Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900-1930 (Studies in Middle Eastern History)

365 Pages·1987·30.4 MB·English

by  Israel Gershoni

Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs
STUDIES IN MIDDLE EASTERN HISTORY
Bernard Lewis, Itamar Rabinovich, and Roger Savory, General Editors
Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski
EGYPT, ISLAM, AND THE ARABS:
The Search for Egyptian Nationhood, 1900-1930
EGYPT, ISLAM,
AND THE ARABS:
The Search for Egyptian
Nationhood, 1900-1930
Israel Gershoni
James P. Jankowski
In cooperation with the Dayan Center and the
Shiloah Institute for Middle Eastern and African Studies,
Tel Aviv University.
New York Oxford
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1986
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York Toronto
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Copyright © 1987 by Oxford University Press, Inc.
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.,
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Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gershoni, I.
Egypt, Islam, and the Arabs.
(Studies in Middle Eastern history)
"In cooperation with the Dayan Center and the
Shiloah Institute for Middle Eastern and African
Studies, Tel Aviv University."
Bibliography: p. Includes index.
1. Nationalism—Egypt. 2. Egypt—Politics and government—1882-1936.
3. Egypt—Relations—Arab countries.
4. Arab countries—Relations—Egypt.
I. Jankowski, James P., 1937- . II. Title.
III. Series: Studies in Middle Eastern history (New York, N.Y.)
DT107.8.G37 1986 320.5'4'0962 86-5221
ISBN 0-19-504096-1 (alk. paper)
2468 10 97531
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
To
Mary Ann
and
Shoshi
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Preface
This is a study of nationalism in modern Egypt. Nationalism is an elusive concept,
the subject of considerable—and inconclusive—theoretical discussion. If a work-
ing definition is needed, we define nationalism as a perception about political
community: that nations are a natural social formation, that they are the object of
the ultimate political loyalty and allegiance of their peoples, and that they have an
inherent right to autonomy and self-determination within the world assembly of
nations. This perception finds tangible expression in ideological movements that
are devoted to the realization of new political orders: the reorganization of cer-
tainly the political but often also the economic, social, and cultural life of the
community defined as the nation.1
As the major framework of group loyalty in modern times, nationalism is a
state of mind as well as a pattern of behavior. In the first instance nationalism is
the product of human thought, a perceptual rather than an objective entity. But it
is always pointed toward the realization of itself in actuality, toward translating its
ideal concepts into objective reality outside human consciousness. It is also a
vision of collective self-realization: how a group wills its becoming. Nationalism is
thus both an ideological construct and a practical way of life. Its abstract doctrines
are usually accompanied by a programmatic emphasis on the achievement of
national goals in the real world.
As an ideology, nationalism is a comprehensive interpretation of past, pres-
ent, and future. Its concepts have their roots in an idealized past and point toward
the realization of an equally glorious future. But its main concern is the here and
now; its attitude toward other times is centered on the question of how they can
be utilized for the purposes of the present. To be sure, nationalist ideology
requires objective elements existing outside human consciousness: territory, race,
language, kinship, religion, history, and the like. But without the manipulation of
these factors by human consciousness and will, no nationalism exists. Natural
factors are only the raw material of nationalism; consciousness and will are the
viii Preface
engines responsible for its creation and perpetuation. Unless they are filtered
through human consciousness and will, these objective elements possess no his-
torical significance: only consciousness and will imbue territory, race, language,
kinship, religion, or history with "national" meanings. The human intellect thus
defines the relevant elements of human identity and loyalty and gives natural
factors their relative importance as components within systems of collective iden-
tification and allegiance. In the process, consciousness and will transform these
objective elements, giving them new meaning; hence territory becomes "patrie,"
race becomes "nation," language and history become "national culture," and so
forth. The collective consciousness of a specific group of people, their identification
of themselves as a collective unity or "nation," their common determination to act
in order to realize collective aspirations: these are the factors defining national
entities in the first instance and accounting for their subsequent development.2
The study of nationalism needs to concern itself with three interlocking di-
mensions. The first is an understanding of the perceptions that constitute nation-
alism: the ideas and patterns of thought that make up specific nationalist ideolo-
gies. The second is the interplay of nationalist ideas and nationalist actions: how
nationalists attempt to realize their values in the real world. The third is the
perpetual interaction and reciprocal influence of nationalist ideas and actions, on
the one hand, and the external historical conditions in which nationalists find
themselves, on the other: how historical circumstances influence nationalist doc-
trines and behavior, as well as how these ideas and actions shape the course of
historical evolution.
Following these principles, this study has three overlapping concerns. The
first is to examine how Egyptians perceived their own collective identity and
affiliations from the turn of this century to the early 1930s. The second is to
analyze how Egyptians tried to realize their nationalist beliefs in the world around
them. The third is to describe and explain the encounter between nationalist
perceptions and actions, and changing historical conditions.
This work proceeds on the basis of several assumptions about historical in-
quiry. Perhaps the most basic of these is that there are crucial interrelationships
between the intellectual life of a society and its political development. An ade-
quate understanding of both the emergence of nationalism in modern Egypt and
its complex evolution over time demands that attention be given to the complex
connections between ideas of the world and behavior in the world.
On the one hand, one cannot comprehend either the origins and meaning of
intellectual constructs or their spread, change, and historical importance without
examining the specific historical context (particularly institutional-political, but
also socioeconomic) in which they emerge, exist, and evolve. As John Higham
put it, ideas occur in "a context of other happenings which explain them,"3 and
thus the historian who concerns himself with the ideas of a society must of neces-
sity also concern himself with the social context of thought. Thought can be
studied apart from its social context, but the result is not history in the proper
sense of the term.
On the other hand, the political behavior of people in a given society can be
understood only in relation to the intellectual context in which political action
occurs. Hence we do not restrict ourselves to a purely political approach to the
Preface ix
history of nationalism in Egypt, an approach that views political behavior as a
pragmatic response to circumstances devoid of any conceptual constraints or pre-
conditions. In our view the political interests and goals of a community and the
political activities undertaken to realize the same cannot be treated as nonconcep-
tual phenomena shaped only by the imperatives of the moment. In regard to
nationalist action in particular, aims and policies are denned and adopted by
nationalists in the light of their nationalist worldview and values. Political behav-
ior is often if not always motivated by ideological considerations, and therefore
worldviews and values are an integral component of any explanation of political
developments.
In sum, political occurrences are in part dependent on a structure of concepts
and values into which they "fit" and which in turn "explain" them. Just as "ideas
and symbols do not exist apart from social [or economic, or political] reality out
there," so they help to define that reality: "they [ideas and symbols] are the
means by which we perceive, understand, judge, and manipulate that reality;
indeed, they create it."4 From this perspective, in addition to the study of nation-
alist ideas in and of themselves, our focus is upon the use to which such ideas
were put in Egypt: how they shaped national interests and goals; how they were
diffused and embodied in political, social, and cultural institutions; how they
helped to dictate national policies in education, literary life, and economics; in
sum, how "intellectual habits and intellectual inventions shaped historic develop-
ments by setting the terms in which groups or generations of men conducted their
lives."5
This study does not follow the purely "internal" approach to the history of
ideas, the prophet of which was Arthur O. Lovejoy.6 Intellectual history that
analyzes "unit-ideas" detached from their sociopolitical context and insists on the
autonomy and integrity of the text, although certainly legitimate for some pur-
poses, does not seem to us a fruitful approach to the study of nationalism per se.
First, the systems of nationalist ideas that emerged in Egypt in this period were
both the product of their time and place and oriented toward shaping their soci-
ety: neither universal nor timeless in nature, these ideas were intimately linked to
their setting. Second, the many transformations in Egyptian nationalist orienta-
tions over time, the emergence and diffusion of new orientations as well as the
decline of old ones, cannot be understood without a discussion of their broader
context: the historical context of ideas is crucial to the analysis of change in ideas.
Third, the exclusively internal approach seems to us to sterilize the historical
process, making it the study of "high" ideas isolated from other nonideological
processes of history. The internal approach all too often seizes upon the key
concepts of leading thinkers over a long period of time, presuming that historical
realities were not critical for the development of these concepts. This exclusive
concern for the inner dynamics of "formal" and more systematic thought is par-
ticularly inapplicable to the study of nationalist ideas, which by definition are
"informal," less systematic, and more programmatic in character. Finally, the
internal approach leads one to neglect the impact of ideas on the real world. As
historians, we believe that ideas are important for what they do as well as for
what they are.
We hope, too, that our analysis avoids the reductionism of the exclusively
"external" approach to intellectual history, one that makes ideas purely a func-