Rethinking 1919: The Global History of a Nationalist Revolution
Panel 077, sponsored byAmerican Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), 2019 Annual Meeting
On Friday, November 15 at 12:30 pm
Panel Description
The story of the Egyptian nation-state has often been narrated as the long term-struggle for the Egyptian people to gain independence from a series of foreign occupations—a sequence that ended with the British and stretched back to the Achaemenid Persian Empire. In their meetings with British colonial officials during the lead up to the 1919 revolution, nationalist leaders are reported to have justified their aspirations for independence by pointing out that “Egypt is perhaps the most ancient race in the world.” But myriad other nations with claims to antiquity less than or equal to those of Egyptians were also demanding their independence in the years before and after 1919. How can we make sense of the simultaneity of all of these movements? Why is this transition to national sovereignty so inextricably enmeshed with global shifts?
The papers on this panel situate the emergence of Egyptian nationalism within the context of global history. World War I looms as major factor that complicates nationalist narratives of the revolution, as two of the papers on this panel demonstrate that mass peasant uprisings across the countryside were actually more motivated by widespread discontent with the war than they were with any sympathy towards the nationalist movement. But it was only after the war that revolution broke out in Egypt, in contrast to places like Russia, Ireland, and Singapore where the war directly precipitated major revolts. While nationalist narratives focus on the struggle to send a delegation to the Paris peace conference, the third paper on this panel focuses on the global economic changes attendant to the end of the war and the transition away from a wartime economy. Finally, the fourth paper on this panel examines the impact of global norms and discourses about gender on protesters' forms of self-representation and claims-making, especially those of protesting women.
Rather than seeing the Egyptian nation as an already existing subject that confronted the tumultuous period encompassing the war and the revolution, the papers on this panel show that the appearance of a national subject was produced by a convergence of shifts in global history. The influence of wartime grievances, the global economy, and global discourses on gender during this quintessential moment in the history of the nation belies any attempt to assert Egyptian exceptionalism, and situates nationalism—as both a system of political sovereignty and a historical methodology—within a specific historical conjuncture.
On the night of 17 March 1919, a train departed Luxor for Cairo with a number of British military officers on board, including four who had been overseeing laborers from the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC). When the train departed Asyut the following morning, a large crowd of rioters began to assemble, and at the next stop, demonstrators forced their way on board, eventually killing all the British officers.
Competing narratives explaining this attack emerged in its aftermath. Colonial authorities blamed local police for failing to act, and even suspected some of being complicit in the act. Nationalist sources focus on the death of the son of a village notable at the hands of British soldiers suppressing demonstrations in solidarity with the nationalist movement. But there is too much evidence of widespread coordination among the different villages along the train’s route to focus on one specific local grievance.
This paper shows evidence that, as early as the summer of 1918, a broad-based movement had begun to take hold in the province of Asyut to resist the wartime mobilizations of laboring bodies, animals, and natural resources. In my research, I have uncovered 35 instances of rural violence associated with resistance to ELC recruitment, ranging from individual acts to village-wide demonstrations. By analyzing this body of literature, I have discovered a unique link between ELC recruitment and violent protest in the province of Asyut. The Asayta were significantly more likely to protest ELC recruitment during the violent summer of 1918 than Egyptians in other provinces. This grievance over ELC recruitment culminated in the so-called “Dayrut Train Massacre.”
I then proceed to tease out the implications of this argument. First, it provides further support for the contention that the 1919 Egyptian revolution cannot be reduced to sympathy with the nationalist movement. Correspondingly, historians must disaggregate the 1919 revolution into multiple distinct movements—with the centralized nationalist movement representing only one strand of many that animated mass protest. This helps us make sense of how the British responded to the 1919 revolution; while they crushed the rebellion in the countryside, they negotiated with the nationalists and allowed them a degree of national autonomy.
Between 1919 and 1921, a series of large-scale uprisings erupted in the port city of Alexandria, Egypt. These uprisings targeted institutions of the British colonial regime, including military and police, in addition to the European bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie. The uprisings were often accompanied by numerous strikes and protests that took place in various industries across the city throughout this period. Although scholarship on modern Egypt has conceptualized these events as part of a country-wide nationalist revolution that began in March 1919, a close reading of colonial state records and media reports indicate that nationalist demonstrations played a minor role in the Alexandria uprisings. Laboring men and women, characterized as “the rabble” in colonial records and “the mob” in media accounts, were at the forefront of the uprisings, in some cases ignoring the requests of nationalist leaders that sought to intervene.
This paper argues that the nature of the post-WWI uprisings in Alexandria challenges the nationalist framework that scholars have long used to study the events of the early interwar period in Egypt. Bringing together a variety of sources from this period, including colonial records, legal records, media reports, and trade statistics, this paper shows that the events in Alexandria were primarily labor uprisings that are best understood in the context of Alexandria’s shifting relationship to the global economy both during and after WWI. The decline in Mediterranean trade during the war followed by the reintegration of Alexandria into the global economy after the war resulted in a sudden influx of foreign goods, a surge in the circulation and price of gold, and rapid inflation, which had serious repercussions for industries both in Alexandria and across the country. This paper will highlight the effects of the wartime economy on workers in early interwar Alexandria as a starting point for rethinking the Egyptian Revolution of 1919 within the framework of the global economy.
World War I was a period of disease, famine, and death for the Egyptian population. Between 1914 and 1918, there were over four times as many deaths in Egypt from infectious diseases as there were from military operations. In 1918, the death rate exceeded the birth rate for the first time in over fifty years. Military requisitions led to shortages in food and high inflation in the cost of basic staples. Nearly two percent of Egypt’s population died during the First World War.
Despite the clear indication of a demographic crisis (if not catastrophe), this story appears in no histories of wartime Egypt, nor has it yet been recounted in the new histories that challenge the Egyptian official narrative that the 1919 Revolution was motivated by widespread commitment to the nationalist cause. The only study to previously address the topic was an exploratory 1992 article titled “Peasants in Revolt.” The article argues that “Egyptian peasant unrest had more to do with hunger, threatening starvation, apportioning the costs of war-induced inflation,” and concluded by suggesting there was much more work to be done.
In this paper, I utilize British and Egyptian government documents, war diaries, and the press to show that food shortages were documented in Egypt as early as the summer of 1915; and that an increase in the mortality and morbidity of epidemic diseases that had otherwise been under control for decades can be seen as early as the end of 1914. By the end of 1916, the average Egyptian family was unable to feed itself adequately. I show that much of the population was starving in plain sight; able to eat, but provided with foodstuffs that failed to provide adequate nutrition. Government officials appear to have been unaware of the extent of the crisis and did not actively intervene.
The story of a starving, sick population during the war is important in its own right, but I also believe that the demographic and health crises of wartime Egypt are an important part of the matrix of factors that led to widespread support for the 1919 uprising.
