The British In Egypt

British forces landed in Egypt in 1882 to put down an armed rebellion against the then-ruling Twefik Pasha, Maintain order, and, most importantly, ensure access to the Suez Canal. They stayed for three-quarters of a century. The story of their rule describes administrators and soldiers who governed a people they didn't really understand, but who unwittingly created the basis for a modern country. Lord Cromer, Chinese Gordon, Kitchener, the Mahdi, Farouk, Masser and Anthony Eden are among the men who played vital roles in this period.

In occupied Egypt, British governmental programs were closely related to England's needs as an imperial power since Egypt was occupied because of its strategic position along the route to India. British presence there, however, inevitably led to modernization during the 32 years of British rule. During the first period the British were preoccupied with the prospect of imminent withdrawal. The second period emphasized programs for such reforms as hydraulic and agricultural modernization, wider education, and urban development. The final period covered the emergence of Egyptian nationalism, whose goals proved incompatible with British rule of Egypt in spite of efforts to deal with nationalism by repression or conciliation. Originally published in 1966. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The history of capitalism in Egypt has long been synonymous with cotton cultivation and dependent development. From this perspective, the British occupation of 1882 merely sealed the country's fate as a vast plantation for European textile mills. All but obscured in such accounts, however, is Egypt's emergence as a colonial laboratory for financial investment and experimentation. Egypt's Occupation tells for the first time the story of that financial expansion and the devastating crises that followed. Aaron Jakes offers a sweeping reinterpretation of both the historical geography of capitalism in Egypt and the role of political-economic thought in the struggles that raged over the occupation. He traces the complex ramifications and the contested legacy of colonial economism, the animating theory of British imperial rule that held Egyptians to be capable of only a recognition of their own bare economic interests. Even as British officials claimed that "economic development" and the multiplication of new financial institutions would be crucial to the political legitimacy of the occupation, Egypt's early nationalists elaborated their own critical accounts of boom and bust. As Jakes shows, these Egyptian thinkers offered a set of sophisticated and troubling meditations on the deeper contradictions of capitalism and the very meaning of freedom in a capitalist world.

"Egypt figured prominently in U.S. policy in the Middle East after World War II because of its strategic, political, and economic importance. Hahn explores the triangular relationship between the U.S., Great Britain, and Egypt in order to analyze American policy both in the region and within the context of a broader Cold War strategy."--"Book News, Inc."

Egypt under the British tends to be looked at now through a post-Suez lens – an inevitable disaster and the last puncturing of a doomed empire. But in fact Egypt for many years was the cornerstone of British success across the Middle East and North Africa. This image of empire was shattered after the First World War by the development of nationalism in Egypt – the foundation and growth of the nationalist Wafd party led by Saad Zaghlul and the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Throughout this period Britain continued to control the Nile Valley – under Field Marshal Allenby and then George Lloyd – through a policy of deliberate containment of nationalism and a slow relinquishing of powers (culminating in the Anglo-Egypt Treaty of 1936). This book will be the first to study that process in the Nile Valley in any great detail and contains previously unpublished primary sources.

Egypt during the British occupation (1882-1922) was a strategically important site for securing British interests in the region. Most studies of Britons in Egypt during the occupation focus on the lives and activities of law-abiding British military and political elites. Using a variety of primary sources, this book deepens our understanding of the hidden British community beyond these elites - the lower and working classes, and those engaged in crime and misconduct - by bringing to light their demographic profile, socio-occupational diversity, criminal activities and varying responses to the crises represented by World War I and the revolutionary period of 1919-1922. It will be essential reading for historians of British imperialism, Egypt and the Middle East.

Annotation A history of the three-way colonial relationship among Britain, Egypt, and the Sudan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Unlike most books on colonialism, this one deals explicitly with race and slavery.