Goldberg, Yonatan.
Pluricultural Egypt: 1803-2006. 134 pages. Alexandria: Press universitaires, 2008.
In Middle Eastern studies, it's very nearly a cliché to compare the two successor states of the Ottoman Empire created in the aftermath of the Syria crisis of 1839-1840. Deprived of Egyptian revenues, the rump Ottoman Empire found itself exposed to the dubious mercies of the Russian Empire and the emerging nationalities of Rumelia, the Greeat War extinguishing this state and limitng it to the territories of western and central Anatolia. Egypt, in marked contrast, managed to adroitly play the French and the Russians off against the British long enough to allow it to bergin its industrialization and comence a territorial expansion (Sudan in the middle of the 19th century, Libya at the century's end, Syria and the Hejaz Arabia in the aftermath the Great War), leading us to the present where Egypt shares more similarities with the Two Sicilies or Castile than not.
How did Egypt survive where Turkey failed? Goldberg argues that it's Egypt's long tradition of pluriculturalism that saved it. As he notes, in its declining years Turkey reacted to the secessionist aspirations of its minority nationalities (its minority Christian nationalities) by wholesale massacre, intensifying the Ottoman state's existential crisis. As early as the reign of
Muhammad Ali, in marked contrast, Egypt eagerly sought out foreign experts from across Europe to aid in his crash modernization program and even attracted settlement from the Two Sicilies and the southern Balkans to a booming Alexandria. The terrific pragmatism that drove the expansion of Egypt paid little attention to the ethnicity of the Egyptian state's subjects-then-critizens save inasmuch as they threatened the state's unity and sovereignty. In addition, the populationist theories that took into account the Egyptian population's decline from a 13th century pak population to less than half that in the early 19th century encouraged the leadership class to favour immmigrations as a way to avoid extinction, again so long as these minorities by conquest or by immigration did not threaten the state. The dubious case of the anti-Turkish sentiments of Aelxandrian Greeks aside, this threat was simply not felt. Accordingly, these attitudes aided Egypt's 20th century expansion and new immigrations, whether we're talking about the immigrations of European Jews to southern Syria, the French-influenced Maronites of Mount Lebanon, the animist and Christian tribes of southern Sudan, and from the results of past migrations, including groups as various as Armenians, Kurds, French, and Indonesians. Immigrations will only intensify, for as Godlberg notes Egypt will be able to maintain its 55 millions only through the movement of peoples from its limitrophic countries to the territories of the Egyptian state.
Goldberg's survey impresses me, but my one main fault with it is that it doesn't provide any but the briefing comparisons with states pluricultural by immigration like La Plata, Canada, France, and the Cape, or states pluricultural through commingling of native populations like Austria, Ruthenia, the Netherlands, and Prussia. There would have been a great deal to be learned about Egypt from these comparisons--is Mount Lebanon's restiveness similar to that of the Walloons? does the Argentine nationalizing ideology compare to that of Egypt's? is the South American movement to Portugal and Spain akin to that of Mesopotamians and Yemenis to the Nile and Syria?--and so I have to criticize Goldberg for the excessive shortness of his otherwise excellent survey.
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