Nurturing the Nation: The Family Politics of Modernizing, Colonizing, and Liberating Egypt, 1805-1923

Introduction

In May 1919, Egypt’s acting consul general, Sir Milne Cheetham (1869– 1938), sent an intelligence report to the Foreign OYce in an attempt to explain why Egypt had erupted in a series of violent uprisings. Having perused the Egyptian political press, Cheetham reported to British foreign secretary Lord Curzon (1859–1925) that he found the Egyptian peasants, workers, and bourgeois nationalists (the eVendiyya) to be largely uninterested in politics. The contagions of Bolshevism, Turkish nationalism , and general Egyptian unruliness—not desires for independence and self-rule—were at the heart of the uprisings.1 His comments, designed as much to explain away the causes of the 1919 Revolution as to uncover them, were meant to persuade Curzon to maintain Egypt as a British protectorate state. Cheetham wrote: More signiWcant than what appeared in the Press were often the things which were entirely ignored. There were endless general expressions of admiration for the noble hospitality of the Egyptian people, and for its wonderful success in proving its political solidarity by demonstrations, modiWed only by a repudiation on behalf of the intellectuals of any responsibility for the excesses of the mob . . . the resignation of the . . . ministry passed almost without comment, and henceforth references to Zaghloul Pasha’s delegation were comparatively few and far between. Attention was henceforth diverted mainly to such matters as the necessity of more interest on the part of Egyptians in trade, the uses of trade unionism, and the necessity of charity on the part of the rich towards the poor.2 In explaining away the revolution, the British missed a number of crucial points about Egyptian politics and the ways that they were shaped. Introduction 1 Acts such as hospitality and charity—“nurturing the nation”—were potent political symbols throughout the turbulent years of 1919–22. Caring for the nation as a family had become the sine qua non of modern Egyptian politics by 1919. A preoccupation with charity during the 1919 Revolution was symbolic of political acumen, not apathy. The iconography of the revolution suggests that regard for the nation’s children and dedication to improving domestic life connoted a real concern for the nation’s progress and welfare. It also demonstrates that such stereotypically female behavior was not reserved for women: The household and its activities, central to which was a kind of maternalism practiced by both sexes, was the arena where Egyptians created new sexual and social relationships, demonstrated political acumen, and deWned a new bourgeois culture. Indeed, during the revolution, bourgeois male nationalists exalted for themselves behavior that can readily be referred to as “maternal.”3 Great political signiWcance was attached to acts such as tending to the nation’s children, its poor, sick, and homeless. Men’s marital behavior and domestic habits appeared central to demonstrating Egypt’s readiness for selfrule . That the British missed this dimension of Egyptian nationalism in their analysis of Egyptian revolutionary activities represents a potent historical irony. Indeed, conXating charity and domesticity with politics was an Egyptian response to the politics of the British protectorate state in their country. In 1919, as in the decades leading up to it, Egyptian nationalists responded to a basic premise of British colonial policy in Egypt: The inability of the Egyptian nation to govern itself stemmed from the domestic and marital habits of the Egyptian governing elite. Upon the British invasion and subsequent occupation of Egypt in 1882, British oYcials had to legitimize an expensive and seemingly unwanted extension of their overseas rule. They faced the task of shaping policies to rule Egypt without making it an outright colony. By claiming that Egyptians had to be reformed before they could take charge of their own government, the British could both justify and aVord an open-ended stay in Egypt. Under British supervision, the Egyptian ruling elite would be allowed to work within their own political institutions until they could prove to their overseers that they had been transformed into modern, competent rulers.4 Sir Evelyn Baring (r. 1883–1907; Lord Cromer after 1892), Egypt’s consul general and architect of the protectorate, claimed that such reform had to start with the transformation of Egyptians’ domestic aVairs. Cromer and his contemporaries conXated the political and economic aptitude of Egypt’s khedives and their ministers with the practice of 2 INTRODUCTION polygamy and the keeping of harems. For the British, Egyptian politics were synonymous with the familial habits—marital practices, living...