This paper will briefly explore the cultural, political, and literary environment throughout the Gulf that encountered the BBC’s early Arabic broadcasts beginning in the late 1930s. Using both colonial and vernacular archival sources, it will demonstrate how negotiations among British officials and local subjects surrounding the broadcasts were a push and pull between aspirations for Arab unity and the realities of governing and living within a region that was effectively an extension of British India. While the late 1920s and early 1930s had already seen a rise of pan-Arab sentiment throughout the Gulf through budding nationalist movements and the distribution of print materials from Iraq and Egypt, the region still retained strong economic, political, and even cultural ties to territories of the Indian Empire, which stretched from East Africa to Southeast Asia. As a region whose immense fossil fuel deposits had only recently been tapped, British officials scrambled to gather intelligence on what sort of content would attract listeners throughout the Gulf, and serve as counter propaganda to Italian broadcasts in Arabic. Relaying broadcast content through Egypt, including religious sermons, news bulletins, and music, was seemingly taken as a default strategy. However, informants and committees in the Gulf advising British authorities on the broadcasts, while enthusiastic about Egyptian pan-Arab sentiment, also noted that the BBC broadcasts should account for the local concerns and tastes of Khaliji listeners. This included announcing exchange rates for the Rupee, price rates on vital Indian imports, and also broadcasting music featuring local talent from both the Gulf and South Arabia (Aden). While some colonial officials viewed the BBC’s Arabic broadcasts in the Gulf as falling on the ears of members of a timeless, isolated desert culture, they soon realized that they not only had to account for a significant population of radio users, but also an existent local economy of selling sounds: a recording industry. Like the region’s economic and political connections extending from Middle Eastern territories to the far reaches of the Indian Empire, Gulf record industry also followed similar economic and cultural networks, its main centers of production being Baghdad, Aden, and Bombay by the late 1930s. Thus, while the Western reaches of British India were increasingly brought into the sonic fold of a “Middle Eastern” Arab world centered around Egypt, concessions had to be made to provincial circumstances, networks, and musical tastes in order to do so.

For the first sixteen years of its existence, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) conducted its activities exclusively in the English language. The Empire Service launched by the Corporation in 1932, though intended to reach the far corners of the globe, was intended primarily for Britons in the British Empire’s dominions and colonies (though the BBC’s executives recognized that English-speaking natives of these lands could and would occasionally tune in). This changed in January of 1938 with an Arabic language broadcast that inaugurated the BBC Arabic service, the primary building-block of what came to be the BBC World Service. Beginning with an analysis of the modalities through which wireless broadcast technology came to be seen as the primary mode of mass communication, this paper examines the place of radio in British imperial strategies and tactics as the unrivalled mass-cultural tool of empire. Though the connections between culture and imperialism have been the object of much study in recent decades, especially as they manifest as representational practices, the processes pertaining to cultural imperialism as an institutionalized set of historical practices remain understudied. Focusing on the British Empire in the early twentieth century, this paper traces the beginnings of the BBC World Service (inaugurated in 1938) to argue that the period between the world wars witnessed the transition in imperial cultural politics from a near-exclusive focus on native elites to a concern with mass culture, arguing further that Egypt was of unparalleled importance for this major shift in the conduct of British imperial and foreign policy. Using the BBC’s own written archives and the transcriptions of the early BBC Arabic broadcasts, together with records from the British Foreign and Colonial offices and the India office, I outline the contours of the debates among officers of the British Empire surrounding Arabic language broadcasts. By doing so, I show that the establishment of BBC Arabic was not only a British response to the Arabic language broadcasts of Mussolini’s Radio Bari—the factor most often cited in the scholarly literature to explain the emergence of BBC Arabic—but that a much broader set of transformations were involved, ranging from the role of propaganda in the conduct of British foreign policy, the broadening of the target of such propaganda from ruling elites to educated publics, and the place of Egypt in particular in transforming mass culture into an arena of imperial politics.

"Egyptian Radio before State Broadcasting: Transitioning from Media-Capitalism to Media-Etatism, 1926-1934." This paper historically traces some of Egypt’s early private radio stations, which operated from the late-1920s until May 1934 when they were all forcefully shutdown by the government. Shedding more light on this important and relatively unknown period in Egyptian radio history partially fills-in an important void in the history of early Egyptian media. More importantly, the paper analyzes the early forced transition to government-controlled radio, and assesses the impact this sudden shift had on the owners, producers and listeners of these stations, as well as the broader implications on Egypt’s media landscape. Little is known about the dozen or so private radio stations operating in Egypt from the late-1920s until the end of May 1934, when they were forcefully shutdown and replaced with one government controlled Egyptian State Radio (ESR). The general historical storyline concerning the pre-ESR origins of Egyptian radio is vague and largely dictated by an official Egyptian government narrative depicting these early stations as morally and culturally inferior, which in the scope of this dominant narrative, justifies their elimination and replacement by an ostensibly more “altruistic and cultured” state radio. In other words, highlighting the supposed rampant and vulgar commercialism of these private stations, was primarily used vividly contrast them with an uncritically positive depiction of state-controlled radio as a national tool of educational and civilizational uplift. Accordingly, this paper will historically trace some of these early private radio stations until their unexpected demise in May of 1934. Who were the owners and operators of these stations? What sort of programing did they offer? Where they as “commercially vulgar” as they are represented in the Egyptian historical imagination? Shedding more light on this important early period in Egyptian media history and highlighting the role of some of these unacknowledged early radio pioneers, will partially fill-in an important void in the history of early Egyptian media. Lastly, I will analyze the early transition to government-controlled radio, and the impact this sudden shift must have had on the owners, producers and listeners of these stations, as well as the broader implications on Egypt’s media landscape. This important early transition from media-capitalism to what I call media-etatism, would by the early 1960s exemplify the role of media in Egypt for decades to come.

Scholars of interwar and World War II-era international radio broadcasting often focus on geopolitics and news broadcasts. However, most radio stations devoted the bulk of broadcasting time to entertainment programming (live and recorded music, radio dramas, poetry) and educational programs (talks, English lessons, children’s programs). Scholarly interest in the BBC’s early Arabic service has similarly focused on its news broadcasts, with less attention to entertainment / educational programming. Drawing on multi-sited archival research and material culture evidence, this paper surveys and analyzes examples of dramatic, literary, and educational programming on the BBC’s Arabic service in the late 1930s and 1940s, arguing that these programs served both to draw audiences and also to help shape developments in mid-century Arabic dramatic and literary cultures. In 1941, the BBC’s Arabic service launched its first Arabic poetry competition, offering cash prizes and on-air readings to the winners. The competition was open to authors of a subset of Arab states, who first submitted their poems to their national broadcasting station – BBC affiliates. By 1944, the competition was opened to submissions from Africa and the Americas. These poetry competitions increased listener interest, and fostered relationships between the BBC and stations in Cairo, New York, and elsewhere. It also provided near-free content for the service, since it reserved the right to broadcast and/or publish all submitted poems.) In May 1942, the BBC’s Arabic service established its first Arabic play competition, modeled on the service’s poetry competition. While it ran more intermittently, it similarly provided the service with an influx of new material for broadcasting, and the listener interest that came with them. The BBC Arabic service’s biggest success in attracting an audience came from its English lessons broadcasts. Starting in April 1939, it broadcast a series of talks delivered in “basic English”. They were aimed at listeners who had some knowledge of English, and used simple vocabulary and regular-form verbs. Listeners responded enthusiastically, with requests for rebroadcasts and new lessons from all parts of the Arabic-speaking world. The BBC expanded the broadcasts, offering more English lessons on the Arabic service and introducing English lessons on its other services, until they became a staple of its overseas broadcasts. Paying careful attention to these and similar entertainment and educational anchors of the BBC’s Arabic service programming helps illuminate their important role in attracting audiences and their impact.

When radio first entered Palestine, it brought with it excitement and fascination, symbolizing cutting edge communication technology and promising to spread modernity over the ether waves. At the same time, radio could not avoid entangling with the political complexity of Mandate Palestine. The Mandate Government established the Palestine Broadcasting Service (PBS) in 1936 as a station that broadcast in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, and therefore created a cultural arena that was shared between Palestinian Arabs and Jews, delivering Hebrew cultural productions to the heart of the Arab public sphere, and vice versa. The Palestinian station thus became a focal point of political discussions about the state of culture in Palestine and its role in determining the identity of the land. In order to understand the importance of the PBS to Arab Palestinian society, it is necessary to examine its acceptance (or lack thereof) among the listeners. The Arabic press served as a platform for educated listeners to express their opinions on the Palestinian station, to criticize its operation, and to make suggestions for improvement. By examining the discussions in the Arabic press, as well as combining memoirs and interviews, the paper traces the listeners’ responses to the PBS and demonstrates its cultural and political significance. Even before the inauguration of the PBS, the Arabic press viewed the station as a threat, a potential instrument for the Judaization of Palestine. The inauguration ceremony enhanced the listeners’ anxieties when the name of the station was translated to Hebrew as the Broadcasting Service of the Land of Israel. While public discussions in the Arabic press scrutinized the Hebrew broadcasts, they also followed the Arabic broadcasts and commented extensively on their form, content, and meaning, offering suggestions and making requests in the name of the public. The paper argues that despite the identification of radio with the Mandate Government and the initial rejection of the PBS, Palestinian listeners engaged actively with the station, influenced its operation, and gradually accepted it as a significant platform for the articulation of Arab Palestinian culture. Palestinian listeners found their ways to utilize the technology and institution maintained by the government to promote anti-imperial resistance and to enhance national identity. Listening to the radio in Mandate Palestine became a political action.