Social history plays an important role in thought today. One strand of social history is comparative social history. For various reasons comparative social history, while implied in all social history, is much less developed than other forms of social history. This is true all over the world and is perhaps a reflection of the residual ties of history to ideas of nationalism and natural uniqueness. I don't know. What follows, though, is an experiment in moving ahead, in writing modern Egyptian history as comparative social history.
I would begin by hypothesising that in the middle of the 19th century Egypt, like other countries, became a capitalist nation state and did so by pursuing roughly the same approach as did Italy in this period. It pursued a form of hegemony in which the ruling class entered the age of the capitalist nation state, deflecting class conflict by playing the northern worker off against the southern peasant -- hence the reference to an Egyptian Risorgimento. I am using Italy here not in a normative sense, but because its history is the best-studied of several different possible examples of this form of hegemony, among them Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria and Spain. Of course, Italy and Egypt are in point of detail quite different, a point to which I will return.
In the middle of the 19th century, i.e. the age of Ismail, one could note the country was in the process of becoming a limited monarchy, the power of the throne limited by the debt agreements and, after 1878, by the ministerial system. It was a country that, much like Italy, was struggling to free itself from an older empire. In Italy the Hapsburg Empire still controlled the military and played divide-and-rule in Italy as the Ottomans did in Egypt; as Isma'il made endless gestures to the Porte, so too the House of Savoy to Napoleon III and to Austria. There is even some similarity in the forms of struggle for independence of these two countries -- between the approach to independence via international diplomacy as reflected in Cavour or in Nubar Pasha, versus the approach to independence through struggle, and radical dictatorship from the army as represented by Garibaldi and by Urabi versus a spiritualist approach to independence represented by a Mazzini or a Marsafi. The criticism which Gramsci makes of Italian independence as coming at the expense of the Italian south could be levelled just as well at the Egyptian independence movement. Urabi was oblivious to the Sa'id even when he acknowledged its bravery.
What then of colonialism? For the older generation of readers in Egypt and elsewhere there was one salient difference between these two countries which rendered all similarities unimportant. Italy gained independence and industrialised and Egypt became a British colony whose development was hampered by that fact. During the heyday of colonialism that was a major consideration, but today, when one looks at the youth of Egypt, or of Italy or of the other countries, most of whom have been cheated by today's state policies, the fact of past colonialism gives way to the more oppressive fact of the present day hegemony which these youths must now contend with, colonial legacy or no colonial legacy. This is not to overlook colonialism, but simply to note that for this new generation the colonial legacy has a meaning different than the one it had for our generation.
What then of colonialism? Recent research suggests that the British tended to build up what already existed, a point one can extrapolate from such phrases as the "Indianisation of the Egyptian Administration under British Rule", a phrase alluding to a prior history of the British in India. In this prior history the British came to grips with the fact that India would not become like England. I would term the outcome the Italian Road, and I believe the British came to grips with this Italian Road in India after the Mutiny of 1858, and then later brought it with them to Egypt. The outcome-colonialism in Egypt was an Italian Road system, one which was already there in any case and one which still exists today. Colonialism in Egypt, as in so many other countries, appears as a way rulers could stay in power by turning to outsiders for help when they were challenged.
Consider now, if one will, the model institution of the period, the army. One does not need to be a specialist in armies to learn that in the 19th century residents of Cairo and of the main cities of the Delta did not serve in the army "by ancient custom", that students, religious teachers and sole supporters were also exempt along with all those who could pay their way out. What stands out is the factor of class and the factor of religion, the hallmarks of the Italian Road form of hegemony. It was the lower class Sa'idis who were disproportionately drafted. In addition it seems unlikely that military service converted them to a consciousness of the nation and citizenship in some generic sense as Khaled Fahmy has been claiming in his otherwise interesting book, All the Pasha's Men: Mehmet Ali, his Army and the Making of Modern Egypt. Those left to serve did not know for how long they would be in the army, nor when they would be paid. Flight from military service was not uncommon nor was self-mutilation. Poor quality food and medicine were the general rule. The results were predictable; the sick rate among soldiers sent to the Sudan approached 50 percent late in the century; troops quartered in Upper Egypt made up for their shortages of food and other supplies by robbing the people of the area they were quartered in. One can only imagine the form of political economy in which this could be tolerated. A similar characterisation could be made of the Italian army. Its abuse of the south in the name of suppressing brigandage was legendary.
A look at the new economy shows in both countries that capitalist accumulation took place at the expense of the southern peasantry, especially in agriculture. In both countries, a tradition of seasonal migrant labour which came north to help with the harvest became an annual phenomenon. In both countries these workers were perceived as a threat to law and order by the northern police.
A look at the organisation of culture in Egypt likewise suggests an Italian Road type hegemony. Literature, heritage and romanticism stand out. Positivism has a toe-hold in the north but the south belongs to the Croce-type romantic figures, the great examples of which include Taha Hussein and Mahmoud Abbas Al-Aqqad.
Yet our common sense tells us this is of secondary importance. Egypt is not like Italy; it is like Russia. Cairo is like Moscow. It is a Russian Road state, not an Italian Road state. What does that mean exactly? The Russian Road approach to hegemony as one finds it in Russia, Turkey, China, Japan as well as in many other countries is a strategy of the ruling class based on deflecting class conflict into caste conflict. The Russian Road is typically a hegemony marked by an elite urban culture with its museums, a culture which studies and controls the lesser castes. Pseudo-scientific theories, such as Stalin's theory of nationalities, are promoted in this hegemony about the levels of culture of different groups and these theories are used with devastating effect against various persecuted groups.
When one takes this model and applies it to Egypt what fits is the casteism of the Ottoman heritage. What equally fits is the importance of the Napoleonic Law Code and then finally of Mohamed Ali's Siyasatname of 1837. It is noteworthy, however, when one looks closely, that the Siyasatname with its centralised Khedivial chancery was in fact continuously modified. Caste-like centralism does exist; the question is how well it can explain the main dynamics of ruler and ruled.
Another feature of the Russian Road model is the urban-rural dualism. A claim can be made that this exists in Egypt, but it exists, in my view, as a subordinate feature of the hegemony. Obviously Cairo is overwhelmingly important: that said, it is not true that Cairo is like Istanbul or Moscow, it is not cut off from the countryside, it is in fact more like Rome, the place where the urban and the rural meet. Cairo is not the home of a high culture which is found only there. From the 19th century onward Egyptian intellectuals, the bearers of the high culture, were often enough born in the countryside. It was there they received their formative education.
Furthermore, if one looks at the traditional dynamics of persuasion and coercion typical of a Russian Road regime, more differences emerge between the institutions of Egypt and those of a Turkey or a Russia. In a typical Russian Road regime, when the state was or is strong, the secular structure of the capital city projects a militantly secular ideology -- like Iraqi Baathism or Bolshevism or Kemalism. Only when it is weak does it go for Pan-Slavism or Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism. The secular wing of the state is notably autocratic, making demands on the population for money and for service. At some distance from the capital city are shrine towns like Kazan in Russia, Kerbala in Iraq, Mashshad in Iran, etc. The religious structure centered in these shrine towns is notable for its love mysticism, its Fatima or its Sophia. By way of contrast, in Egypt, the Azhar, an enormous bureaucratic Vatican-like structure dominates religious discourse. Shrine towns like the Ahmadi Mosque in Tanta exist but are reduced to annual pilgrimage points and are much attacked by strong trends in the society, e.g. the Salafis.
Cairo culture, while often secular, is not ideologically or militantly so. Moreover, the Azhar culture shares much with the kulliyat al-adab (faculties of arts), both teaching religious and secular subjects, in somewhat different forms but with a great deal of overlap.
Rule by caste, which is the hallmark of the Russian Road and which underlies the dominant paradigm for writing modern Egyptian history, involves a hierarchising of different social groups which are characterised as castes or closed cultural communities. In a Russian Road regime, a kind of caste chauvinism of the working class of the dominant group is encouraged by state education and propaganda as a way to make workers feel a solidarity with their bosses, as opposed to with workers in other lesser caste groups, thereby deflecting or abating class conflict. Groups exist in Egypt which politicians potentially could claim are low status caste groups but, for whatever reasons, the ruling class has not availed itself of this option. There exist in Egypt Nubians, Gypsies, Bedouins in the Sinai and in the Western Desert. These groups are defined, at least in the popular imagination, as closed cultures, but this fact does not lead to their wholesale oppression, oppression being the fate of the poor defined by region and not by caste. No Egyptian regime has stigmatised a caste group the way that the Turks or the Iraqis have stigmatised and persecuted the Kurds or the Armenians.
Finally, Russian Road regimes are characterised by specific trends in history writing. Historians in Russian Road states teach that the country is the state and the state is the capital city. The rest of the people are not often mentioned. In such contexts history becomes an elite urban activity; often it is world history or international relations or elite party history or elite biography. What is openly opposed by Russian Road regime intellectuals is social history which, as a result, is largely written by foreigners and refugees. The reason for this is logical. Social history serves to integrate the society as a whole, serving to historicise or make historically significant large numbers of people. In Russian Road states, this is not what the regime wants; the ruling class is not going to use the strategy of civil society and does not want many people to be significant.
In Egypt the Russian road type of history writing did exist but as a lesser genre. It existed in specific contexts when it was supported, as, for example, when it was supported by the monarchy and by its hired historians or by Arab nationalist historians or Islamists. The main trend, the trend one associates with the Egyptian university, is social history.
Finally, in Italian Road societies, such as Italy and Egypt, prose dominates over poetry in terms of prestige; in Russian Road regimes, despite the presence of prose writers, the reverse tends to be true. In part this point can be linked to the nature of the audience. In Egypt the audience arises from within the civil society, one often composed of newspaper readers, while in Iraq, with its more rural and less literate population, orality plays a larger role, the great novelists writing almost more for the world than for the country.
To sum up, this paper is a foray into rethinking Egyptian history in terms of comparative history, an attempt to widen and deepen the existing social history. Perhaps, in a few years, professors and students will do their research through e-mail and pick up the details they need from around the world. As this takes place some of the real specificity of each country will emerge. At such a time, less will appear to be unique than is the case today. It will become clearer what a historian actually needs to explain and what is common throughout a range of cultures.
The writer is professor of history at Temple University and the author of The Islamic Roots of Capitalism and Beyond Eurocentrism: A New View of Modern World History, Syracuse, 1996
