Esther Fahmy Wissa, Egyptian Christian nationalist, was a threat to British diplomatic interests in the eventful year of 1935. Miles W. Lampson, the High Commissioner of Egypt at the time, complained to British Secretary Robert Vansittart of her persistent efforts to unilaterally mitigate the rise of fascism in Europe. On the eve of World War II, she utilized her longstanding diplomatic relationship with the British Foreign Office to garner political support for convincing Hitler and Mussolini to cease their imperial expansions. Correspondence between the High Commissioner in Cairo and British officials in London reveal a disdain for Wissa’s idealistic plans. Yet the letters also show a marked effort to appease her in hopes of preventing any international escalations or worse—a critique of continued British colonial control in Egypt. While Lampson believed that her “peace crusade” would ultimately fail, he endeavored to demonstrate the extent of his preventative interventions: “As you see, I have done my best to pour cold water on her scheme but I am clearly not in a position to stop her.” This presentation considers the prominent international role and diplomatic interventions of Egyptian nationalist Esther Fahmy Wissa during the early twentieth century. While Wissa became an important political liaison between Egypt and the United Kingdom into the 1930s, her bold advocacy platform drew from her family’s involvement in Coptic communal politics at the turn of the twentieth century and her role in Egypt’s women’s movement following the Revolution of 1919. Extant scholarship provides limited references to Wissa’s significance who is often overshadowed by other prominent Egyptian women like Huda Sha‘rawi and Safiyya Zaghloul. Due to her influential role in both national movements and international affairs, an examination of Wissa’s impact based on her extensive imprint on the archival record is long overdue. Probing Arabic, French, and English primary source materials, this paper traces how Wissa fused Christian, national, and transnational solidarities to challenge the political status quo of her time.

In this paper, I offer a cultural history of football in colonial Egypt that departs from mainstream readings of football and colonialism. Scholars studying the history of football in British colonies have often viewed the spread of the sport as a byproduct of British imperialism and narrowly focused on its role in anti-colonial struggles. The history of Egyptian football, I argue, is not merely a story of British domination, and the game’s popularity is not only a byproduct of British imperialism and its cultural venture in Egypt. In carrying out this argument, I examine the history of early football clubs in Egypt and bring forward the cosmopolitan landscape of sports. The data for this project build upon interviews with families of expatriate founders of football in Egypt and their histories as retained in their own material archives – letters, papers, photographs, and memorabilia, as well as in their own memories. Information will also be gathered from the Egyptian Gazette, the Egyptian Mail, and Al-Ahram, these newspapers are known for their coverage of culture in Egypt in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Piecing together these materials underscores how Italian and Greek communities make the story of Egyptian football a diverse and cosmopolitan one. The study is situated within the literature on sports history from the late nineteenth century to mid twentieth century. My theoretical framework builds upon and challenges theories of nationalism and football in the region and highlights the heterogeneity and cosmopolitanism of the game’s history. The paper promises to add to our stock of knowledge on sports and imperialism in British colonies. It offers a new perspective and lens to studying the history of football in Egypt.

On Monday, March 6, 1911, representatives of the Coptic Christian community convened in the Upper Egyptian city of Asyūṭ for three days to discuss the main grievances believed to have been hindering Coptic equality with Muslims in public life. Given the unprecedented nature of the event and its uncompromising language, it became customary to situate the 1911 Coptic Congress within the nexus of Western Protestant missions and the rapidly escalating sectarian strife in colonial Egypt—particularly following the appointment and assassination of the first Coptic Prime Minister Buṭrus Ghalī (1908-1910). Notwithstanding the merits of these scholarly approaches, this paper proposes to examine the 1911 Coptic Congress against the backdrop of its Ottoman context, particularly the growing lay Christian movements throughout the Empire. In this light, this paper argues that the 1911 Congress constitutes a development of the community council movement (al-majlis al-millī) aiming at expanding the purview of the lay elite representing the Coptic community (ṭāʾifah) on both geographical and denominational levels. To this end, this paper will first present a synopsis of the different processes underlying the development of community councils throughout the Ottoman Empire. Second, it will present an overview of the Coptic community council from its inception in 1874 and the snowballing of Coptic lay movements. Lastly, it will conclude with a discussion of the 1911 Congress and its agenda situating it in its Ottoman-Egyptian context in general, and the growing Coptic lay movement in particular. This study rests primarily on an examination of a wide array of Coptic publications from the period of inquiry including newspapers and magazines (e.g. al-Waṭan, Firʿawn, and al-Karmah), as well as other publications whether published by charitable societies (such as Jamʿiyat al-Tawfīq and Jamʿiyat al-Ikhlāṣ al-Qibṭīyah al-Markazīyah) or by journalists and public intellectuals (such as Jirjis Fīlūthāʾus ʿAwaḍ, Yūsuf Manqaryūs, and Tawfīq Ḥabīb)—in addition to the proceedings of the congress published in 1912.

European Pastries in Egypt: A History of Colonialism, Modernity and Class If one takes a walk in any of Egypt’s bustling streets, they are bound to find local bakery shops displaying varieties of petit-fours, “Lancashire” biscuits and millefeuille, side by side to the most traditional of items. These European baked goods do not necessarily strike Egyptians today as foreign, instead they are deeply rooted in the local culture. From fruit cakes and Marie biscuits, to high tea etiquette and French pastry techniques, I argue that the presence and popularity of such food and foodways in Egypt’s history are products of a complex and multilayered process of Euro-centric modernization. This modernity first arrived with the colonizer in the late 19th century but as his physical presence left, it stayed lingering behind as an extension to his body and a reminder of his superiority. What further complicates this, however, is that through colonial ramifications on education, culture and economies of the early 20th century, we see evidence in cookbooks, menus, catering orders, film and textbooks that point to the fact that elite Egyptians themselves savored this western taste with minimum resistance. In examining the aforementioned materials, issues of class are found to intersect with colonialism as engrained class ideals, aspirations (Shanahan 2014) and anticipatory socialization (as coined by Robert K. Merton) are steered by European standards. By the 1950s, however, things began to change. Rules of "good taste" set by those in power are found to be democratized by those of the lower social hierarchies, as Egypt entered into a new Nasserist era. What was once foreign and exclusive to a few yet powerful Europeanized aristocracy, with time, became accessible and attainable to all classes and in many cases adapted and transformed to meet their own tastes. Historical and archival material as well as analyses by political and social historians come together to provide an understanding of how food becomes a space for such political and social complexities in history. This a case study in which sugar dusted pastries, jam filled biscuits and frosted cakes, transform from being extensions of the colonial body to becoming instruments of reclaiming power and authority in 20th century Egypt.

Teacher Activism in Egypt: 1922-1952 In 1936, a group of Egyptian Pedagogues established Rabitat al-Tarbiya al-Haditha, an association dedicated to the promotion of ‘modern pedagogy’, child-centered practices and progressive education. The group included psychoanalysts, prominent surrealists, a former student of Jean Piaget, and a renowned British progressive pedagogue, among others. But Rabitat al-Tarbiya was not the only teachers association of its kind: Between 1922 and 1952, teachers founded at least three other associations to advance progressive education and defend their rights as a profession. From Rabitat Khariji Ma‘had al-Tarbiya to Jam‘iyyat al-Mu‘allimin, teachers were continuously in search for adequate representation and like-minded networks. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on teacher activism in Egypt between 1922-1952. Historian Barack Salmoni notes that “educational thinkers in Egypt (...) saw themselves as integrally involved in cultivating the nation, setting national priorities, and crafting the tone and substance of nationalist thought.” In this respect, Salmoni follows a long line of historians who explore education, and teacher activism through the lens of an overarching nationalist project. After all, education is the institution through which generations of young people are taught to become nationalists. Yet, with its exploration of teachers as nothing more than closeted nationalists, the literature has failed to capture the often complicated motivations behind teacher activism, the nuances of their individual and collective aspirations and the richness of their own thinking. By contrast, this paper seeks to understand teachers through an exploration of their activism and the nature of their involvement in associations, unions and networks. It does so through an in-depth analysis of the pedagogical press, conference papers, ministerial reports, and reports left behind by some of their members. In addition, it analyses the few magazines which openly discussed their plight. The paper seeks to answer two interrelated questions: In what ways was teacher activism connected to the pedagogical trends of the time period, most notably “progressive education”? Why were these pedagogical commitments favoured by teachers associations in interwar Egypt? The paper will show that progressive education—as an intellectual force—allowed teachers to call for the amelioration of their material conditions and social standing. Because progressive education, by design, necessitates enormous pedagogical skills, specialised training, and technical knowledge, calling for progressive education enabled teachers to aspire to become part of a more prestigious profession, one in which monetary and social compensation was higher

While some scholarship has looked at the construction of Egyptian national memory through a state-centered/top-down approach, none has attempted to understand the reception of these historical narratives and whether they actually occupy the collective memory of Egyptians today, nor how Egyptians collectively remember the military’s role in Egypt’s national history. My research begins to fill this much-needed gap and asks the following questions: How do Egyptians’ memory compare to the state’s narrative? Have memories that failed to be documented been forgotten? When they revolted in 2011, what place did the military occupy in their imagination? Has the military(-dominated) regime successfully established legitimacy through its manipulation of collective memory? And what about events they were not present for? For example, in what ways does collective memory align with, complicate, or reject the state’s historical narrative of the October War? And most importantly, how has Egyptians’ lived experience of recent events played a role in shaping the memory of events they did not live through? This paper is structured around two “phases” – encountering the state narrative, and complicating the state narrative. The first examines vehicles of memory used by the state to construct an official history – specifically commemoration sites and practices, popular culture productions, and secondary school textbooks. The key sources analyzed in this section are the October War Panorama and military museums in Cairo and Port Said; films and TV series produced by Synergy, a military-owned/affiliated company that is monopolizing the film industry, including the film El Mamar (2019) and Ramadan TV series Al Ikhtiyar (2020); and the current Grade 9 and Grade 11 history textbooks published by the Ministry of Education. It then draws on oral history interviews with middle and middle-upper class Egyptians of various educational, political, and religious backgrounds to understand the reception of said official narratives and the effectiveness of these vehicles of memory. Drawing further on these interviews, the second phase identifies five themes that capture how these narratives are challenged and complicated by interlocutors in their historical memory: 1. “We wanted to believe it was true”: The Historic Bond between the People and Army 2. “It’s suffocating”: The Armed Forces as Selfless Provider 3. “A diplomatic win at best”: (Capable of) Protecting the Nation Since 1973 4. “Wide roads and empty compounds is not progress”: The Armed Forces as Masters of Development 5. “Maybe for boys who grew up extra spoiled”: A Factory of Men