Britain in Egypt

Egypt under the British tends to be looked at now through a post-Suez lens – an inevitable disaster and the last puncturing of a doomed empire. But in fact Egypt for many years was the cornerstone of British success across the Middle East and North Africa. This image of empire was shattered after the First World War by the development of nationalism in Egypt – the foundation and growth of the nationalist Wafd party led by Saad Zaghlul and the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Throughout this period Britain continued to control the Nile Valley – under Field Marshal Allenby and then George Lloyd – through a policy of deliberate containment of nationalism and a slow relinquishing of powers (culminating in the Anglo-Egypt Treaty of 1936). This book will be the first to study that process in the Nile Valley in any great detail and contains previously unpublished primary sources.

Painstakingly researched from the viewpoint of the colonizer, the study explores imperial relations between Britain and Egypt. The author's major argument is that the nationalist Wafd Party posed a greater threat to Britain’s dominance in the Nile Valley than communism, Pan-Arabism, or Pan-Islamism ... [T]he text successfully sorts through key decision-makers' personalities, affiliations, and inclinations. Summing Up: Recommended., [T]his study is substantial, being of chief interest to specialist imperial historians, albeit with references, signposts, and dialectical stimulation also useful for general and postcolonial scholars., Jayne Gifford has produced an important and timely work. Meticulously researched, well-written and deeply insightful, her book is an important contribution to our understanding of British imperialism overall and in the Middle East in particular: what it was and what it was supposed to achieve. Scholars of Britain’s interwar foreign and imperial policy will benefit enormously from this detailed analysis of the place of Egypt in those areas of British strategic thinking and planning, as will contemporary policy makers who wish to learn from the past with regard to dealing with changing social and political dynamics in the region., An excellent history of Britain’s strategic focus of Egypt in the interwar years, and an important contribution to understanding the complex background of the regional situation today. Britain was a major force is shaping the modern Middle East, and Gifford provides a clear, deeply researched, and highly accessible account of this critical phase in its relationship with Egypt., Jayne Gifford’s ground breaking new study of Anglo-Egyptian relations between 1919 and 1931 based on multiple archives fills an important gap. At a time of rising nationalism, decision-makers wanted to maintain a foothold in a strategically vital country linking the empire via Suez. Debates between Whitehall and the men on the spot on the best way forward are carefully sifted. The result is an absorbing and illuminating portrayal of a neglected dimension of British imperial history, including colourful portraits of the British High Commissioners in Cairo during this turbulent period.

Jayne Gifford is Lecturer in Modern History at the University of East Anglia.