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The decision of Gladstone's government to invade and occupy Egypt in 1882 remains one of the most contentious in late nineteenth-century British political and imperial history. This article examines the decision-making process in June and July 1882, revisiting Robinson and Gallagher's influential study in the light of more recent historiographical research and previously unused sources. It looks at who made the critical decisions, what their preoccupations were, and how they were able to get Cabinet approval. Hartington and Northbrook were the two key figures, who co-operated to overturn Gladstone's and Granville's policy in June 1882. Yet their co-operation was momentary and they found themselves on different sides of the argument over the participation of Indian forces and international support. Although they shared a sense of Egypt's importance to British imperial security, they each had a distinctive approach, so that the decision to occupy cannot be reduced to a conflict between Whig pragmatists and Radical idealists. The article also shows how the Alexandria riot on 11 June altered the context of decision-making by shifting the mood in the parliamentary Liberal party towards intervention. Parliament, not the press, was the crucial site of 'public opinion' in the Egyptian crisis in June and July 1882. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1923 Constitution prepared the legal framework for Egypt's semi-independence from British imperial control under a newly established liberal monarchy. This Constitution carried a promise for a significant change in setting the ground for a nascent national system of mass elementary education for boys and girls that would also be free of charge and compulsory. As I discuss in this article, this vision hardly matched Egyptian socio-economic and cultural realities of the time. I explore this gap through a study of the deliberations of the Constitutional Commission that first drafted and later debated the various articles of the Constitution. I argue that the Constitutional Commission followed a consensus, in both Egypt and abroad, over the necessity of establishing a national system of mass education as a means for a broader social reform. Setting high expectations, this consensus would simultaneously enhance national education and the future setbacks that would beset its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article genealogically traces the historical development of democracy in Egypt and the military and Islamists' involvement in politics since the British occupation in Egypt in 1882, following the semi‐independence in 1922, through the 1952 revolution, and up to the revolutionary waves of the Arab Spring of January 25, 2011 and June 30, 2013. In this article, the author provides perceptual and analytical insight into the outcome of the Arab Spring of 2011 within the complicated realities of Egypt's politics during the transition to democracy, where the military and Islamists are competing to retain power in order to shape Egypt's future. The author argues that it is too early to make a judgmental argument that the transition to democracy has failed since the process of democratization is long and not linear, with periods of political trajectories while adapting in response to national, regional, and international events, dynamics, and forces. The research concludes that the coping models of democracy from outside of the Egyptian context may not work. Egypt should develop its own model of democracy based on an all stakeholders consensus accompanied by an incremental process of demilitarizing and desecuritizing the nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 1898, the Italian vice-consul in Alexandria charged a group of Italians with participating in an anarchist plot to attack German Emperor Wilhelm II during his planned tour through Egypt and Palestine. This collective arrest produced unexpected outcomes, left a trail of multi-lingual documents, and illuminated specific forms of late nineteenth-century Mediterranean migration. Anarchists were among those who frequently crossed borders and they were well aware of and connected to what was happening elsewhere: they sent letters, circulated manifestos, raised and transported money, and helped fugitive comrades. They maintained nodes of subversion and moved along circuits of solidarity. Similarly, diplomats of Europe, Cairo, Istanbul, and local consular officials operated across borders and cooperated to hunt anarchists down. By following people who were on the move on boats, in post offices, and in taverns, I make a methodological and historiographical argument. First, I examine the Mediterranean as a space of flows and show how the Maghreb/Mashreq divide in Middle Eastern history has concealed webs and connections. Because anarchists and authorities acted on multiple fronts simultaneously, so must scholarship of this part of the world take account of several histories at once. Second, I look beyond the micro-macro binary to emphasize the interconnections and mutual implications of the micro, the macro, and everything in between. I highlight competing, intersecting, and even contradictory trajectories of some of these anarchist migrants’ belonging. As the affair of the bombs unfolded, all of these contradictions and scales of analysis became visible at once. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores the conservation of antiquities in Egypt during occupation by Great Britain. The author reflects on the development of Egyptological discourse and the political aspects of archaeological excavations. Emphasis is given to topics such as conflict between the European Egyptologists and archaeologist William Matthew Flinders Petrie, the publication of the book "Methods and Aims in Archaeology," and the development of archaeological practice.

The contribution "Uncommunicative Communication: Competing Egyptian, Ottoman and British Notions of Imperial Order in 19th-century Egypt" by Maurus Reinkowski (University of Basel) sees Egypt in the late 19th and early 20th century as a particularly illustrative case of competing imperial ventures, in particular of the Egyptian, Ottoman and British states. Whereas the Egyptian imperial venture, prominent under Muhammad 'All in the 1820s and 1830s and revived under Ismā'il (r. 1863-1879) in the early 1870s, quickly degenerates into bankruptcy and finally British occupation from 1882 onwards, the Ottoman-British imperial competition continues until 1914. A particularly colorful example of how the Ottoman Empire and Great Britain - in the way of uncommunicative communication - strived to maintain respectively to enforce their notion of an appropriate imperial order is to compare of Ahmed Muhtär Pa§a and Lord Cromer. Ahmed Muhtār, a high-ranking Ottoman officer, was sent in 1885 as Extraordinary Commissioner to Cairo, where he stayed until 1908. Muhtār's semi-exile in Cairo was characterized by factual powerlessness as he was completely overshadowed by Sir Evelyn Baring, the British consul general who was the factual ruler of Egypt between 1882 and 1907. Starting from the assumption that Ahmed Muhtär's status in Egypt does not only reflect his personal isolation, but also the precarious imperial status of the Ottoman Empire, this paper examines Ahmed Muhtār's presence and politics in Cairo as a case of both personal self-reassurance and imperial self-representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sir William Willcocks (1852–1933) was a prominent British irrigation engineer who served in various British colonies. Best known as the chief designer of the Old Aswan Dam, Willcocks was born and trained in India, achieved prominence with his contribution to the development of centralized and perennial irrigation in Egypt, and was hired at the end of his career by the Ottomans to restore the ancient irrigation works of Mesopotamia (which was then on the verge of being acquired by the British). In this article, I follow Willcocks' voyages across the British Empire and show how hydraulic science moved from one colonial centre to another, and how this movement contributed to the construction and maintenance of colonialism on the ground. Often sent to newly acquired territories with ambitious projects to redesign the landscapes of property and agriculture, Willcocks and other engineers who gained their expertise in the colonies relied on lessons from their day-to-day struggle with the land and other social actors' competing agendas to develop the daily techniques that helped establish colonial rule. As the reception of Willcocks' work in London illustrates, it was in the metropole that engineers' practices were translated into a colonial symbolism that had large-scale technical systems as the right tools for the job of subordinating unruly waters and Nature writ large. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relation between Egypt's 1882 Aswan Dam and the nation's water control policy from 1882 to 1902. It is said that Egypt's irrigation policy was influenced by its British occupation government. Topics include technical reports from the dam's supervising engineers, the relationship between technology and politics, and the relation between imperialism and state control of water. The impact of the dam on Egyptian agriculture is addressed in relation to the environmental and social effects of the dam.

This article discusses the roles of Muhammad 'Abduh and Colonel Ahmad 'Urâbî in the Egyptian revolution that occurred on September 9, 1881. The author offers a comparative analysis of their political and military leadership in the revolution and considers their similarities and differences regarding the implementation of political reforms in the region. He also examines the establishment of the Egyptian constitution of 1882 following the revolution. The years immediately following the political change in Egypt are also highlighted.

Mixed courts were an internationally staffed bench that represented the diplomatic alliances between capitulary powers and the Egyptian government. Decisions delivered by these courts were based on the so-called 'mixed codes,' which provided parties to a dispute with substantial scope for legal maneuvering. On the basis of a case study concerning a mortgage on a waqf (charitable endowment), I shall explain how legal actors, in spite of the state strong presence as regulatory agent, took advantage of the loopholes in the mixed-court system. Far from being an obstacle in the quest of justice, legal vagueness became an opportunity for anyone able to expand his own legal horizons beyond the limits imposed by the colonial rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented which examines the nonwhite British colonial state in Egypt which existed from 1882 to 1922. It investigates the development of consent by colonial state without a social contract. It discusses the justification and seek of legitimacy in British Egypt. It explores the relationship of the colonial state with its colonized subjects.

Wilfrid Scawen Blunt (1840–1922) was a member of the landed aristocracy well connected with the inner circle of late Victorian high society and high politics. He is known as a poet and a translator of Arabic poetry, as well as an adventurous traveller and an ardent anti-imperialist controversialist. He rates, in fact, as something of a precursor, and a fellow traveller, of J.A. Hobson. However, in the 1870s, at the beginning of his Arabophilia, he might have easily been mistaken for an ambitious patrician bent on making the East his ‘career’ (in the line of Disraeli's Tancred) at a time when the decline of Turkish religious and political authority over Islamic lands seemed to open up exciting opportunities for nations which were not ‘afraid of growing great’, as well as for enterprising individuals. It was only in 1881–82, through his commitment to the Egyptian nationalists, that his vague political sympathies were reshaped into a coherent critical attitude towards British colonial policies. Relying on Blunt's autobiographical writings, on his poetry and on other sources (published and unpublished), and – for the overall critique of imperialism – on Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, my paper foregrounds the details of Blunt's ‘political education’, discussing his orientalist beginnings, and then his reaction to Urabi's Nationalist Movement and to Britain's involvement in its repression. What I intend to underline is how Blunt's conflicting personal allegiances sharpened his awareness of the contradictions of British ‘liberal’ foreign policy by placing him at the meeting point of multiple crucial political faultlines, at the forefront of colonial modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores two approaches to the gendered human that occupied the historical stage of colonial Egypt. The first was juridical, the second was Islamic and mystical. Elaborating on the first, 'juridical humanity', this article probes the constitutive force of modern law in cementing the human as its teleology as well as the colonial operations of this force. Fashioning itself as an answer to the question 'who is the human?', juridical humanity took on particular salience in relation to women while engendering disciplinary operations: the humanising powers of colonial law instituted a system of bondage between the law and the woman-human. The mystical articulation, on the other hand, offered a competing vision for the human, one that constituted an answer to the question 'where is the human?', thereby making impossible the unleashing of colonial humanising powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1882, the British occupied Egypt. A decade later British Egyptologists successfully spearheaded an international campaign against a scheme to dam the Nile at Aswan-a project that would result in the flooding of the Island and Temples of Philae. The article analyses the campaign to preserve Philae as it unfolded at the Foreign Office in Downing Street, in Egyptologistis circles in Britain, among British administrators in Cairo, and in public spheres in late-Victorian London. Introducing the terms muscular modernization and paternalistic preservation the article analyses the tensions that the Philae controversy revealed in British imperial ideologies in relation to questions of modernity and tradition. Drawing on a uniquely well-preserved archival record the article demonstrates how the protection of what we now call global heritage was negotiated before the birth of UNESCO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the British in Egypt during the British occupation (1882-1922) have generally focused on the lives and exploits of the upper- and middle-class Britons who served in the military or in the civil service. Drawing from private papers, census data, court archives and business records, this article describes the socio-economic space inhabited by non-official upper- and middle-class Britons as well as those from the lower middle and working classes within the hierarchical structure of Egypt's British community. It discusses the income levels of British upper-middle-class lawyers, doctors, engineers, teachers, bankers, businessmen, clergymen and missionaries; lower-class clerks, artisans and policemen; and working-class tradesmen, railway workers and domestic servants in the context of both their Egyptian and British socio-economic environment. The research also seeks to illuminate some of the hardship, inequality and snobbery that working-class Britons encountered in Egypt. Throughout the analysis, comparisons between the income levels for similar occupations of the British in Egypt and their counterparts in Britain are used to discern possible motivations for their working abroad. Since little research has been done regarding the non-elite Britons in Egypt during the occupation and particularly concerning those from the lower classes, this effort aims to be a useful contribution to knowledge of British imperial history and the colonial experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British colonialism in Egypt marked a period of a failed empire and an unfinished nation. The colonial administration and the co-opted native ruling elite attempted to unify the north with the south—the Delta with Upper Egypt—into one market, the basis for a modern state. Nevertheless, the empire's capitalism in Upper Egypt proved utterly incompetent, faced bailout crises, and generated environmental catastrophes including the cholera epidemic. Thus, the separatist south was constantly simmering with subaltern rebellion, where ruthless bandits assumed leading roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article challenges both the “gentlemanly capitalist” thesis and “official mind” interpretation of the 1882 British occupation of Egypt. The former fails to adequately consider the political character of the Anglo-French financial Control overturned by the Urabist revolt in February 1882. The latter overstates the significance of the Suez Canal as both trigger and justification for military intervention. The article argues that the primary motivation behind the Egyptian occupation was the vindication of British prestige, vis-à-vis the Continental Powers, but especially in India and in the “East” by suppressing the threat to “civilised” order posed by the Urabist revolt. The protection of the Suez Canal and British financial and trade interests were secondary and derivative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes in detail the beginning of aviation in Egypt, with special reference to the Great Week of Aviation at Heliopolis in 1910, and the effect of this new technology on Egyptians. With the exception of a few flights in North Africa made by French pilots in late 1909, it also describes the first flights in the Arab world. Based primarily on contemporary Egyptian Arabic newspapers, it recounts how a group of colonial entrepreneurs sponsored a great aviation meeting at Heliopolis in order to promote their development of the 'Oasis of Heliopolis', or 'Ayn Shams/Misr al-Jadida, as a new suburb of Cairo. The article focuses on the concept for the meeting, the first flights in Egypt before the meeting, the promotion of the meeting, and the international competitors and their performances. It then summarises the consequences of the meeting for aviation in general, aviation in Egypt - including the reaction of Egyptians to aviation - and the development of Heliopolis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to rethink “peasant consciousness” in colonial Egypt, through a study of the performance of folksongs by Upper Egyptian agricultural workers on the archaeological excavation sites of Karnak and Dendera at the turn of the twentieth century (1885-1914). Mainly based on a historical-anthropological analysis of songs collected between 1900 and 1914 by the French archaeologists Maspero and Legrain, this essay proposes a new understanding of subaltern consciousnesses as fragmented objects constructed through a dialectical relationship of power and resistance as performed by the various actors present on the scene. Drawing its inspiration from the work of contemporary ethnomusicologists (Finnegan 1977, 1992; Slyomovics 1987) and relying on the framework shaped by their use of oral-formulaic and speech-act theories, this study conceives of the performance, reception and collection of the songs as a crucial locus of encounter, interaction and negotiation between the local landless peasants employed as daily workers on the excavation sites, and the colonial administrators of the Antiquities Service during the key period of transition from corvee to contract labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Egypt's monarchical succession in the spring of 1936 has conventionally been seen as an internal Egyptian matter in which Britain, despite its continuing imperial presence in the country, played little or no role. King Fuad died, his 16-year-old son Farouk replaced him as monarch and a largely uncontested regency council was established for his ensuing 15-month minority. By first highlighting Britain's longer-standing structural imperial interests with the Mohammed Ali dynasty and then scrutinising the secret politics and diplomacy of Anglo-Egyptian relations during a crucial four-week period, this article provides a fundamental reinterpretation of what was a highly significant moment in Egypt's modern history. The upshot is a delineation of the limits of Egyptian 'independence' and a case study of the etiquette of Britain's informal imperialism in the Middle East during the second half of the 1930s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the viability of separating technology from politics by examining how the introduction of modern streets in Alexandria - newly paved with a hard and durable surface, fitted with tram-rails, lined with poles, illuminated, and built over a modern network of drainage and water supply pipes - affected the city's evolving politics and social life. This history, most literally 'from below', aims to reinstate the agency of materials and networks as a key element of the complex social evolution of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the relationship between Indian and Australasian soldiers and colonial Egyptians from 1914-19. Drawing upon memoirs, letters, and the work of Nagib Mahfuz, I argue that the First World War reaffirmed British military rule in Egypt and also posed a danger to it in the form of disorderly soldiers. Because British officials feared the unruly conduct of their troops they promoted manly ideals of self-control to facilitate their control over Egyptian society. Uncontrolled spectacles of wartime violence were therefore critical to the ways in which the British Army deployed masculine behaviour in the service of the colonial state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents literary criticism on the female character of the Arab woman, the queen of antiquity, and the living mummy in British literature during the British occupation of Egypt at the turn of the 19th century. The author suggests that the politics of the occupation are expressed in the works of authors Bram Stoker and H. Rider Haggard. Other topics include mummy fiction, Orientalist assumptions, and imperialism.

The article presents an socio-historical exploration into the rise of aviation culture in Egypt in the first half of the 20th-century. Discussion is provided outlining both the historical development of aeronautics in the nation as well as the means by which Egyptian society acculturated the technological innovation and used it as a characteristic example class conflict. The links between aeronautics and the aristocracy in Egyptian history are noted and examined. The social and philosophical aspects of human flight and its impact on its popularity and significance in Egypt is also addressed.

The US occupation of lraq and the ongoing war throw up a number of parallels with British imperial history. Outstanding in this regard is the Gladstone government's 1882 invasion of Egypt, ostensibly to oust a despotic military government. In fact, the many decades-long occupation saw the country virtually bankrupted, suppressed a modernising Islamic movement for constitutional democracy and, in the fall-out from this, fostered in the Sudan a more fundamentalist Islamic movement. The move to war was led by a charismatic politician who had, in opposition, indicted the war-mongering of the Tories but now termed himself 'a labourer in the cause of peace'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the impact of the British occupation of Egypt in the late 19th century on the Ottoman Arab province of Syria. Problems from the arrival of Egyptian refugees in Syria's coastal towns; Ottoman efforts to curb the influence of Egyptian mutiny leader Ahmed Urabi in Syria; Attitude of the Porte towards Muslim refugees and exiles; Syrians' lack of real interest in developments in Egypt.

Discusses the first British Armed Forces expedition to Egypt in 1800. Sir Ralph Abercromby as the British Commander in chief in the Mediterranean; French army occupation in Egypt; Invasions plans; Negotiations for a league of Armed Neutrality; British economic and political relationship with France and Russia.

Discusses the interest rates charged by foreign financial capital in Egypt under British occupation. Rate of decline in interest differentials during the period 1882 to 1914.

Information about several papers discussed at a workshop held June 1-2, 2012 at Zentrum Moderner Orient Berlin in Berlin, Germany, titled "Big Dams: investigating their temporal and spatial politics in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia," is presented. Topics include a comparison of dam-building throughout British Egypt, the environmental impact of dams in Thailand, and dam politics and activism in Germany.