The events of 1919 have been interpreted as a manifestation of a united national community, a sacred totality (ittihad muqaddas); however, descriptions of the revolutionary crowd have observed that it was divided, that it was composed of various cultural types, gender divisions, and status classes. These cultural and social divisions shaped the course of post-revolutionary politics. When the nationalist coalition of 1919, known as the Wafd, emerged as a distinct political party after 1919 it was increasingly difficult to balance and thus represent Egypt’s diverse social constituencies. While some among the West-oriented professional class (effendiyya) envisioned a radical revolution, this idea was incomprehensible to the old elite (dhawat), conservative effendis, and incomprehensible to most rural notables. The Wafd Party was therefore forced to compromise with, firstly, the dhawat and, secondly, the rural notables. The result was a shift of power from the revolutionary crowd to the more conservative notables, mostly rural, as well as conservative effendis and dhawat. This paper analyses this process through a study of elections, including the electoral laws, electoral party lists, and manifestos. The question entertained was whether the notables were primarily motivated by their material interests, rooted in their localities, or if constitutional and ideological issues were also a primary factor. The paper argues that the elections opened the door to the involvement of new groups: empowered by the electoral process, the notables demanded a more conservative and traditionalist ideological orientation against the radical, democratic nationalism of 1919.

Egyptian advertising blossomed in the interwar period, moving beyond simple line drawings, sketches, and borrowed advertisements that characterized the period before World War I. As Roland Marchand has argued in his landmark study, advertising offers not a mirror into society, but a distorted image that enhances some aspects while ignoring others. While depictions of women in Egyptian advertising leaned toward slender figures, fine features, and fair skin, the bourgeois effendi demonstrated a much wider range of coloring, size representation, features, and skin tones. Egypt received partial independence in 1922, and its politicians navigated the course of party politics, parliamentary process, and continuing British influence. Similarly, its reading middle class public experimented with new forms of and forums for consumption as new multinational companies arrived and indigenous interests, e.g. department stores, expanded. Targeting the effendiyya, who ranged in age as well as wealth, would be a concern to both foreign and local companies. This paper will examine advertising depicting the effendiyya in the mainstream press, popular magazines, and regional journals between 1922 and 1936, the year of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. As Egypt struggled to define itself as a nation, so too did the bourgeois male of Egyptian advertising. This paper will focus on clothing, food/beverages, toiletries, and department stores, utilizing journals e.g. al-Ahram, al-Akhbar, Kashkul, al-Lata’if al-musawwara, al-Ithnayn wal dunya, Ruz al-Yusif, al-Fayum, al-Duhuk. By adding the latter two regional journals a comparison can be made regarding the significance and centrality of Cairo as an urban, cultural center.

In April 1936, the leading Egyptian cultural magazine, al-Hilal, devoted an entire issue to al-Shabab, the youth, on the grounds that “at the present time youth have an influence in both the political and social spheres; on their shoulders now rests the responsibilities for new revivals in the East and West.” As scholars have previously noted, in interwar Egypt a “myth of youth” emerged stressing the redeeming power of a new, younger generation of Egyptians possessing vitality and promise to deliver independence and modernity to the nation. Likewise, historiography informs us that this period’s political factionalism and fragmentation incorporated students into the political fold, eventually leading to violent clashes (e.g. the student uprising of 1935-36, the “shirt” street clashes of 1937, the student uprising of 1946) that demonstrated the dynamic force of students. This paper examines representations of youth in Egypt, providing a more nuanced analysis of the changing conceptions of youth which contributed to the development of youth’s symbolic political and cultural capital in public debate and imagery following the declaration of Egypt’s nominal independence in 1922 to the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. While acknowledging the general notion of “youth” as a socially and culturally determined category, a transitional phase between childhood and adulthood that has shifted in modern history as a result of changing local and global processes, I position the specific shifts and diverse conceptions of imagined youth within the Egyptian historical context. Thus, the struggle to define an Egyptian national identity, the reality of the era’s political fragmentation and cultural contests mirrored the challenges to define the characteristics of an idealized Egyptian youth. Utilizing sources from Egyptian mainstream media, the divisive political press, and emerging children’s periodicals, I scrutinize these conceptions and images to reveal the contentious fault lines of this signal issue within the debates to define not only an essential entity within Egypt’s political and cultural community, but also Egypt’s modernity and independence.

The promulgation of a constitution often follows a revolutionary moment or a break with the past and is usually intended to epitomize the national will and provide a judicial and ideological basis for a country. This paper intends to rethink the process by which the Egyptian constitution was promulgated in 1923. Nathan J. Brown argued in "Constitutions in a Nonconstitutional World" (State University of New York Press, New York, 2002, pp. 61-63) that the 1923 Egyptian constitution - along with the other contemporary Arab monarchical constitutions - served a symbolic purpose (expression of national will and of popular sovereignty) and an enabling purpose (organization of state authority without limiting it). However, he claims it did not have a highly ideological value. In fact, its assertion of popular sovereignty – far from having a relapse in the practical sphere or being the expression of an ideological current – was limited to a symbolic value in stressing the independence of Egypt from the British colonial rule after the 1922 unilateral declaration of Independence. Following the methodology provided by the study of Brown, the major argument set forth by this paper is that the original draft of the 1923 Egyptian Constitution had far more ideological meanings and implications than its alternative version that was ultimately octroyée by King Fuad I on 19 April 1923. The final version represented a retreat from the bold stances taken in the first draft. This draft emerged out of twofold forces; on the one hand, the complex relationship between Egypt and Great Britain, and on the other, the pressures exerted by the king in shaping the constitutional text. A semantic comparison between these two documents and the use of the available data on the debates occured during the constitutional discourse (most notably some excerpts of Muhammad Husayn Haykal's "Mudhakkirat fi al-Siyasa al-Misriyya") will show the steps that led to the promulgation of this text and the process by which it was drained of ideological value and sharpness in favour of a major vagueness and neutrality that could meet the expectations of each involved political party. In this sense, the draft of the 1923 Egyptian constitution is considered ideological in its representation of the national aspirations and the main political goals of post-1919 revolutionary Egypt, which were subsequently frustrated by the pressures of the colonial rule and the monarchy.