the ben
efits and complications of introducing uniform mean times, they revealed a remark
able ineptitude at imagining such units of time as hours or zone times as constructed
entities that would be grafted onto the duration of a full rotation of the earth. Par
liamentary discussions and administrative correspondence are replete with refer
ences that demonstrate how Europeans implicitly combined absolute, natural, "true"
time with a newly introduced measure such as standard time or summer time. Many
people came to conclude that under the new standard time, hours had to be adjusted
to make activities previously carried out at one point in "absolute" time fall at the
same absolute moment in time as before. The most illustrative example of such rea
soning was a measure passed in western Germany after the introduction of a na
tionwide standard time for German railways in 1892. In order to make trains run at
the same absolute point in time as they had under local sun time, officials adjusted
timetables accordingly. Hence, in a location where the new standard time ran eigh
teen minutes ahead of local sun time, a train that had previously departed at 9 a.m.
was now rescheduled to run at 9:18 a.m.21 Behind such measures was the belief that
the course of things would still be determined by "real" time, and that any event,
being as intrinsically stable and immovable as it was, would merely receive a new
name (9:18 instead of 9:00). Such reasoning was common in Europe as late as the
1920s in discussions about summer time. These arguments betray a striking imag
and David Prerau, Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time (New
York, 2005).
19 On early calendar reform at the League of Nations, see League of Nations Archives, Geneva,
Communications and Transit Section, 1919-1927, 14/12478/22679, report, March 9, 1922.
20 See, among the many examples, British National Archives, Kew [hereafter NA], HO 45/11626,
Summer Time—Notes of Deputations from the Early Closing Association.
21 See German Federal Archives, Berlin Branch [hereafter BArch], R 901/15612, "Local Time and
Mean Time Once Again," Kôlnische Zeitung, May 19, 1892, n.p.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
inary difficulty among European legis

abstractly and to separate different
ropeans instead sought to combine t
Measured by their own goals, Euro-A
uniform thus failed widely. In much
adopted only between the 1920s and
disregard of the Greenwich system.22
mandated official times always rema
lation, in Europe as much as anywhere
the application of said law was anothe
1950s without any achievements to sp
day. Most importantly, however, le
multaneously and independently of
conversations about different aspects
the Parsi and Hindu calendars, the acc
of clocks and telegraphs in transmittin
the start of Ramadan.23 The simulta
sible to steer. Europeans were certainl
time.
While Germans adjusted train sched

own assumptions about trains and time
Indians made time the topic of conv
Intellectuals reflected on the compres
Colonial subjects integrated the rhythm
life but did not refrain from complai
uling arrangements.24 Moreover, Hi
22 In 1942, the British Dominion Office com

knowledging that nobody was able to establis
empire. Multiple British possessions followed
though the Washington system of time zones h
December 6, 1945, 26.
23 On Hindu calendar reform, see "Reform
on Parsi calendar reform, see "Parsi Festivals
1915, 6; see also Ahmed Mukhtar Pasha, La ré
astronomer who for some time lived in Paris
reform was first published in Ottoman Turkish
Pasha and astronomy in Egypt more generall
Lighthouse and the Observatory: Islam, Autho
(Princeton University, 2013). On the use of
al-Qasimi, Irshad al-Khalq ila al-'Amal bi-Kha
to similar works it contains, as well as fatw
reformers of the period who was based out of
for example, al-Manar 6 (1903): 705-707, 86
endar, and the Koran," Moslem World 3, no.
Irshad Ahl al-Milla ila Ithbat al-Ahilla (Cairo
24 Ritika Prasad, in the context of writing a
sense" pertaining to the spread of railroads in
time: Prasad, " 'Time Sense': Railways and Tem
4 (2013): 1252-1282.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1384 Vanessa Ogle
siastic followers of the principle of self

agement as central to their efforts a
administration first considered the id
therefore no strangers to Euro-Amer
Between 1881 and 1905-1906, the We
for protests against the abolition of l
called Indian Standard Time, which w
tem. Bombay's citizens were infused wi
fueled not least by the recent economic
American Civil War, when cotton produ
owners in Lancashire and elsewhere tur
governor of Bombay, James Fergusson,
thicket of simultaneously existing diff
lines, telegraph bureaus, and local tow
ernor missed a train. Out of this mish
governor moved to introduce Madras
Indian city and its observatory was th
most Indian telegraph bureaus and ra
both Indian and British, were quick to
all as imposing the time of a rival cit
confidently claimed for their city the
handful of government offices had a
Thomas Cathedral, whereas private offi
local Bombay time. "Consequently great
people," the Bombay Samáchár wrote.2
multiple times that required knowledge
also of who would follow which time
how am I to know that Jones and Sm
25 The study of Hindu reform movements lie

inence of self-help principles among members of
reformers endorsed time management as a tool
who emphasized "discipline and organization," s
Dayaram Gidumal, Hiranand: The Soul ofSindh
movements broadly, see Kenneth W. Jones, So
bridge, 1989). My thanks to Barbara Metcalf fo
26 On the global repercussions of the Civil W
Bombay and Indian cotton markets, see Sven B
Worldwide Web of Cotton Production in the
Review 109, no. 5 (December 2004): 1405-1438; C
India, 23; on the history of Bombay generally,
India: Politics and Communities in Bombay Ci
merchant communities; Meera Kosambi, Bomb
Colonial City, 1880-1980 (Stockholm, 1986); Ter
History of Bombay, 1840-1865 (New Delhi, 1985);
Colonial Governance and Public Culture in Bom
Mumbai Fables (Princeton, N.J., 2010).
27 On the events in Bombay, especially betwe
in Meera Kosambi, ed., Intersections: Socio-Cu
28 Kidambi, The Making of an Indian Metropo
29 See APAC, IOR, L/R/5/136, Report on N
Samáchár, December 2, 1881.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
ambivalence.30 Two years later, in 18

mained partial, and criticism continued.
lic pressure and rescinded his decision
After this first brush with standardiz
touched for roughly fifteen years. In th
ganizations, including the Royal Scotti
sociation for the Advancement of Scie
and submitted schemes for introducing
GMT.32 A uniform time for all of India,
ent barbarous arrangement, unworthy
which every place keeps its own time."
versal project of time reform by contra
barbarism of "irregularities," as they re
Officials initially objected, citing consi
India's bigger cities, but in 1903 they f
agreed to adopt the meridian five hours
the colony's standard time. This was an i
ington agreements had called for only
adopted.35 The Indian government's de
interests easily overrode collective int
regularity such as the half-hour differe
deemed politically opportune to bestow u
the colony's latitudinal extension, man
entific questions involved had advocate
GMT, one six. But government and railw
more than one time zone, as in some cas
one time in one administrative unit—a pr
Officials feared a loosening of their adm
arrangement.
Eventually, the viceroy and regional go
time zone for all of India. The new time
for use only by railways and telegraph b
the decree specified, they were at libert
30 "Bombay vs. Madras," Bombay Gazette, Dec

31 J. R. B. Jeejeebhoy, Some Unpublished & Lat
Mehta (Bombay, 1918), 175. See also APAC, IOR,
Presidency, Jám-e Jamshed, April 11, 1883.
32 APAC, IOR, P/5664, GOI, Proceedings of t
Royal Scottish Geographical Society to Secretary
P/5664, GOI, Proceedings of the Department of
Scottish Geographical Society, memorandum N
Meteorology, "On Time in India: A Suggestion fo
Geological Survey of India.
34 Ibid., 1899, George F. Hamilton, Secretary o
ibid., Hamilton to the Asiatic Society, Septembe
Secretary to the Government of India, Note on a
1904.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1386 Vanessa Ogle
to official purposes in their respective

local press, and resistance to these plans
government quickly recanted and agr
time" for all municipal and local purpos
was not subject to such concerns, and th
GMT for government purposes in the c
it up to the local self-governing body
mer out the precise details of applying
shifted back and forth, and after endor
cided against it in April 1906. In 1908
corporation, this time with a provision t
Market and Victoria Garden on local t
When Indian Standard Time was to
Bombay Municipal Council in 1905-1906
town hall meeting primarily to hear
also known as "the Lion of Bombay,"
tutional nationalism.39 He had been
which was headquartered in Bombay,
of applying Indian Standard Time to th
population of this City should be dri
Chamber of Commerce and the Port
adopted by Government without consul
and without giving them an opportunit
It was Mehta's fiery speech that eventu
reject the new time once and for all.42
standard time were beginning to be cou
and representation, or rather the lac
termed "Indian" Standard Time, bu
36 APAC IOR, P/7073, Proceedings of the De

orology, Secretary of State for India, April 27,
37 Municipal councils were among the first bodi
and were thus experiments in limited self-gove
Bombay, see Kidambi, The Making of an Indian
38 "The Corporation and Standard Time," Ti
ration: The Time Question—Reversal to Local
Thereof," ibid., April 25, 1906, 6; "French Tim
39 On institutional Indian "nationalism" in Bo
Indian Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian Nat
and his involvement with Bombay politics, see
iations and the Politics of Public Associations in
pecially 240.
40 On Mehta's relationship with the Bombay
standard time, see Usha Thakkar, "Pherozesha
Nawaz B. Mody, ed., Pherozeshah Mehta: Make
41 Jeejeebhoy, Some Unpublished & Later Speech
On the Chamber of Commerce and similar as
tropolis, 188.
42 APAC, IOR, L/R/5/161, Report on Native P
Prakásh, April 25, 1906. See also V. S. Srinivasa
ed. (Bombay, 1975), 102.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
lish-educated Bombay middle classes did

was being imposed, and the legitimac
Newspapers soon joined the swelling c
as not only cumbersome but also "art
time, the same that we have been fami
the new 'standard' which the ingenuity
servatory) has devised," the newspaper
herself must be in rebellion against thi
to replace a time "which Nature has giv
followed these eight thousand years at l
later.44 Pointing to the dishonest and d
way to accusations of interfering with
Parsis alike, all of whom relied on solar
religious duties.45 And yet, contrary to
no "absolute" time that would continue
new standard or summer time (hence
dians who preferred nature's sun tim
sophical reasons had no problem imagin
rather than entwined.
Fueled by such criticism, factory workers and cotton mill hands began to unleash
protests against working hours under standard time. In January 1906 roughly five
thousand mill hands gathered in front of the city's cotton mills and factories, ad
amantly refusing to return to their looms under the new time regime.46 They as
sociated standard time with another innovation that had recently been introduced
to the workplace. When electric lighting was installed in the factories, working hours,
which had previously lasted from dawn to dusk, were suddenly increased to up to
fifteen hours, independent of the seasons. In a number of strikes in 1905 and 1908,
workers therefore adopted the slogan "We want no electric light."47 Standard time
was seen as yet another measure that would extend the working day and, most im
portantly, shorten the period between sunrise and the beginning of work; hence it
would interfere with morning breakfast routines and deprive workers of daylight
time outside of working hours. Only when factory owners promised a return to Bom
bay time did workers agree to resume their work.48 Later, a demonstration against
Indian Standard Time in Bombay drew some three thousand participants. Several
43 APAC, IOR, L/R/5/160, Report on Native Papers Published in the Bombay Presidency, 1905,
Kaiser-i-Hind, June 11, 1905.
44 Ibid., Rejection of Standard Time for Calcutta by Bengal Chamber of Commerce, August 13,1905.
45 APAC, IOR, P/7073, GOI, Proceedings of the Department of Revenue and Agriculture, 1905,
Secretary to the Government of Bombay to Secretary to the Government of India, Bombay Castle, Oct.
17, 1905. See also ibid., Lukhamsee Nappoo, Chairman of the Grain Merchants' Association, to Chief
Secretary of the Government of Bombay, October 13, 1905.
46 "Bombay 'Slaves' and Standard Time," Bombay Gazette, January 15, 1906, 7.
47 Quoted from Morris David Morris, The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study
of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947 (Berkeley, Calif., 1965), 101; see also Vasant Gupta, The Labor
Movement in Bombay: Origin and Growth up to Independence (Bombay, 1981), 30; and V. B. Karnik,
Strikes in India (Bombay, 1967), 32.
Jám-e-Jamshed, January 5 and 6, 1905. See also "Standard Time: Dissatisfaction among Bombay Mill
Hands; A Strike Averted," Bombay Gazette, January 6, 1906, 3.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1388 Vanessa Ogle
petitions circulated, on some of which a

collected.49
In 1905-1906, criticism of time standardization grew more openly political than
it had been in 1881-1883, when it was focused primarily on inconveniences and the
Madras origin of the new time. Roughly twenty years later, the flourishing local press
became the stage for the public and political contestation of time. Now, the fact that
Bombay was a city within a colony determined how this renewed round of time con
testation played out. Once British commercial circles had been identified as the main
beneficiaries of the new time, it was but a small step to ask how "representative"
these circles were of Bombay and India, and thus how much weight their opinions
ought to carry. The anonymous Bombay journalist who objected to the introduction
of standard time was among those who wrote in this vein. When the Bombay Cham
ber of Commerce endorsed Indian Standard Time, Kaiser-i-Hind wrote about its
members, "surely, they are not permanent residents of Bombay. They are aliens and
foreigners . . . They are only birds of passage—a microscopic minority."50 As the
same newspaper succinctly put it, those benefiting from the reforms constituted but
"a few hundred globe-trotters and exalted officials."51 Above all, it was the British
viceroy in India, Lord Nathaniel Curzon, who served as a lightning rod for public
anger. In July 1905, the same month in which standard time was announced, the
much-despised Curzon carried out what would come to be known as the first par
tition of Bengal, far away from Bombay across the subcontinent in the eastern part
of British India.52 But opponents of standard time in Bombay now linked their dis
satisfaction with government impositions in their own city to the plight of Bengalees
and the entire imagined community of the Indian "nation." Curzon's partition mea
sure prompted the so-called Swadeshi movement, one of the first India-wide protests
that boycotted British goods for several years and instead promoted the consumption
of local products.53 In this atmosphere, opposition to Indian Standard Time in Bom
bay took on anti-British tones. Curzon's decision to introduce the new time was now
seen as "adding fuel to the flame of intense dissatisfaction prevailing in the coun
try."54 Applying Indian Standard Time to Bombay on the western coast and parti
tioning Bengal in the east were viewed as expressions of a certain style of leadership:
after "having performed his Herculean miracles in matters administrative and ex
ecutive, ... His Lordship . . . seems to be engaged in the task of over-riding Nature
herself"Kaiser-i-Hind scoffed, calling Curzon an "imperial Caesar."55 Standard time
was condemned as one of the "despotic measures thrust upon the Government of
Oriental Review, February 21, 1906, and Kaiser-i-Hind, February 25, 1906; and "Madhav Baug: Protest
against Standard Time," Bombay Gazette, February 22,1906, 4. See also Jeejeebhoy, Some Unpublished
& Later Speeches & Writings of the Hon. Sir Pherozeshah Mehta, 174.
Kaiser-i-Hind, September 3, 1905.
51 Ibid., Kaiser-i-Hind, August 13, 1905.
52 The partition of Bengal meant that the eastern parts of the previously largest administrative unit
in British India would be united with Assam, the west with Bihar and Orissa.
53 See Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903-1908 (New Delhi, 1973).
Kaiser-i-Hind, December 24, 1905.
55 Ibid., Kaiser-i-Hind, June 11, 1905.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
Bombay by the late Viceroy of India."

alization of communication and transp
Muslims to reconceptualize Islamic histo
The same could be said for standard t
munication, and the ways in which it le
as the historical time of British rule in
it was possible to frame Indian history a
In light of such criticism and the incr
gitimacy in India, authorities eventual
forcing compliance with the new time i
In Bombay, half a year after the new ti
was reported that "only a very small po
the Government Resolution." The Bom
some sense of Schadenfreude, that th
households in the "native town," and
Bombay time that remained on display.5
partial application of standard time to
number of renewed but futile attempts t
before the Municipal Council were ma
time stayed in use until 1950.61
As a consequence, even after the int
plication remained uneven for several
bureaus had switched to the new time
(along with the time ball, a common t
accordingly as well and was now fired ni
clocks continued to indicate local Calcutt
after urban dissent, refrained from int
as the mid-1920s. In 1919, a newspaper c
would merely add another layer of time
"Calcutta is already possessed of more tim
the decision to adopt standard time even
56 Ibid., 1906, Oriental Review, January 10, 19

57 Nile Green, "Spacetime and the Muslim Jour
of the 'Muslim World,' " American Historical R
58 The interplay between notions of uniform
beyond the scope of this essay but can be glean
chaps. 5 and 6. On early nationalists' datings o
Nation," in Sujata Patel, Jasodhara Bagchi, and K
in Honour of Alice Thorner (New Delhi, 2002),
59 "Standard Time," Bombay Gazette, January
60 See Masselos, "Bombay Time," 179.
61 The protests against introducing Indian Stan
end of this protracted story of local disobedience
in 1906 and 1908, and the question of introduci
the Municipal Corporation several times in 1921
1942, Bombay seems to have introduced Standar
Time," Times of India, September 1, 1942, 5. S
Time: 44-Year Old Battle of Clocks Ends," ibid
62 "Standard Time in India," Bengalee, July 4,
63 "The Time in Calcutta," Times of India, Jul

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1390 Vanessa Ogle
ronment of urban times in cities such as

institutions followed the new time while
The protesters who clung to local Bo
forces of urban identity against British
to disapprove and voice criticism of imp
litical, social, and economic order of t
tities that had become more pointedly
evance. It was here that Bombay and
compared to Beirut's position as a provi
Euro-American presence. The protrac
therefore showcases a broader trend in
when nationalism defined parameters of
universal concepts such as uniform tim
was no exception to this rule. In France
had prevented the introduction of "Br
late as 1911 under the official title of "P
seconds."64 When Germany formally ab
mean times in lieu of a new nationwid
mitteleuropaische Zeit, a term insuffi
in English, as its German original con
racial notions tied to ideas about where
extend eastward. Japan's comparative
time occurred against the backdrop of a
of the Meiji Restoration, a set of mea
pelling the country into a future where
many other instances of adopting uni
ously and without a national rebrand
theless speak to the pliability and adap
to the importance of national frames
terized by increasingly transnational cr
consisted of interactions between the g
bring national differences to the fore.
It is at such junctures that the differe
globalization emerge most visibly. React
with the global order of timekeeping em
took on national flavors. In this regar
resembled the reorganization of time
occupation with time was a very differ
Christian and Muslim intellectuals in

galvanized by time. By the turn of the
64 See G. Bigourdan, Le jour et ses divisions: L

de l'heure de 1912 et 1913 (Paris, 1923), 67.
65 See Nakamura Naofumi, "Railway System
bunken Japan Review 14 (2002): 13-38.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
had grown from little more than a fishing hamlet

chants, missionaries, consuls, and an incipient m
tegration into the world economy made it increasi
powers that were vying for formal and informal
same time, under mounting pressure from the Gr
had embarked on the so-called Tanzimat, a progr
primarily after European ideas about education,
rule of law.67 On the peripheries of the empire
provinces to the level of modernity now claimed b
of the twofold European and Ottoman challenge w
public moralists began to feel politically, economic
in turn devised ways and means for "Easterners" t
They ushered in what came to be known as th
"awakening"), a program consisting of educatio
litically and culturally educate the Arab subjects o
themselves.69 In Beirut, the Nahda brought with i
local press, initially edited primarily by Christian
by their Muslim contemporaries. Men such as B
Qabbani, Khalil Sarkis, and Ya'qub Sarruf were
bers of an incipient middle class to write and c
porary affairs.70 In their editorials, these intellec
66 On the rise and transformation of Beirut, see Fawaz, Mer

tury Beirut ; on the history of the city in this period more gen
The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford, 2003
67 For a recent introduction to the Tanzimat and the late
foremost historians of the late Ottoman Empire, see M. §ü
Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J., 2008). Selim Deringil, The
Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909 (
tional contestations between the Ottoman imperial center and
and Ottoman legitimacy to carry it out in the provinces.
68 On the persona of the public moralist, here in Victorian
Public Moralists: Political Thought and Intellectual Life in B
69 See Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean an
1914 (Berkeley, Calif., 2010), 40-41.
70 In addition to print culture, new educational institutio
individuals as well as reform societies aimed at promoting kno
element of the broader reform movement; see Hanssen, Fin d
of such institutions, while at the same time it was at the cent
al-Bustani, a Maronite who converted to Protestantism, found
Ya'qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr established one of the most infl
in 1876. In 1885, the journal moved to Cairo over struggles w
helped create a network of intellectual exchange and reader
In Beirut, other important publications included Lisan al-H
Thamarat al-Funun, founded and edited by Abd al-Qadir al
Nashabi, "Shaykh 'Abd al-Qadir al-Qabbani and Thamarat
tellectual Life in the Arab East, 1890-1939 (Beirut, 1981), 84
Offentlichkeit: Aufklarung, Rasonnement und Meinungsstreit
munikation, vol. 1: Analyse medialer und sozialer Strukturen
neh, "The Christians between Ottomanism and Syrian Na
International Journal of Middle East Studies 11, no. 3 (1980)
Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharqfi al-Qarn al-Tasi'a 'Ashar, 2 vols
see Philippe de Tarrazi, Tarikh al-Sahafa al-'Arabiyya (Beiru
initially at the forefront of the new publishing industry, b
Thamarat al-Funun, were similarly interested in "time" and

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1392 Vanessa Ogle
to embark on a project of self-invigor

modernity, to learn about the scientif
Europe, and to adopt the most promis
In Beirut, in contrast to Bombay, A
sparked by the introduction of GMT
troduced to to the city in 1917 with th
was another matter.72 Until the late 1
tained a detailed explanation of "inter
of zone times), as well as a list of well-k
respective zone times. The fact that it w
zones in such a way and to infer Beirut's
to indicate that these times were not
readers of the several Levantine almana
ened local sensitivities to questions of t
of times that coexisted in the city.
Beirut's temporal landscape was uniq
time differently, calling it either "Fran
Islamic day began at sundown, the E
lation, the day was structured by the f
the muezzin. As in many other cities
in 1897, added a public dimension of t
toman time" was also competing w
churches.74 Home to Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christians as well as
(mainly Sunni) Muslims and a smaller population of Druze, and centered around
Wadi Abu Jamil, an even smaller Jewish community, Beirut was, moreover, a city
of different calendar times—the Gregorian calendar, the "unreformed" old Julian
calendar, the Islamic lunar calendar, and the Jewish calendar.75
to reporting on clocks and watches just as their Christian counterparts did. On the press generally, see
Ayalon, The Press in the Arab Middle East, 37.
71 The classic reference for Nahda authors and the topics they embraced is still Albert Hourani,
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939 (Cambridge, 1978), here 101, 115.
72 Nikula Shahin, an astronomer at the American University of Beirut's Lee Observatory in the
1950s, mentioned in a radio-broadcasted lecture that GMT was introduced to Beirut in 1917. See AUB
Jafet Archives and Special Collections, Nikula Jurjus Shahin Collection: AUB Faculty 1918-1966, box
1, file 5: Hiwar 'ilmi li-l-'idha'a.
73 For one such almanac, see Taqwim al-Bashir 1928 (Beirut, 1927), 96.
74 On clock towers in Anatolia, see Mehmet Bengü Uluengin, "Secularizing Anatolia Tick by Tick:
Clock Towers in the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic," International Journal of Middle East
Studies 42 (2010): 17-36. See also Klaus Kreiser, "Ottoman Clock Towers: A Preliminary Survey and
Some General Remarks on Construction Dates, Sponsors, Locations and Functions," in Mustafa Kaçar
and Zeynep Durukal, comps., Essays in Honour of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, vol. 1: Societies, Cultures,
Sciences: A Collection of Articles (Istanbul, 2006), 543-547. On the symbolic and often very practical
conflicts over church bells in France, see Alain Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nine
teenth-Century French Countryside (New York, 1998). On the role of church bells in conflicts fought by
the Bolsheviks over collectivization in internar Russia, see Richard L. Hernandez, "Sacred Sound and
Sacred Substance: Church Bells and the Auditory Culture of Russian Villages during the Bolshevik
Velikii Perelom," American Historical Review 109, no. 5 (December 2004): 1475-1504.
75 Another calendar frequently used especially for official government purposes was the Ottoman
financial year and calendar, Maliye, beginning on March 1 and combining Hijrï months with the Gre
gorian solar year. It had been introduced in 1789 mainly because Ottoman tax collection, in its relation
to agriculture and the seasons, occurred on a Gregorian schedule, but salaries were paid following the

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
In this environment, local elites re

ropean time prevailed in missionary sc
new Syrian Protestant College, an Am
about the absence of a properly workin
America because, in his words, time
work. Through foreign publications,
time, wrote about its adoption, or com
time were another favorite topic. Descr
are among the most frequently recur
Newspapers also provided readers with
times, steamboat schedules, court hour
instances, local newspapers such as Lisa
about sunrise and sundown times or th
contested by readers who wrote letters
paper had indicated a different time
racies. In one instance, the leading n
Funun, got into an exchange over sever
the Jesuits, over whose stated sunrise t
accurate.76 Hence, while local writers w
ish administration introducing GMT, t
bated questions of time.77 Moreover, t
dustrial communications" led contempo
history to reframe both the religious a
to position their own societies within a
backwardness (ta'akhkhur).78
Among all these topics, one stood ou
nessmen, and better-off citizens who w
older idea that time should be saved an
turned homogenous time into a curre
moralizing exhortations went hand in h
and watches throughout the region, as
officially used Islamic lunar calendar. On the

toman Fiscal Calendar," Middle East Studies A
Newspapers regularly indicated at least two dif
çois Georgeon has charted some aspects of thi
the Young Turk period: Georgeon, "Temps de
et du calendrier à la fin de l'Empire Ottoman
Ottomans et le temps (Leiden, 2012), 241-279.
76 See "Shuruq al-Shams," Thamarat al-Funun
77 On Barak has analyzed primarily newspap
tramways, and telegraphs in the context of Egyp
in Modern Egypt (Berkeley, Calif., 2013). For t
Time in Mount Lebanon, 1860-1914," Chronos:
131-155.
78 The term "industrial communications" is Nile Green's. On writing history and conceptualizations
of historical time that occurred concurrently with the encounters of industrial time, see Green, "Space
time and the Muslim Journey West"; Yoav Di-Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History
Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt (Berkeley, Calif., 2009); and Elliott Colla, Conflicted Antiquities: Egyp
tology, Egyptomania, Egyptian Modernity (Durham, N.C., 2007).

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1394 Vanessa Ogle
of the day in fin-de-siècle Beirut.79 Wat

in newspapers and other widely circulat
as the representative for Swiss Longines
from "the biggest factories in Europe
spent five years in Australia working as
from London as well as Waltham wat
returning to his Levantine homeland, h
used in this industry."81 A contempora
region of "Greater Syria" even deemed
sheep that had recently infiltrated th
training, unjustifiably claiming the t
watches become.82
In the writings of local journalists, technological devices such as watches were
easily tied to more abstract and conceptual musings about time. One important
source of Levantine contemplations on time, then, was the industrial time of watches
and other time technologies rather than European social and political standards
alone.83 One especially talented inventor of watches, Elias Ajiya al-Sa'ati, was even
awarded a prize for a particularly sophisticated piece he had crafted. In a laudatory
ceremony led by the head of the Lee Observatory (part of the Syrian Protestant
College, founded by American missionaries, today's American University of Beirut),
Ajiya was described as having made an invaluable contribution to the trades so des
perately needed in the region. His diploma, reprinted in a newspaper, stated: "he
was among those who spent their time ... on useful inventions for the nation."84
Not by coincidence did the trope of spending time working for the greater good
of the nation find its way into Ajiya's diploma. The exhortation to heed the call, pull
oneself up by the bootstraps, make good use of one's valuable time, and through such
self-improvement contribute to the health of the body politic overall was a leitmotif
of the Nahda's plea for the self-induced invigoration of Easterners.85 In a largely
79 See Earnest Weakley, Report upon the Conditions and Prospects of British Trade in Syria (London,
1911), 163.
80 See L'indicateur Libano-Syrien, 1922, 92.
81 See Lisan al-Hal, December 31, 1897, 1.
82 See Khalil al-Azm, Muhammad Sa'id al-Qasimi, and Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, Qamus al-Sina'at
al-Shamiyya, 2 vols. (Paris, 1960), 1: 174.
83 In a similar vein, see Green, "Spacetime and the Muslim Journey West," 415.
84 See "Shahhada fi Thurayya Falakiyya Tushakhkhis Nizam Dawrat al-'Ard, Ikhtara'aha al-Khawaja
Ilyas Ajiya," Thamarat al-Funun, February 8, 1881, 3. Elias Ajiya (meaning "Flagia") was a member of an
Aleppine Syriac-Catholic family and specialized in different sorts of artisanal inventions. Later, Ajiya even
traveled to Paris, where he presented his piece in front of the Société de Géographie at a meeting on June
6, 1883. See "Mutafarriqat: 'Ard al-Sa'a al-Falakiyya," Al-Tahib 1 (June 15, 1884): 137-139.
85 In this regard, I contribute to recent attempts to contextualize the Nahda and lay open its several,
often variegated, often heterogeneous strings of thought. Instead of viewing the Nahda as merely a
precursor to Arab nationalism, such attempts highlight the several different elements of Nahda thought,
which come into profile only once the movement is placed in a broader context. For a recent work
situating the Nahda within frameworks of global discourses of radicalism and socialism, see Khuri
Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism. Other important networks of
intellectual exchange were those sustained by Muslim reformers who began to advocate for a more
modernist version of Islam and religious renewal. Egypt became a harbor for some of these more rad
ically reformist Muslim thinkers as well, among them most prominently Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (tem
porarily), Muhammad Abduh, and Rashid Rida. For more on these reformers, see the respective chap
ters in Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
-<C
•<£' "P"
J-''^ 'p~
Í1
jkn j
A&Jryd\
JUU.0 ••I"
%j *Jv
Figure 1: Watchmaker Fadlallah Asmar advertises the products and services offered in
Souk al-Tawila in the newspaper Lisan al-Hal, January 24, 1905, 4.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1396 Vanessa Ogle
overlooked instance of translation and

oiNahda ideas about self-improvement
pion of all self-made men, Samuel Sm
seller titled Self-Help.86 Under headin
age," "knowledge as a means of rising
Levantine readers a tableau of advice on
worthy, the section on "Men of Busines
ness are accustomed to quote the maxi
the proper improvement of it is self-cu
acter. An hour wasted daily on trifle
improvement, make an ignorant man w
conduct allowed individuals "to get thro
of being driven by it." And remorse fo
held, as "lost wealth may be replaced by
by temperance or medicine, but lost tim
Self-Help—the book that would estab
sketches of successful self-made men
vidual of modest means could make
Smiles's bible of Victorian values. The
Sarruf requested permission from Smil
late Self-Help as early as 1874, and the
circulated widely in Beirut and Cairo.
Arabic was not the only language into
to Smiles's son, in 1912, translations
86 Samuel Smiles, Self-Help: With Illustrations

see Adrian Jarvis, Samuel Smiles and the Const
1997); Tim Travers, Samuel Smiles and the Vict
87 Smiles, Self-Help, 199-200. Jurji Zaydan, ano
later founded the journal al-Hilal in Cairo, wrot
an example of the kind of self-made man Smil
from a modest background with illiterate parent
to end up as a student who excelled in his stud
discussing his interest in acquiring knowledge i
'The Secret of Success' which Dr. Sarruf had tr
I read, as I said, some of it but was unable to fi
had upon me to read about the lives of men wh
and efforts and selfreliance [sic]. Amongst them
who rose through their eagerness and viligance
I would be so agitated that I could not sleep any
would overcome me and I would get depressed.
finished reading it." Zaydan, Mudhakkirat J
Philipp's from The Autobiography of Jurji Zaid
1990), 44. Zaydan's Tarajim Mashahir al-Sharq
graphical portraits of successful historical and c
tory and intellectual life, some of which could
often tell the same "rags to riches" story that
Zaidan: His Life and Thought (Beirut, 1979), 6
88 Smiles's publisher, John Murray, "gave lea
use of the people of Mount Lebanon!" Samuel Sm
Mackay (London, 1905), 230. Levantine Christian
The Egyptian Khedive had excerpts from Self-
walls of his palace. Egypt also had a Self-Help S
Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Cambridge, 1988),

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
atian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French,

nese, Marathi, Norwegian, Pali, Polis
Siamese, Spanish (one from Buenos
Swedish, Tamil, Ottoman Turkish, an
even more successful in British India
Smiles received a letter from a "Madra
passages-from his works; and by 1877,
one language of the subcontinent. L
manding permission for reprints are
dence in Smiles's and Murray's pape
prompted the publishing house Murray
Indian market, produced with slightly
received several letters expressing grati
on helping Indians seize the opportunit
global phenomenon beginning in the se
offered leading heads across the globe
ernization from within.91
Clearly inspired by Smiles, Arab authors of the period often expressed the per
ception of time as a transient good by transforming it into a currency that could be
spent, gained, and lost. The phrase "killing time" (qatl al-waqt) frequently appeared
in texts of the period, often bemoaning the tendency of Easterners to waste time
idling in cafes, oblivious of its value ("because time is money").92 In an exceptionally
long and intense article, Thamarat al-Funun emphatically declared the need to rad
ically change people's moral economy of time. For this purpose, it printed in full a
speech given by a sheikh named Muhammad Salih al-Bahrayni at a reformist school
in Mecca. The lecture covered the topic of "man's time, from the benefit of saving
it and taking interest in it, from the vice of wasting and losing it." It went on to state,
"Time, or a man's life" allows man to be "creatively industrious and produce good
results, sow and you will harvest, work and you will do well, reflect and you will reach
a judgment, contemplate and you will know with certainty, and your happiness lies
89 National Library of Scotland, John Murray Archives [hereafter NLS, John Murray], Accl2927/
285/H8, Samuel Smiles, General File, Samuel Smiles (the son) to John Murray, February 29,1912. Some
translations were made slightly later, in the 1920s and, in the exceptional case of the Persian version,
1933, but most seem to have been completed in the second half of the nineteenth century.
90 NLS, John Murray, MS 41099, fol. 173, letter Samuel Smiles to John Murray, March 8,1869; see
also MS 42203, letter Smiles to Murray, May 11, 1877.
91 Smiles and his publisher frequently complained about the several unlicensed translations that
circulated in an era of virtually absent copyright enforcement. The global success of Self-Help is not well
studied. Only historians of Japan have explored the circulation of Smiles's works and ideas in this coun
try. For an attempt to contextualize Smiles's attraction to his Arab translators within the context of
emerging ideas about free entrepreneurship among Levantine Christians, see Donald M. Reid, "Syrian
Christians, the Rags-to-Riches Story, and Free Enterprise," International Journal of Middle East Studies
1, no. 4 (1970): 358-367, especially 362. On the notion of the self-made man in Japan, see Earl H.
Kinmonth, The Self-Made Man in Meiji Japanese Thought: From Samurai to Salary Man (Berkeley, Calif.,
1981); see also Kinmonth, "Nakamura Keiu and Samuel Smiles: A Victorian Confucian and a Confucian
Victorian," American Historical Review 85, no. 3 (June 1980): 535-556. Most recently, Sheldon Garon
has compared the spread of notions and practices of thrift as a transnational history between Britain,
Japan, and the United States: Garon, Beyond Our Means: Why America Spends While the World Saves
(Princeton, N.J., 2012). See also Nishimoto Ikuko, "The 'Civilization' of Time: Japan and the Adoption
of the Western Time System," Time and Society 6, no. 2-3 (1997): 237-259.
92 See, for example, 'Abd al-Qadir al-Mu'ayyad, "Al-Waqt Dhahab," al-Jinan 1 (1870): 277-278.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1398 Vanessa Ogle
in saving your time." The speech con

(/hayatak) if you wasted your lifetime Ç
the present circumstances lead you to ca
you look at yourself and find yourself to
in your time (zamanak), which you lost."
on "beneficial sciences and useful knowle
state."93 The interpretation of time as a
of such exhortations to conceive of time
that no longer depended on the movem
Another author combined the aforemen
question of work and working hours. "If
sible for him to limit his thoughts to ea
and dividing up time, and to studying w
is apprehensive of these features and dev
in front of his fate with a sturdy soul, n
were all the more important because "th
the well-being of the nation's individual
dering of a passage from Smiles's Self-
For the nation is only an aggregate of indiv

question of the personal improvement of th
composed. National progress is the sum of in
national decay is of individual idleness, selfi
In some instances, European secrets o

ulated. When Arab writers alerted reade
troduced a new term to the debate that
of philosophical and religious inquiry.
gressive clock time with the idea of a
(Arabic for "time," used in connection
dahr.96 This term denotes time in the se
93 "Qimat al-Waqt," Thamarat al-Funun, Ma
latiya, was well-known in the Sunni Arab world,
the brainchild and lifelong project of Sheikh Ra
had fought on the side of the "djihadists" durin
subcontinent rather helter-skelter in its wake
around the mid-nineteenth century, where he beg
the only teaching available in Mecca happened at
woman and funded in part by Indian Princely State
offering both a religious and a worldly curricul
Muslim reformers in Istanbul, Mecca, and the s
Outlawed Fanatics': Indian Muslims in Nineteent
Asian Studies 45, no. 6 (November 2011): 1337-
94 Salim Diyab, "Mulaqat al-Zaman," al-Jinan
95 Smiles, Self-Help, 1-2. At the top of the pag
for this quote, John Stuart Mill, who wrote, "the
individuals."
96 On the concept of dahr, see Dalya Cohen-Mor, A Matter of Fate: The Concept of Fate in the Arab
World as Reflected in Modern Arabic Literature (Oxford, 2001 ). On "time" in mostly ancient and medieval
European and Arabic religious and philosophical writings, as well as linguistic differences between words
used to denote time (e.g,,zaman, mudda, waqt, dahr), see Hussam &\-' Musi, Al-Zaman fi al-Fikr al-Dini
wa-l-Falsafi al-Qadim (Beirut, 1980).

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
span, lifetime) and is found in many

to fit into the Islamic tradition, whe
command.97 Such unrestricted sovereig
tain protagonists of the Nahda, inclu
Abduh, who taught that Islam meant a
for shaping their fate as much as the w
by the Qur'anic verse "God changes not
is in themselves" (13:11).98 In many
ment, waqt and dahr occur alongside
terspersed with the language of dahr,
be understood as reprimands not to wa
a vehicle for translocating what Leva
with time into an Eastern context, wh
philosophical tradition of thought.99
As part of the history of flows and co
concepts frequently generated nuanced
uniform time—when European ideas
riphery, or when ideas originated at th
meanings, functions, and contents, t
sible to conceive of. Public intellectua
of the first Arabic-language newspap
among Europeans that found non-We
derstanding of time and to display casu
translated and adopted into their ow
ever, was an exaggerated and essenti
absent among Europeans themselves
Notions of time thrift are famously
of modern capitalism. Samuel Smiles
be a celebration of free individual en
laissez-faire economics. But to frame
success stories simply in economic term
be to misconstrue their understandin
for the self-strengthening of an entir
ficient time management would add
viduals, a nation that would be able t
Arab encounters with time, as in Briti
civilizational idiom and endowed wit
97 See Cohen-Mor, A Matter of Fate, 47.

98 This verse is reminiscent of the saying "H
which has been attributed to various sources,
is used in Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard'
Smiles's Self-Help opens with the phrase " 'H
maxim" (1).
99 See "Qimat al-Waqt" as such an example, as well as Diyab, "Mulaqat al-Zaman."
i°° The notion of "timeless" societies of course was a trope in countless travelogues and later de
scriptions of colonial conquests and encounters. See Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How An
thropology Makes Its Object (New York, 1983); and more generally Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing
Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton, N.J., 2000).

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1400 Vanessa Ogle
Ideas about national time management b

a desire to do away with Beirut's plet
creating a more uniform landscape of t
good time management. Beirut citizens
tiple times. In the 1930s, the mufti of
ceived from the American University
prayer times. And individuals lost am
revert to one of the several almanacs pu
for all major denominations, formula
Christian Era, Islamic prayer times, and
the emergence of a notion of time m
another concept of time to Beirut's mult
and other clock times and calendars at
the present day.
The lively debates on civilizationally
efficient time management, and on the
where elites saw a creeping but ultim
Europeanization looming large. It was th
Levantine engagements with time. In co
was not yet a reality in Beirut. In the v
was the illegitimate time of the colonize
represented the Indian "nation." Beirut
weapon in efficient time managemen
could be turned against the threat of
time, they therefore encouraged fello
tures. These different political outloo
where a full-fledged British occupation
habits and technologies was occasional
wrench strategic assets back from for
thor, Ibrahim Ramzi, published Asrar a
title echoed that of Smiles's Self-Help
(The Secret of Success). Ramzi's book
("al-waqt thamln"), as well as advice o
dustry, and trade. Ramzi frequently
mentary on what had enabled the "fo
sectors, and what was required of Egypt
position.102
What emerges in light of the above is the image of a highly interconnected and
globalized world characterized by greater heterogeneity rather than homogeneity.
101 The most well-known caricature and criticism of a Westernizing Arab is probably that by the
Egyptian political activist and journalist Abdallah al-Nadim: '"Arabi Tafarnaj," Al-Tankit wa al-Tabkit,
June 6,1881, 7-8. See Samah Selim, The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985 (New York,
2004), 50.
102 See Ibrahim Ramzi, Kitab Asrar al-Najah (Cairo, 1911), e.g., 32, 35, 63-84, and especially the
sections on trade.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
This persisting, even increasing, heterog

in which the citizens of colonies such as
on the global flows of concepts and pr
capital within another empire such as th
than time, Lauren Benton has shown h
ritorial sovereignty remained at least t
book ends.103 Besides time and space, we
global condition from the 1870s to the
of hybrid norms and orders. The mult
other, in the non-Western world could be
and interactions between universal featu
came to form a protracted stage of trans
not even always the default solution to c
the non-colonial future as internationalis
legal orders and the move to gradually
ditions with European-style civil codes. W
ment to spread uniformity, the second h
liferation of legal pluralism in the co
extorted capitulations and concessions or
the Ottoman Empire, and Egypt, for ins
rogated in the post-World War I peace tr
World War II and in 1949, respectively
points to the role that the eclipse of sove
have eventually played in ironing out the
alike. For many parts of the world, th
nization.107
Viewed through the lens of time refo

priately, modern globality since the 18
ment, rationalization, and secularization
temporal orders were rapidly crumbling,
duced a pluralization of already variegate
two accounts from Bombay and Beirut.10
during the second half of the nineteenth
between different times (or legal norms)
important reason why it took so long fo
103 See Lauren Benton, A Search For Sovereign

1900 (Cambridge, 2010), xii. My thanks to David A
of time unification as "lumpiness" in Benton's se
104 On the interactions between earlier forms
world, see C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern
(Maiden, Mass., 2004), chap. 6. See Manu Goswa
isms," American Historical Review 117, no. 5 (D
105 See Pâr Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgm
teenth-Century China and Japan (New York, 201
106 Ibid., 13.
107 On the rise and fall of territoriality, see Mai
108 Not that the concept of modernity would req
the AHR Roundtable "Historians and the Questio
no. 3 (June 2011): 631-751.

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00
1402 Vanessa Ogle
switching between different times and

well until surprisingly late, in the West
in such diverse cities as Beirut and Bo
them, the plurality of socially and relig
urally, and they occasionally appeared
their European contemporaries.
This is not to say that Indians commen
and failed to remove themselves from t
Europeans remained mired. They did
peatedly. It is remarkable that Jubran M
both consciously treated time as a social
put on and stripped off again like Eu
historical constellation of British colo
nineteenth century. They clearly saw "u
and firmly rooted in historical time an
in different times, and under the global
to see the different times in play as
certainly Germans soon stopped adjustin
same point in sun time, the time th
reaucrats would have to actually conti
time. The result, after all, was an uncoo
sun-time-adjusted but working hours h
leaving workers stranded on the platfor
them to work at the required hour. B
the same imaginary flexibility of abstra
those at the core of modern globality
Vanessa Ogle received a Ph.D. in Internat

vard University in 2011 and has since bee
Modern European History at the Universi
argument about globalization, capitalism
form from international conferences to Fr
man colonies in Africa and the British Em
scholars in the Eastern Mediterranean, a
projects are an economic history of terri
of who has the right to own and access
is a member at the Institute for Advanc
Princeton and a Kluge Fellow at the Libr

93.44.200.226 on Sun, 15 Oct 2023 11:16:20 +00:00

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Whose Time Is It?

The Pluralization of Time and the Global Condition, 1870s—1940s

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Bombay (and to a lesser degree Calcu

3 "Local time" (meaning sun time) is not sc

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connections and flows, moreover, s

5 For such a perspective, see my forthcomin

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It has become a commonplace to a

Kocka, eds., Geschichte und Vergleich: Ansatz

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In the second half of the nineteenth ce

13 For an account of early modern global and

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ization of a growing body of recogniz

15 On the laws of war and especially Russ

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out as an effort to convince the no

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inary difficulty among European legis

While Germans adjusted train sched

22 In 1942, the British Dominion Office com

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siastic followers of the principle of self

25 The study of Hindu reform movements lie

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ambivalence.30 Two years later, in 18

30 "Bombay vs. Madras," Bombay Gazette, Dec

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to official purposes in their respective

36 APAC IOR, P/7073, Proceedings of the De

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lish-educated Bombay middle classes did

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petitions circulated, on some of which a

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Bombay by the late Viceroy of India."

56 Ibid., 1906, Oriental Review, January 10, 19

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ronment of urban times in cities such as

Christian and Muslim intellectuals in

64 See G. Bigourdan, Le jour et ses divisions: L

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had grown from little more than a fishing hamlet

66 On the rise and transformation of Beirut, see Fawaz, Mer

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