Egypt’s independence from Britain in February 1922 was an
awkward moment. Most politicians in Britain and Egypt correctly assessed that
this nominal independence would neither satisfy the aspirations for real
freedom that Egypt’s 1919 revolution had stirred nor seriously secure for
Britain its strategic interests in the country. But since the energy that 1919
had given rise to was too great to ignore or contain, an alteration of the
political equation in the country was needed.
اضافة اعلان
In Britain, Prime Minister Lloyd George and most of his
government opposed giving any form of independence, nominal or real. In Egypt,
neither the palace nor the leaders of Al-Wafd (the extremely popular political
party that had emerged from the fervor of 1919) were highly excited about a
move they considered devoid of substance.
The only reason this nominal independence became a reality
was that Field Marshall Edmund Allenby, at the time Britain’s High Commissioner
in Egypt, decided it was the only solution to quieten the scene in the country.
And since Allenby had secured for himself a legendary reputation after
defeating the Ottomans during the war, few politicians in London or the Middle
East were willing to challenge him.
The awkwardness of the historical moment continued in
historical records. Most historians pass by 1922 gracefully, invoking it as a
consequence of 1919, but hardly consider it of particular importance. Yet, 1922
was consequential.
It lessened the intensity of the demands for independence,
thereby channeling political energy to internal ideological infighting. Two
ideas quickly filled the air: Islamism, seeing Egypt as the most suitable
inheritor of the Islamic caliphate that had fallen with the collapse of the
Ottoman state, and nationalism, whose proponents looked forward to a state
anchored in a purely Egyptian identity.
This gave rise to a fight over what constitutes Egyptian
identity. There were two camps. The first saw Egyptianism as a continuation of
the identity prevailing in the decades before 1919. This was a melange of what
the ruling Mohammad Ali dynasty, and the families that rotated in its orbit,
represented: Ottomanism, Turkishness, and co-existing forms of Islamism and
Westernization.
The other camp wanted a rupture with the past. In this view,
1919 inaugurated a new path in which the Egyptian identity was to discard any
association with Ottomanism and Turkishness, and instead evolve into another
melange – one that mixed ancient history (Pharaohism) with a desired future (an
Egypt looking across the Mediterranean, rapidly borrowing from the West).
The struggle between Islamism and nationalism unfolded
gradually and slowly over the decades that followed. The struggle over the
Egyptian identity, however, was more intense, because at heart it was between a
ruling elite fighting to preserve the Egypt it had forged, against an emerging
social constituency – the upper echelons of Egypt’s professionals and
increasingly large landowners – that wanted a new serious say in the governing
of the country, which meant it wanted to forge an Egypt that represented them.
Amidst this struggle, the upper echelons of the middle class
wanted to deepen their power. And so, Al-Wafd (led by Saad Zaghloul Pasha, the
most dominant figure in the 1919 revolution and later the unrivalled leader of
the nationalist, secular wave) began to appeal to Egypt’s lower middle classes
and poor. Within a decade, political representation in the country grew
exponentially. The electoral laws were far from perfect; indeed they strongly
favored major landowners in the Egyptian Nile Delta and Saeid. And there are
strong indications that Saad Pasha was particularly enamored with personal
glory. Irrespective of all this, widening representation in Egypt was a
colossal change in the country’s politics.
As a result, Egyptian public life became more inclusive in
terms of class, gender and geography. Hundreds of thousands from poor and
peasant backgrounds entered education, the civil service, and various
professions. Women began to enter, and in several cases had notable roles in,
journalism, academia, philanthropy, and of course in theatre and cinema. Modern
healthcare, higher education, new irrigation technologies, and cultural and
artistic production slowly but clearly began to spread beyond Cairo, and
Alexandria, and the developed parts of the Delta. Some argue that these
developments were byproducts of the economic and cultural advances that Egypt
(and the entire Orient) witnessed in the period after World War I. True, but
1922 facilitated this because independence meant having a constitution, and
indeed Egypt’s 1923 constitution, the first modern comprehensive political
charter in the Arab world worthy of the designation, was based on
socio-economically inclusive principles.
Even foreign policy changed after 1922. After four decades,
since the end of Khedive Ismail’s reign, during which Egypt was utterly inward
looking, Egypt began to think of its place beyond its borders. The expansionism
of Mohammad Ali, Ibrahim, and Ismail Pasha was by now distant history. Yet,
Egypt’s political class at the time felt a sense of entitlement in – and often
superiority to – the country’s neighborhood.
Indeed, Egypt was then a nominally independent country. But
relative to the new states that were emerging at the time (Saudi Arabia in the
Arabian Peninsula, the Hashemites in the Fertile Crescent, and a
multi-sectarian polity on Mount Lebanon and in its valley), Egypt was light
years ahead in terms of its historical depth, geographical consolidation,
social cohesiveness, and political and economic development. In addition, many
Egyptian politicians – including the Egyptian monarch at the time, King Fouad –
recalled that almost all of these lands were, at one point or another in the
19th century, under Egyptian control. Often grandiosity merged with hubris;
often realpolitik set in. And amidst fluctuations between the two, Egypt began
to think of its relationship regarding what was then emerging as an Arab,
rather than Islamic or Ottoman, world.
Independence, even if nominal, drafting a comprehensive
constitution, widening political representation, engaging the public in
national identity, thinking about foreign relations – all forced Egypt’s
political class at the time to confront the reality of the by then sovereign
state that they were ruling. That reality included the fact that over 85 per
cent of Egyptians in the mid-1920s were illiterate, that Egypt had one of the
world’s most egregious levels of social inequality, and that in almost the entire
country elite-despotism constituted the political order of the day. It was no
coincidence that the two decades after 1922 witnessed waves of major
demonstrations, serious protests, especially in the countryside, and several
high-profile assassinations. Independence gave rise to aspirations as well as
unleashed anger.
Perhaps one can think of 1919 as an eruption that had
unravelled Egyptian socio-politics in the early 20th century. But it was the
reckoning, the changes, and the responsibilities that came with independence in
1922 that really ushered in the dynamics which shaped Egypt’s liberal
experiment in the three decades until 1952, when monarchical Egypt fell and a
new age began.
The writer is an Egyptian author, commentator, TV presenter and documentary producer who specializes in regional politics and political economy affairs.
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