Down memory lane
Below, extracts from Frances Donaldson's The British Council: The First Fifty Years (Butler and Tanner Ltd, 1984) shed light on the institute's long history in Egypt
"Sir Percy [Loraine, High Commissioner to Egypt in the late thirties] remarked in an introductory passage [of a request to government for some promotion of British culture] that, although he would confine himself to a discussion of conditions in Egypt, the story he had to tell was the same in other parts of the Near East, in Arab countries and in Persia... He then said: 'The failure of England to make use of forty years from 1882 to 1922 to create for herself a strong cultural position in Egypt is one of the most extraordinary phenomena of our illogical Imperial story... The net result is that the declaration of Egyptian Independence in 1922 found France still predominant in the cultural field.'
"In the second half of this memorandum, Loraine outlined a policy for the future, which included the development and maintenance of British schools, both for the education of the British and to increase the number of Egyptian and other oriental boys and girls educated in British institutions. (In an earlier paragraph he had stated that for every Egyptian reviving an English education in 1930-1, nine were receiving a French, while between 1927-8 and 1930-1 the number of British schools diminished by 10 per cent and at American by two per cent, while those at French schools increased by 10 per cent and those at Italian schools by 20 per cent.)
"He asked for a British Library of Information with a central establishment at Cairo and later with branches in other capitals of the Near East, cultural features to be added; for films of current events to be shown on the screens of Egyptian cinemas... for the encouragement of Egyptian students in the United Kingdom; ('At present it is difficult to get an Egyptian into an English University. I of course realise there are difficulties in this respect owing to the overcrowding of universities. However, France makes no such difficulties and every Egyptian student is welcomed there.')
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"The teaching of English was of primary importance and schools as well as institutes were needed. Institutes had been open in Cairo and Alexandria in 1938, and by 1943 there were many more in the Middle East area... The more important Institutes were as follows: in Egypt, at Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Assiut, Mansura, Mosul: in Cyprus, at Nicosia, Famagusta, Limassol, Larnaca and Kyrenia: in Palestine, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus and Nazareth; and there were Institutes in Aden, Tehran and Addis Ababa...
"In Egypt particularly, schools were not even more important than the Institutes. Immediately before the war it was estimated that there was a Maltese and Capriot population of 30,000 and a United Kingdom population, apart from the army, of about 7,000. Reporting, [C.A.F.] Dundas [British Council Representative in Egypt in 1939] wrote: 'British parents are as a rule unwilling to send their children to Egyptian schools and therefore turn to the schools of the various foreign communities, French, Greek and pre-war, German and Italian. As a result, the vast majority of British children were being brought up with little or no knowledge of English and no knowledge of the British Empire or British ways of life and thought.'
"Dr Leslie Phillips, Director of the Institute in Alexandria from 1942 to 1946, said that from his observation the French method of setting up first-class educational settlements, staffed from the French educational system, was 'a good deal more likely to bring home to the bacon.' He cites the case of a British girl who had been educated at the French Lycée and who was 'not only saturated in things French...but she had at the same time learned to ignore, or even to despise, our own cultural achievements', a fact which cannot be thought very surprising considering how little attention we had until recently paid to them ourselves. However, the Annual Report of the British Council for 1940- 1 states that in the four big cities of Egypt -- Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said and Suez -- all United Kingdom, Maltese and Cypriot children could now obtain a British education whatever the means of their parents. This had been achieved either through scholarships, or, as in Alexandria, by financing and opening schools specially for Maltese and Cypriot children.
"The best known school in the area was Victoria College at Alexandria, which had been run for forty years on the lines of an English public school and had attracted the sons of many of the leaders throughout the Middle East. When this was bombed in 1941, the Council subsided its re-opening in Cairo and the majority of the borders returned immediately. In August 1941, Ifor Evans, arguing that there should be a greater balance between the expenditure in the Middle East and that in South America, said: 'For instance, our contribution to schools in South America.' Victoria College was given importance because the Council looked for long- term results from the youth countries they worked in and it was normal to expect to find the leaders of tomorrow in the equivalent of the public school system. Yet criticisms of a bias in favour of the upper classes were not justified. The council owned three and supported eleven schools in Egypt alone.
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"Egypt has a particular significance in the history of the British Council because it was from there that in 1934 Sir Percy Loraine wrote a memorandum (quoted earlier) of primary importance in pressing the case for cultural relations; and, secondly, because the Council's first overseas representation opened in Cairo in 1938.
"After 1956 nothing remained of the pre-Suez network of Institutes and supported schools. All British property was sequestrated and an entirely fresh start had to be made..."
