Deferring discussion of this broader development, let us follow a trifle further the course of the more restricted Arab nationalism within the Turkish Empire. Despite the Pan-Islamic sentiment evoked by the European aggressions of 1911-12, nationalist feeling was continually aroused by the Ottomanizing measures of the Young-Turk government, and the independence agitation was presently in full swing once more. In 1913 an Arabian nationalist congress convened in Paris and revolutionary propaganda was inaugurated on an increased scale. When the Great War broke out next year, Turkey's Arab provinces were seething with seditious unrest.[145] The Turkish authorities took stern measures against possible trouble, imprisoning and executing all prominent nationalists upon whom they could lay their hands, while the proclamation of the "Holy War" rallied a certain portion of Arab public opinion to the Turkish side, especially since the conquest of Egypt was a possibility. But as the war dragged on the forces of discontent once more raised their heads. In 1916 the revolt of the Shereef of Mecca gave the signal for the downfall of Turkish rule. This revolt, liberally backed by England, gained the active or passive support of the Arab elements throughout the Turkish Empire. Inspired by Allied promises of national independence of a most alluring character, the Arabs fought strenuously against the Turks and were a prime factor in the débâcle of Ottoman military power in the autumn of 1918.[146]
Before discussing the momentous events which have occurred in the Arab provinces of the former Ottoman Empire since 1918, let us consider nationalist developments in the Arabized regions of North Africa lying to the westward. Of these developments the most important is that of Egypt. The mass of the Egyptian people is to-day, as in Pharaoh's time, of the old "Nilotic" stock. A slow, self-contained peasant folk, the Egyptian "fellaheen" have submitted passively to a long series of conquerors, albeit this passivity has been occasionally broken by outbursts of volcanic fury presently dying away into passivity once more. Above the Nilotic masses stands a relatively small upper class descended chiefly from Egypt's more recent Asiatic conquerors—Arabs, Kurds, Circassians, Albanians, and Turks. In addition to this upper class, which until the English occupation monopolized all political power, there are large European "colonies" with "extraterritorial" rights, while a further complication is added by the persistence of a considerable native Christian element, the "Copts," who refused to turn Mohammedan at the Arab conquest and who to-day number fully one-tenth of the total population.
With such a medley of races, creeds, and cultures, and with so prolonged a tradition of foreign domination, Egypt might seem a most unlikely milieu for the growth of nationalism. On the other hand, Egypt has been more exposed to Western influences than any other part of the Near East. Bonaparte's invasion at the close of the eighteenth century profoundly affected Egyptian life, and though the French were soon expelled, European influences continued to permeate the valley of the Nile. Mehemet Ali, the able Albanian adventurer who made himself master of Egypt after the downfall of French rule, realized the superiority of European methods and fostered a process of Europeanization which, however superficial, resulted in a wide dissemination of Western ideas. Mehemet Ali's policy was continued by his successors. That magnificent spendthrift Khedive Ismail, whose reckless contraction of European loans was the primary cause of European intervention, prided himself on his "Europeanism" and surrounded himself with Europeans.
Indeed, the first stirrings of Egyptian nationalism took the form of a protest against the noxious, parasitical "Europeanism" of Khedive Ismail and his courtiers. Sober-minded Egyptians became increasingly alarmed at the way Ismail was mortgaging Egypt's independence by huge European loans and sucking its life-blood by merciless taxation. Inspired consciously or unconsciously by the Western concepts of "nation" and "patriotism," these men desired to stay Ismail's destructive course and to safeguard Egypt's future. In fact, their efforts were directed not merely against the motley crew of European adventurers and concessionaires who were luring the Khedive into fresh extravagances, but also against the complaisant Turkish and Circassian pashas, and the Armenian and Syrian usurers, who were the instruments of Ismail's will. The nascent movement was thus basically a "patriotic" protest against all those, both foreigners and native-born, who were endangering the country. This showed clearly in the motto adopted by the agitators—the hitherto unheard-of slogan: "Egypt for the Egyptians!"
Into this incipient ferment there was presently injected the dynamic personality of Djemal-ed-Din. Nowhere else did this extraordinary man exert so profound and lasting an influence as in Egypt. It is not too much to say that he is the father of every shade of Egyptian nationalism. He influenced not merely violent agitators like Arabi Pasha but also conservative reformers like Sheikh Mohammed Abdou, who realized Egypt's weakness and were content to labour patiently by evolutionary methods for distant goals.
For the moment the apostles of violent action had the stage. In 1882 a revolutionary agitation broke out headed by Arabi Pasha, an army officer, who, significantly enough, was of fellah origin, the first man of Nilotic stock to sway Egypt's destinies in modern times. Raising their slogan, "Egypt for the Egyptians," the revolutionists sought to drive all "foreigners," both Europeans and Asiatics, from the country. Their attempt was of course foredoomed to failure. A massacre of Europeans in the port-city of Alexandria at once precipitated European intervention. An English army crushed the revolutionists at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, and after this one battle, disorganized, bankrupt Egypt submitted to British rule, personified by Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer. The khedivial dynasty was, to be sure, retained, and the native forms of government respected, but all real power centred in the hands of the British "Financial Adviser," the representative of Britain's imperial will.
For twenty-five years Lord Cromer ruled Egypt, and the record of this able proconsul will place him for ever in the front rank of the world's great administrators. His strong hand drew Egypt from hopeless bankruptcy into abounding prosperity. Material well-being, however, did not kill Egyptian nationalism. Scattered to the winds before the British bayonet charges, the seeds of unrest slowly germinated beneath the fertile Nilotic soil. Almost imperceptible at first under the numbing shock of Tel-el-Kebir, nationalist sentiment grew steadily as the years wore on, and by the closing decade of the nineteenth century it had become distinctly perceptible to keen-sighted European observers. Passing through Egypt in 1895, the well-known African explorer Schweinfurth was struck with the psychological change which had occurred since his earlier visits to the valley of the Nile. "A true national self-consciousness is slowly beginning to awaken," he wrote. "The Egyptians are still very far from being a true Nationality, but the beginning has been made."[147]
With the opening years of the twentieth century what had previously been visible only to discerning eyes burst into sudden and startling bloom. This resurgent Egyptian nationalism had, to be sure, its moderate wing, represented by conservative-minded men like Mohammed Abdou, Rector of El Azhar University and respected friend of Lord Cromer, who sought to teach his fellow-countrymen that the surest road to freedom was along the path of enlightenment and progress. In the main, however, the movement was an impatient and violent protest against British rule and an intransigeant demand for immediate independence. Perhaps the most significant point was that virtually all Egyptians were nationalists at heart, conservatives as well as radicals declining to consider Egypt as a permanent part of the British Empire. The nationalists had a sound legal basis for this attitude, owing to the fact that British rule rested upon insecure diplomatic foundations. England had intervened in Egypt as a self-constituted "Mandatory" of European financial interests. Its action had roused much opposition in Europe, particularly in France, and to allay this opposition the British Government had repeatedly announced that its occupation of Egypt was of a temporary nature. In fact, Egyptian discontent was deliberately fanned by France right down to the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. This French sympathy for Egyptian aspirations was of capital importance in the development of the nationalist movement. In Egypt, France's cultural prestige was predominant. In Egyptian eyes a European education was synonymous with a French education, so the rising generation inevitably sat under French teachers, either in Egypt or in France, and these French preceptors, being usually Anglophobes, rarely lost an opportunity for instilling dislike of England and aversion to British rule.
The radical nationalists were headed by a young man named Mustapha Kamel. He was a very prince of agitators; ardent, magnetic, enthusiastic, and possessed of a fiery eloquence which fairly swept away both his hearers and his readers. An indefatigable propagandist, he edited a whole chain of newspapers and periodicals, and as fast as one organ was suppressed by the British authorities he started another. His uncompromising nationalism may be gauged from the following examples from his writings. Taking for his motto the phrase "The Egyptians for Egypt; Egypt for the Egyptians," he wrote as early as 1896: "Egyptian civilization cannot endure in the future unless it is founded by the people itself; unless the fellah, the merchant, the teacher, the pupil, in fine, every single Egyptian, knows that man has sacred, intangible rights; that he is not created to be a tool, but to lead an intelligent and worthy life; that love of country is the most beautiful sentiment which can ennoble a soul; and that a nation without independence is a nation without existence! It is by patriotism that backward peoples come quickly to civilization, to greatness, and to power. It is patriotism that forms the blood which courses in the veins of virile nations, and it is patriotism that gives life to every living being."
The English, of course, were bitterly denounced. Here is a typical editorial from his organ El Lewa: "We are the despoiled. The English are the despoilers. We demand a sacred right. The English are the usurpers of that right. This is why we are sure of success sooner or later. When one is in the right, it is only a question of time."