Bonaparte in Egypt and the Egyptians of To-day

by Abdullah Browne

Though the outline I have given of the history of Egypt under Mahomed Ali and his successors has been of the briefest, it is sufficient for the purpose of this volume. It would no doubt be a study of great interest to see in some detail how the varying characters and actions of their rulers and the events these gave rise to affected the people, but the effects thus produced have proved for the most part of a purely temporary nature, and have been of such conflicting characters that without a very elaborate study it would be well-nigh impossible to trace their influence upon the Egyptian of to-day. Fortunately for my reader's patience, what we have to do with is the influences that, broad and general in their results, have also been lasting and are therefore still in operation, and just as we may appreciate the force and volume of the mighty Mississippi without studying, as Mark Twain and his brother pilots had need to do, its ever-varying currents and eddies, its snags and snarls, so we may learn the strength and tendency of Egyptian opinion without stopping to analyse all the incidents that have helped or hindered its development.

As I have said in my last chapter, the full development of the Egyptian character dates only from the evacuation of Fachoda. As yet, indeed, the people have taken nothing more than the very first steps towards the adoption of a definite and clearly shaped policy such as can alone give them a truly national and distinctive character. During the whole of the past century, beaten hither and thither by fluctuating influences and impulses, the constant uncertainty that overhung their future reacted upon their thoughts and rendered these as unstable as the events by which they were stirred, but since the commencement of the English occupation influences have been at work with steadily growing effect consolidating and directing the thoughts and aspirations of the whole body of the people and gradually creating a true public opinion such as has never before existed. These influences have been but three in number—the increased acquaintance of the people with European civilisation, their increased knowledge of the social and political condition of the Mahomedan countries of the world, and the development of the Arabic Press.

Except in so far as it has contributed to the strengthening and enlarging of these influences through the facilities it has afforded for their operation, the English administration of the country has had but little effect upon its political or mental development as a nation, although upon the personal character of the people, that is to say upon the people as individuals, it has had a much greater and stronger effect than either the English or the Egyptians realise. The young Egyptian who has grown up under English rule is of altogether a different type to that which his father was. Whether of the highest or of the lowest rank, he has a conception of his personal rights and responsibilities that places him socially and politically upon a totally different plane to that of his elders. The general effect thus produced is that he is more self-reliant, more independent, and less willing to submit to restraint of any kind than was his father. That this change is the source of some evil is as certain as natural, but that on the whole it is a change for the better, and one tending to the elevation of the people, is equally certain. Eventually it must have a powerful influence upon the political feeling of the country. As yet those who are most strongly affected by it are for the most part too young to have any very definite or influential place in the political affairs of the country, but they are gradually swelling the ranks of the journalists, and in but a few years will be the men in whose hands will be gathered most of the strings by which the people at large are likely to be most strongly moved. Of all the tasks, therefore, that the Government of the country and those responsible for it are called upon to perform, if they would ensure the future stability of the present prosperity and the real welfare of the people, there is none more important than that of endeavouring by every legitimate and possible means to guide the development of this change into healthy and vigorous directions.

Joined with that loyalty to Islam and the Turkish Empire I have shown to be dominant forces in the country, the three influences I have just described are those which are to-day, and must be for long to come, the real controlling influences in the political and social growth of the Egyptians. It is conceivable, of course, that events might possibly arise to divert, nullify, or even destroy the effects of one or more of these influences; but this is a contingency so remote and so little likely to occur that it is needless to discuss it here. It will be well, however, for us to see a little more of the nature and effect of these influences as they actually exist.

That these influences have been healthy will have been gathered from what I have already said of them, but it is necessary to show in what way and how far they have been so. First, then, let us see what has been the effect of the increased acquaintance of the people with European civilisation. Omitting all consideration of such minor effects as the adoption of changes in dress, in the furnishing of their houses and other details of their daily life, the effect that is most potent for good is one that goes much deeper and further than such merely superficial matters as these. This effect is the constantly increasing desire for the improvement of the social and political conditions that prevail. Keenly awakened to a sense of the deficiencies from which they have suffered in the past, the people are more and more being influenced by the wish and the will for self-improvement. As yet, however, their views are but vague and indefinite, and lie rather in the direction of ambitious dreams than of purpose-giving aspirations. But though they are eager, rather than emulous, to be regarded as the intellectual equals of the European peoples, it is certain that this desire is at least one of the most powerful of the impulses by which the life of the nation is being stirred.

As we have seen, Mahomed Ali, though a Moslem and a native of Turkey, was essentially a European. His knowledge of and sympathy with Islamic ideals were of the slightest. Familiar as he necessarily was with Oriental thought and life, the Egyptian and Arab were to him more alien than the Western Europeans. Hence his love of European society, his passion for innovation on European lines, and his frequent sacrifice of Mahomedan sentiment to European utilitarianism. All that was best in the man was strikingly European in type and character, all that was bad was eminently Oriental. Had he had such advantages of early education and such surroundings as Bonaparte had had, he would in all probability, nay, certainly, have proved a really great man, a man of high ambitions and great if not glorious achievements. As it was, hampered by the want of the most elementary education, cramped in aspiration by the narrowness of his experience, and with a mind vitiated by the false ideals of those amidst whom he was reared and lived and by the evils of the only political system he had any knowledge of, it is not surprising that his rapid rise quickly brought him to a point at which he became the victim rather than the ruler of affairs. His personal influence with the people was but small, for the popularity that led them to choose him as their Governor did not long stand the strains he placed upon it, and in carrying out his schemes for the Europeanising of the country he met with more opposition than approval and failed to awaken any desire for the change he was so anxious to bring about. He succeeded, indeed, in rendering the people more familiar with European thought and ideals than they had been, and thus set in motion the current of thought that is to-day leading the Egyptian to look to the West for his standard of social and political life. As we have seen, the people had been quite ready and willing to adopt all that they found good in the methods of the French, and now that Frenchmen and other Europeans came amongst them, not as conquerors and dictators, but as the guests and friends of a Moslem Governor, they were much more willing to hear their views and profit from their advice and instruction. The good results that might have sprung from this cause were, however, very largely barred by the spirit of opposition created by Mahomed Ali's attempts to force the adoption of unwelcome innovations. It was therefore rather in spite, than in consequence of his European tendencies that during his reign the Egyptians began to have a clearer conception of and more friendly feelings towards European civilisation as a whole. Under the French, with all the faults of their administration, a conviction had spread in favour of the advantages of a regularly constituted and properly organised government, and with this had also come the recognition of the principle that it should be the aim of a government to protect the interests of the people, and that it was for the good of all that the various classes should be treated with equity. These are things taught indeed as part of the law of Islam, but they were parts of that law of which the people had had no practical experience, and the discovery they had thus made that Christian nations and peoples could and did hold out as ideals, and still more, to a certain extent bring into actual practice the teachings of the Moslem faith, awakened in them a new interest in the civilisation to which they had so long felt the most irreconcilable hostility. It was under the French that these thoughts first began to impress the people. Under Mahomed Ali they were extended and grew more familiar, but still, hindered and checked by the unfavourable conditions that encompassed them, they made but little substantial progress. Yet, in defiance of all difficulties, they took solid root, and when later on, under the successors of Mahomed Ali, they were presented under a more favourable aspect, they began to sway even the classes that had at first most strenuously opposed them.

The steady growth of the desire for reform that has thus gone on from the time of the French invasion, has been almost entirely spontaneous. It has sprung, as I have said, from the increased acquaintance of the people with European ideals brought about by the presence of Europeans in their country, but this presence, which has been the chief cause of the progress made, has at the same time been the greatest obstacle in the way of that progress. To the present day this is so. All that is reactionary in the spirit of the country to-day is almost wholly and directly due to the presence of Europeans in it, and the consequences entailed by that presence. Again and again have I heard some enthusiastic advocate of progress and reform silenced and put to shame by some quietly made allusion to some of the evils nurtured by the European Consulates, or some of the anti-Islamic laxities, the presence of Europeans, and the political influence they possess, force upon the people. This is indeed the great hindrance to progress, the drag that stops the Egyptian from advancing as he might and could. Yet, in spite of all difficulties, that which is really good in the intercourse of the two peoples is bearing fruit. Of necessity the first produce of the new feelings, thoughts, and aspirations, stirring to activity the long latent abilities of the people, has been little more than a few weak saplings of progress, too frail and immature to send forth aught more than a few fragile blossoms; but the crop is thriving, and though as yet rich in neither quality nor quantity, it is the fair promise of a sound, healthy, and abundant harvest to come. It was not until the first half of the nineteenth century had passed that the appreciation of European civilisation became at all general; it is to-day almost universal. Nor is it less powerful for good that it appeals to various classes with varying aspects. To many it is no doubt nothing more than an appreciation of the physical advantages offered to the individual by railways, electric tramways, telegraphs, and telephones, and the hundreds of other minor inventions that add to the pleasure or tend to the comfort or convenience of life; to others it is the higher side of civilisation, its intellectual and social advantages that appeal most forcibly, but these are at the same time appalled and repelled by its evils, and thus the very men that it is most desirable should be most strongly influenced are held back from accepting much that they would otherwise welcome. And these men, while always candid and open in their intercourse with Europeans in the expression of their sense of the merits of European civilisation, and of the backward condition of their own countrymen, are withheld, by their fear of appearing discourteous or offensive, from even hinting at their perception of its evils. Thus, left in ignorance of one of the chief reasons why the Egyptian does not more enthusiastically adopt and practise that which he so freely commends, Europeans are wrongly led to believe that the appreciation he expresses is not sincere. It is not so. He thoroughly comprehends the advantages he commends, but at the same time he sees clearly enough, what most strangely the European seems incapable of perceiving, that the unrestricted adoption of Western standards could not fail to set loose a flood of evils far outweighing all the benefits it could confer. Hence at the present day the problem that of all others attracts discussion in native circles in Egypt is, How may we secure the benefits, without incurring the evils of European civilisation?

This, then, is the net result of a century of almost daily increasing acquaintance with the people of Europe and the civilisation of which they boast. It is a problem that many earnest men are studying in various parts of the Mahomedan world, and which is tending to solve itself by slow but yet perceptible steps. In Egypt the most hopeful feature of the difficulty to be faced is, that no one appreciates the need of reform more than, or indeed as much as, the Egyptian himself. Fortunately he is by no means inclined to accept too hastily the often ill-considered advice Europeans are prone to give him, for he can see, as they cannot, the real difficulties to be overcome. Rightly comprehended, then, the very slowness of the progress being made, so far from being discouraging or to the discredit of the Egyptians is quite otherwise, for it shows that the advance being made is sure and well-grounded, and not a mere passing impulse, and it is a guarantee that all further progress will be well-considered and deliberate, and will thus be certain of producing more enduring benefit than any hastily adopted reforms, however brilliant their first effects might seem to be, would be likely to secure.

Directly connected with the healthy influence which is thus at work in Egypt and other parts of the East is another of a very different character in some respects, but tending in exactly the same direction—the elevation of the moral, social, and political standards of the peoples affected by it. It is, however, of much more recent origin, for it was not until after the English occupation that the Egyptians, profiting from their increased intercourse with Europeans, and the development of the native Press, of which they are such avid readers, began to give attention to the condition of Islam outside the narrow limits of the Ottoman Empire. To the present day the fellaheen indeed are indisposed to credit the fact that a majority of the Moslems of to-day are not only not subjects of the Turkish Sultan but do not speak either the Arabic or Turkish language. Naturally the English occupation turned the attention of the more enlightened classes to the question of England's relations with her Mahomedan subjects in India and elsewhere. Their conception of those relations were at first drawn from uncertain and most unreliable sources, and were scarcely less accurate than unfavourable. Thanks mainly and directly to the honesty of the Moayyad, the leading Mahomedan journal of the country, the ignorance that formerly existed has largely disappeared, and the news-reading public are now able to follow the progress of events in India and other Moslem lands with a fair knowledge of the circumstances affecting them.

The interest thus excited in the affairs of their brother Mahomedans in other lands is steadily increasing, and this has led the Arabic journals to pay special attention to all that appears in the European Press with reference to any matter in which Moslems are concerned. The outcome of this is clearly marked. The Egyptians no longer regard their country as they did a few years ago, as an isolated unit, but see it as part of a great whole of which it is its right and privilege to be the head. And with this increased knowledge of the Islamic world has grown side by side an increased knowledge of the condition of the European nations and more particularly of the Great Powers. Throughout Islam it is now recognised that if these Powers are no longer inclined to enter upon crusades against the Moslem states it is not from any enlarged tolerance for Islam nor from any peace-decreeing doctrines of Christianity or civilisation, but because they are restrained by the political conditions controlling their relations with each other. This is a matter on which it is no use saying smooth things that have no basis of actual fact. There is not a single Mahomedan in any part of the world who believes any of the many protestations of friendship for Islam made by nations or peoples or governments. That these professions are genuine enough for the moment, that they are not based upon either falsehood or dishonesty of intention is not asserted. Under existing conditions they are honest and true enough, but they depend wholly upon the continuance of those conditions. Side by side with the growth of this knowledge and the diffusion of the ideas to which it gives rise, there has been a similar increase in the knowledge that the various Moslem peoples have of each other and a growing perception of the causes that have led to the decadence of Islam. Of these latter, as every student of history knows, the two principal have been disunion among the Mahomedan peoples and the stagnation of social and intellectual progress that followed the overthrow of the political power of Islam. The recognition of these facts by the Moslems themselves has pointed them directly to the obvious remedy—the reunion of Islam and the development of the social and intellectual capacities of its peoples. Hence the rise of that Pan-Islamism which has of late been so much discussed and is as yet so completely misunderstood in Europe and by Europeans living in the East.