Kingdom of Egypt

The Kingdom of Egypt (Arabic المملكة المصرية, DMG al-Mamlakat al-Miṣrīya), also (New) Egyptian Empire (Arabic الإمبراطورية المصرية الجديدة, DMG al'iimbiraturiat almisriat aljadida) refers to the overall state of the Muhammad Ali dynasty empire in North and East Africa in its final phase during the period from 1922 to 1953.

The Kingdom was granted state independence by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland on 28 February 1922 and came into being with the proclamation of the previous Sultan Fu'ad I as King on 15 March 1922. This had been preceded by a popular uprising against the colonial power in 1919. Thus, after more than 2,000 years of several foreign dominations under a monarchical form of government, a sovereign Egyptian nation state had emerged again for the first time.

The Kingdom of Egypt covered the territory of the present-day republics of Egypt, Sudan and South Sudan and at times included parts of the states of Libya (most of the historical region of Cyrenaika) and Chad (Ennedi and Borkou regions) and the disputed Ilemi Triangle (now controlled by Kenya) and was the largest modern African state to date and the sixth largest state on earth at the time. With over 27 million inhabitants, the monarchy was also the most populous country in the Middle East. As a result, the country had an enormous political and cultural influence in the Arab and Islamic world and thus virtually replaced the Ottoman Empire, which had fallen in 1922 and to which the country had nominally belonged until 1914, as the leading Sunni power. For three decades, the Kingdom of Egypt therefore claimed a regional hegemonic power role politically, militarily and economically vis-à-vis the European colonial powers there and the already independent Arab-Islamic states. In Libya, the empire fought with Italy and local tribal leaders and in Sudan with Great Britain for economic and political supremacy. After the Second World War, it struggled with the Kingdom of Iraq, Iran and Turkey for military and economic dominance in the region. In the newly formed Arab League in 1945, the empire challenged Saudi Arabia for the leading role in the organisation and wrestled with the latter for economic influence in the Kingdom of Yemen. In Palestine, Egypt's expansionist policy led to conflicts of interest with the neighbouring states of Jordan and Syria.

During the time of the kingdom, Egypt's economic and social history was marked by rapid industrialisation and a course of social modernisation that aimed, among other things, at radical secularisation, extensive gender equality and an improvement in the standard of living. Economically and socio-structurally, the empire began to transform itself from an agricultural to Africa's first industrial state from around 1925. Through the expansion of trade in cotton and banking, the service sector also gained in importance. The rapid economic growth was temporarily slowed down by the world economic crisis and the long economic crisis that followed it. Despite considerable political consequences, this did not change the structural development towards an industrial state. This phase of economic and social stabilisation lasted from 1922 to 1939.

Characteristic of the demographic changes in the Monarchy were rapid population growth, internal migration, urbanisation and the intensified immigration of European foreigners. The structure of society was significantly altered by the increase in the urban working-class population and the formation of a new bourgeoisie of technicians, white-collar workers and small and medium-sized civil servants and military personnel. In contrast, the economic importance of crafts and agriculture - in terms of their contributions to the gross national product - tended to decline. Nevertheless, the Egyptian and Sudanese aristocracy were able to maintain their high social prestige, their dominant role in the military, diplomacy and higher civil administration. Moreover, public opinion gained weight through the rise of several mass associations and parties and the development of radio and newspapers into mass media.

Domestic and foreign policy development was determined by the nationalist Wafd Party, especially in the early years. Its various governments pursued a relatively liberal course with many political and social reforms. In foreign policy, attempts were made to secure the empire through a complex system of alliances with the great powers Italy, France and Great Britain (e.g. Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936).

The period after the death of King Fu'ad I in 1936 led to considerable personal influence of his son Faruq on day-to-day politics. His reign was also marked by corruption and a contradictory foreign policy that vacillated between aligning itself with the fascist dictatorships in Europe and the Western democratic states, ultimately leading Egypt into isolation on the eve of the Second World War. The economic situation also increasingly deteriorated with the Great Depression from 1930 onwards. The subsequent rise of the fascist Young Egyptian Party and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood led to a five-year dictatorship (1930-1935).

In 1940, Egypt was occupied by Great Britain. The country was involved in a multi-front war and it was not until 1942 that the troops of the British Empire were able to repel the Axis invasion that had been ongoing since 1940. The deep economic and political crisis resulting from the war in 1946 and the continued considerable British influence led to a strong loss of support for the monarchy among the population and the military.

The decline and end of the empire came in the wake of the Cold War. In this, the kingdom initially gained enormous geopolitical influence as a strategically important power. As an initially pro-Western non-aligned state, the country intervened symbolically successfully in the Greek Civil War against the communist insurgents there. With the defeat of Egyptian-Arab troops by the newly created state of Israel in the Palestine War of 1948/49, Egypt lost its position of power in the region and broke politically with the West in 1951. The increasing repression of the left-liberal, communist and Islamist opposition in the post-war period led to multifaceted social tensions that culminated in the "Revolution of 23 July" in 1952, in which Faruq was overthrown. The subsequent dictatorship of the military during the reign of the minor Fu'ad II until 1953 led to increased alignment with the Soviet Union and its satellite states and the strengthening of Arab nationalism. On 18 June 1953, the centuries-old monarchy was abolished and the territory of the empire was divided up. The northern part of the country became the Republic of Egypt in the same year, the southern part the Republic of Sudan in 1956. The two subsequent states abolished the aristocracy, expelled the Muhammad Ali dynasty from the country and Egypt carried out a land reform. Not least because of the experiences of the following decades (the Six-Day War in 1967, the rise of Islamism, the dictatorship of Husni Mubarak from 1983 to 2011, military rule and the war of secession in Sudan from 1969 to 1985 and from 1983 to 2005), there is a positive culture of remembrance of the Kingdom of Egypt in the successor states.

Prehistory

Ottoman rule and establishment of the Muhammad Ali dynasty

The roots of the Kingdom of Egypt lay in the conquest of the country by the Ottoman Sultan Selim I. Afterwards, Egypt became a major province of the Ottoman Empire as Eyâlet. In the 16th century, the country became an important base for the Ottomans to expand in North Africa and Arabia. The constant military presence of the Ottomans resulted in profound cuts in Egyptian civil society and previous economic institutions. It led to a weakening of the economic system. Eyâlet Egypt subsequently became impoverished and suffered six famines between 1687 and 1731. The famine of 1784 alone cost it about one sixth of the population of the time their lives.

In 1798, in the course of the Second Coalition War between the European monarchies and the revolutionary French Republic, the conquest of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte began. The Egyptian expedition only ended with the expulsion of the French in 1801 by the Ottomans. Thereafter, internal power struggles broke out in the country, with the Mamluks, parts of the British forces, the Ottomans and Albanians, nominally loyal to the Ottomans, vying for power. The commander of the Albanian regiments, Muhammad Ali Pasha, emerged victorious from this chaos. Muhammad Ali was granted the title of Wālī (Governor) of Egypt by Sultan Selim III in 1805. In the same year, he founded the dynasty of the same name.

After coming to power, Muhammad Ali Pasha shifted his focus to the military. He created the modern Egyptian army and in several campaigns conquered Sudan (1820-1824), Syria (1833), parts of the Arabian Peninsula, Anatolia and Greece (see Greek Revolution). In 1841, the leading European powers, fearing that Muhammad Ali might overthrow the Ottoman Empire, put the brakes on Egypt's territorial expansion and forced the province to return most of its conquests to the Ottomans. However, Muhammad Ali was granted the Turkish-Egyptian Sudan and allowed to continue to rule largely independently. He then modernised the country. To do this, he sent Egyptian and Sudanese students to the West to make the new techniques of the great powers accessible to Egypt and invited foreign training missions to Egypt. He tried to industrialise the country, had a system of canals built for irrigation and transport, and reformed the civil service.

In 1820, Egypt began exporting cotton. The cultivation was supported and promoted by Muhammad Ali. This resulted in a monoculture that would shape Egypt until the end of the century. The social impact of this project was enormous: land ownership was restricted, many foreigners entered the country and production was shifted to international markets.

In September 1848, Muhammad Ali, who was to die in 1849, handed over the office of Wālī to his son Ibrahim, then he was succeeded by his grandson Abbas I (in November 1848), then Said (in 1854) and Ismail (in 1863). Abbas ruled Egypt in a relatively restrained manner, while Said and Ismail were ambitious developers. The Suez Canal, built in partnership with France from 1859 to 1869, was completed in November. However, the construction came at a high cost.

British rule until the First World War

The construction of the Suez Canal, with its high costs, had two effects: it led to enormous national debts of Egypt to the European banks and caused discontent among the local population because of the burdensome taxation. In 1875, Ismail was forced to sell shares of the canal to the British government. Within three years, this led to the introduction of British and French financial control and made the country dependent on the three great powers of France, Britain and the Kingdom of Italy. France and Britain also reserved the right to each send an official to assist the Egyptian government.

The influence of European countries on Egypt gave rise to an Islamic and Arab nationalist opposition. However, the most dangerous opposition for the British at this time was the Egyptian army, which was largely dominated by Albanians and the Mamluks. The military saw a threat to its previous privileges above all in the reorientation of economic development.

A large military demonstration by the Urabi movement in September 1881 forced the Khedive Tawfiq to dismiss his Prime Minister Riyad Pasha and issue several emergency decrees. Europeans already living in the country retreated to their neighbourhoods, like Alexandria, and organised self-defence against nationalist attacks.

The unrest led to the dispatch of French and British warships to the Egyptian coast in April 1882. However, the invasion did not begin until August, after the Urabi movement had taken power in Egypt in June. It began nationalising all assets in Egypt and encouraged anti-European violence and protests. In conjunction with an Islamic revolution in British India, the British sent an Anglo-Indian expeditionary force to capture the Suez Canal. At the same time, French forces landed in Alexandria. The operation succeeded and the Egyptian army was defeated at the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir in September 1882. Tawfiq then took control of the country again.

The aim of the invasion had been to restore political stability in Egypt under a government of khedives and to make the country accessible to foreign influences again. However, the permanent occupation of Egypt soon became apparent. In 1883, a British Consulate General for Egypt was created, with Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer becoming its first consul. Cromer believed that Egypt's political stability would require financial stability and created a programme of long-term investment in Egypt's productive resources, especially in cotton production, the mainstay of the country's export earnings.

In 1881, a religious uprising broke out in Sudan, which still belonged to Egypt. The rebel leader Muhammad Ahmad proclaimed himself the Mahdi of the country and conquered large parts of the state by 1885. With the capture of the city of Khartoum in 1884/1885 and the proclamation of the Caliphate of Omdurman, Egypt had finally lost control over Sudan.

In 1896, during the reign of Tewfik's son Abbas II. a massive Anglo-Egyptian force under the command of General Herbert Kitchener began the reconquest of Sudan. In the Battle of Umm Diwaykarat in 1899, Egyptian rule in Sudan was restored.

In 1906, the Dinshavai incident led to nationwide protests in Egypt and the formation of new nationalist political camps, some of which were funded and supported by the German Empire. Britain's main goal, in the early 20th century, in Egypt was to eliminate these groups once again. By the eve of the First World War, Egypt under British rule had developed into a regional economic power and a major Middle Eastern trading destination. Immigrants from less stable parts of the world, including Greeks, Jews and Armenians, as well as many British, French and Italians, began to go to Egypt and settle there. The number of foreigners in the country increased from 10,000 in the 1830s to 90,000 in the 1840s and to over 1.5 million in the 1880s.

Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty from its foundation to 1914


Map of the Khedivate of Egypt from 1912


Muhammad Ali Pasha, painting by Auguste Couder 1840

The road to independence

Emergence of the Sultanate of Egypt

In December 1914, following the declaration of war by the Ottoman Empire, of which Egypt was still nominally a part, Britain declared a protectorate over Egypt and deposed the previous Khedive Abbas II, replacing him with Hussein Kamil, who proclaimed himself the first Egyptian Sultan.

At the beginning of the First World War, the main target of the Ottoman army in the Middle East was the Suez Canal area, which was strategically very important for Great Britain and the shortest connection to its colonies. In January 1915, it crossed the Sinai Peninsula and advanced towards the Canal. In the first half of 1916, the Egyptians and British managed to recapture parts of the Sinai Peninsula and repulse the Ottomans. After the battle of Rafah in January 1917, the Turkish troops were completely driven out of the Sinai.

When the war ended, nationalists again began to demand Egyptian independence from Britain. They were influenced and supported by US President Woodrow Wilson, who defended self-determination for all nations. In September 1918, Egypt took its first steps towards independence by forming its own delegation (from Arabic وفد Wafd) for the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The idea for such a delegation came from the Umma Party (حزب الأمة, Hizb al-Umma), whose prominent members such as Lutfi as Sayyid, Saad Zaghlul, Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil, Ali Sharawi and Abd al Aziz Fahmi were to be the delegates.

On 13 November 1918, as Egypt celebrated Yawm al Jihad (Day of Struggle), Zaghlul, Fahmi and Sharawi were granted an audience with the British High Commissioner to Egypt Reginald Wingate. They demanded complete independence with the stipulations that Britain be allowed to control the Suez Canal and oversee the country's public debt. They also asked for permission to go to London to bring their demands before the British government under David Lloyd George. On the same day, the Egyptians formed a delegation for this purpose. However, the British refused to allow the delegation to go to London.

On 8 March 1919, Zaghlul and three other members of the Wafd were arrested and deported to Malta the next day. An action that triggered the 1919 revolution.

First World War and its consequences

The 1919 revolution, called the "first revolution" in Egypt, marked the end of British rule in Egypt. Representatives of all social classes (nobles, upper classes, clergy, workers and peasants) took part in the popular uprising. There were violent clashes in Cairo and the provincial towns of Lower Egypt, especially Tanta, and the uprising spread to Cyrenaica, north-eastern Chad, Sudan and Upper Egypt.

The deportation of the Wafd delegates also sparked student demonstrations and escalated with calls for strikes by students, government officials, professionals, women and transport workers. Within a week, Egypt's infrastructure had been shut down by general strikes and unrest. Railway lines and telegraph lines were disrupted, taxi drivers refused to work, lawyers did not show up for court proceedings and so on.The revolution was largely carried by women from the upper strata of society. They organised strikes, demonstrations and boycotts of British goods and wrote petitions which they sent to foreign embassies.

The British reacted to the unrest with harsh repressive measures that led to the deaths of more than 800 Egyptians and 31 Europeans by the summer of 1919.

In November 1919, a commission headed by Alfred Milner was sent to Egypt to try to clarify the tense situation. However, cooperation with the commission was boycotted by the nationalists, who rejected a continuation of the protectorate as demanded by Britain. The arrival of Milner and his advisers was accompanied by renewed strikes by students, lawyers, professionals and workers.

In 1920, Milner submitted his report to British Foreign Secretary George Curzon and recommended that he abolish the protectorate and establish a British-Egyptian military alliance. Curzon agreed and invited an Egyptian delegation led by Saad Zaghlul and Adli Yakan Pasha to London. The delegation arrived in London in June 1920 and by August 1920 negotiated a treaty that would bring Egypt into broad independence from Britain. In February 1921, the British Parliament approved the agreement and Egypt was invited to send another delegation to London to reach a final agreement. The second delegation arrived in June 1921 and obtained far-reaching concessions from the British. Egypt was guaranteed full sovereignty over itself and the Sudan, but the British retained control over the Suez Canal. However, parts of the agreement were not fulfilled later.

Shortly before Egypt's planned declaration of independence, there was renewed unrest in Cairo in November and December, which the British were unable to bring under their control. In December 1921, the British authorities in Cairo imposed martial law and had Zaghlul exiled to the Seychelles.

Revolutionaries with the religious symbols of the Islamic crescent, the Christian cross and the Jewish Star of David during the 1919 Revolution, Cairo.


Egyptian Revolutionary Flag


Africa and the Sultanate of Egypt 1917

Granting of independence and foundation of the empire

On 28 February 1922, Egypt was granted broad state independence by Great Britain, which continued to regard itself as Egypt's protecting power, in the Declaration to Egypt. The treaty was ratified by the Egyptian and the liberal British government of David Lloyd George.

This was done under four restrictions. British troops remained stationed in the country for external defence. In addition, the British retained far-reaching rights of intervention in Egypt and in the jointly administered Sudan, which limited the country's foreign policy independence. Furthermore, these included rights regarding transport routes, such as the Suez Canal and the Nile, and to secure the claims of foreign creditors. On the subject of Egyptian foreign policy, a reduction of British interventions as well as a reduction of British troops, personnel and military bases in the kingdom were stipulated. In return, Egypt undertook to support the British Empire in times of crisis, to provide the use of airspace, and to allow the British to operate military bases on Egyptian territory. Other political, economic and cultural commissions were also included.

The treaty met with rejection from parts of both sides. Some Egyptian nationalists saw the country's independence as not complete. Nevertheless, the British succeeded in splitting the Egyptian national movement and calming the country. In London, in addition to the failure in Syria to support Arab nationalists against the French, the treaty led to the fall of Lloyd George in October 1922 in the wake of the Chanak crisis and the formation of a Conservative government under Andrew Bonar Law that recognised Egyptian independence.

Shortly after independence was granted, the previous Sultan, the son of the Khedive Ismail Pasha, Fu'ad I, who was highly respected and popular among the population, proclaimed himself King of Egypt in Cairo on 15 March 1922. The monarchy's first prime minister was Abdel Khalek Sarwat Pasha, who had been head of government since 16 March 1922. Egypt was thus the only sovereign state in Africa, along with Liberia (independent since 1847), the Abyssinian Empire (never colonised) and the South African Union (independent since 1910).

Fu'ad I took his title of "king" from the tradition of the pharaohs (Hebrew for "king") in ancient Egypt. The country was therefore also called the "New Egyptian Empire" (الإمبراطورية المصرية الجديدة al-imbiraturia al-misriyya al-jadida). On 4 November 1922, it once again gained international attention with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun.

The first parliamentary elections were held in January 1924. The newly formed Wafd Party emerged victorious with 87.4 %. Prior to this, a 30-member committee of representatives from all walks of life had worked out a new constitution together with the king, which came into force on 19 April 1923 and made the Kingdom of Egypt a federal and constitutional hereditary monarchy under a parliamentary system of government, oriented towards the monarchical principle. The new constitution was mainly modelled on the constitution of the Kingdom of Belgium of 1831 and partly on the constitutions of Prussia, Japan, Italy, the United Kingdom, the United States, and so on. It nevertheless guaranteed the ruling monarch far-reaching powers. Fu'ad I had the right of veto and frequently made use of his right to dissolve parliament. During his reign, no parliament could constitutionally end its legislative term.

A flag with three white stars representing Muslims, Christians and Jews, enclosed by a crescent moon, was chosen as the new state symbols. The coat of arms of the Muhammad Ali dynasty served as the state emblem.

King Fu'ad I in the new Egyptian Parliament, 1924

Founder and stabilisation phase

New frontiers, secularisation, social reforms

On 26 January 1924, Saad Zaghlul was elected by the Egyptian parliament as the new prime minister. He succeeded Abdel Fattah Yahya Ibrahim Pasha (in office since 15 March 1923). He pursued a course of modernisation and was in conflict with Great Britain. Zaghlul demanded that the British recognise Egyptian sovereignty in Sudan ("Unity of the Nile Valley") and wanted to completely remove the Egyptian army from British influence.

On 19 November 1924, an assassination attempt was made in Cairo on the British Governor General of Sudan and British Commander-in-Chief of Egyptian Forces (Sirdar) Lee Stack, who died as a result on 20 November and pro-Egyptian riots broke out in Sudan.

The murder led to a state crisis in Egypt and became the first stress test for the young state. When the British demanded a public apology from the Egyptian government for the act, the payment of a heavy fine, the expansion of irrigation systems in Gezira for the benefit of European settlers and the withdrawal of all Egyptian officers and Egyptian army units from Sudan, supposedly to protect foreign investors, the crisis escalated. It is true that the Zaghlul met the first demand. The second failed due to the resistance of King Fu'ad I.

The Egyptian troops did not see themselves bound by their oath to the Egyptian king to obey the orders of their British officers and mutinied. The British tried to put down the mutiny by force, removing parts of the Egyptian army from Sudan and liquidating some important Egyptian officials from the administration. Nevertheless, it was only after pressure from the Egyptian government that the rebellion was calmed down and the condominium remained legally in place de jure, but in practice Egypt had lost much of its influence over the administration of Sudan. However, the uprising, along with the Mahdi uprising, was one of the most successful uprisings in the Third World against colonialism.

In the period following the attempted overthrow, the British administration regarded most Sudanese, some of whom had supported the revolt, as potential spreaders of "dangerous" nationalist ideas from Egypt. Lee Stack's successor, Geoffrey Francis Archer, was appointed Governor General of Sudan in 1925 and began forming his own Sudan Defence Force, completely separate from the Egyptian army. The new army was under his command and included only pro-British Sudanese officers who had previously served in the Egyptian army.

On 24 November, Zaghlul was deposed by Fu'ad I, who was increasingly in conflict with the Wafd party, and under pressure from the British, and replaced by Ahmed Ziwar Pasha. Ahmed Ziwar Pasha continued the modernisation course and he and his successors established the final borders of the Kingdom of Egypt with its neighbouring states of Italian Eritrea and Abyssinia to the east, British Uganda and Kenya to the south, Belgian Congo, French Equatorial Africa and Italian Libya to the west.

In 1926, Egypt ceded the Kufra oases and parts of today's Libyan provinces of al-Kufra, Murzuq and al-Wahat to Italian Libya, despite widespread resistance up to the royal family and unrest among the population. However, the territories were not conquered by Italian troops until 1931. After a treaty for the final Egyptian-Libyan border settlement, the small town of al-Jaghbub with al-Butnan was still ceded in 1926 at the suggestion of Great Britain. In the same year, in an Egyptian-French border agreement, Egypt ceded a 152.436 km² territory, which included the north of today's Chadian regions of Ennedi and Borkou, to the colony of French Equatorial Africa.

In 1934, the Sarra Triangle, which included the oasis of Ma'tan as-Sarra, was separated from Anglo-Egyptian Sudan and annexed to Libya. In total, the Egyptian monarchy ceded an area the size of 855,370 km² to Libya with Sudan by 1934. Nevertheless, the land mass of the kingdom remained enormous at over 3.5 million square kilometres. The kingdom was by far the largest state in Africa, followed by the Belgian Congo with over 2.3 million km², the largest Arab and Muslim country, and by 1930 the fourth largest contiguous independent state in the world after the Soviet Union, the Republic of China, the United States and Brazil.

From 1925 onwards, the ruling Wafd party aimed at secularisation and, despite the preservation of the aristocracy, a modernisation of the previous social order. Although Islam formally remained the state religion in the constitution of 1923, the principle of separation between religion and state de facto prevailed and the kingdom can be considered a secular state. The Wafd Party went even further. It initiated a fundamental upheaval of the previous religious structures. Among other things, the public wearing of the burqa was banned (but mostly tolerated) and a reorganisation of marital divorce law was carried out, although women were still denied the right to vote until 1956. For the Wafd Party, the process of gender equality that had been ongoing since the 1919 revolution was largely complete. Other reforms included the abolition of the Islamic calendar and the introduction of the European Gregorian calendar, which was mainly due to Adli Yakan Pasha and Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha. In the Egyptian school system, too, the various secular and sometimes anti-religious governments of the Wafd went toe-to-toe with Islam. All religious influences were banned from schools until Fu'ad I's death in 1936, and religious and Koranic instruction was abolished. From 1930 onwards, the Wafd governments increasingly expelled numerous clerics from the country, as the party considered them a danger to the nation and the royalty, and in 1923 replaced the Qur'an-oriented jurisprudence of the Sharia with a civil code. The legal norms were modelled on the civil code. The entire economic, criminal and civil law, which still stemmed from Ottoman times, was also redesigned according to Western models. The modern law of succession and family law of the civil code and Italian criminal law were also adopted. The Egyptian government took its cue from Turkey under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and from Iran, which appeared to be rising rapidly under the rule of Shah Reza Shah Pahlavi.

In opposition to the social reforms was the Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Bannā and campaigned for the end of British domination in Egypt and actively for the strengthening of Islam and the Ummah. It also called for the abolition of the aristocracy and the end of the monarchy, which put it in conflict with the secular Egyptian state. Its popularity therefore remained limited in the first years after its founding. Even staged boycotts of Jewish and Coptic shops were unsuccessful.

Economic upswing, failure of the liberal state from 1930, instability

In 1929, the Wafd won another clear election victory and the party's leader Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha was appointed prime minister for the second time on 1 January 1930.

During his tenure, conflicts arose with King Fu'ad I, as Nahhas Pasha considered himself a defender of the constitutional order and had already been deposed by the monarch in 1928 when he spoke out against the king's suspension of the constitution. He also began to modernise the country, which had already been promised by the Wafd Party in 1924. He was responsible for the reorganisation of the Cairo Stock Exchange, which thereafter became one of the five largest stock exchanges in the world, and carried out tax and agricultural reform. Nahhas Pasha's main concern, however, was to increase the industrialisation of the country in order to be on a par with European nations. New industrial plants were built in Cairo, Alexandria and Giza. Most of the port cities, such as Port Said or Suez, were greatly expanded and new roads and railway lines, some of which reached as far as present-day southern Sudan, were built. New electricity grids and a renewed communication system were also formed to supply the whole kingdom with electricity and information respectively. Egypt was thus the first industrialised state in Africa and the most modern country in the Middle East.

Despite strong popular support, the Wafd Party suffered two decisive defeats on the domestic and foreign policy fronts between 1930 and 1935. The first was the failure to reconcile with Britain, which was prepared to make serious concessions. Talks to this end were initially successful, but were broken off due to disagreements over the disputed status of Sudan. At the same time, the emerging world economic crisis pushed the king to take the political initiative. Fu'ad I dissolved parliament and appointed Ismail Sedki Pasha as the new prime minister on 20 June 1930. Ismail Sedki was party leader of the Hizb ash-Shaab ("People's Party"), a monarchist party that advocated more political rights for the king. Fu'ad I let the party have its way and Sedki began to undermine the previous democratic institutions in favour of royalty. His first official act was to resign from the party he had founded, which refused to support his course. The parliament also refused to support him. When, in the summer of 1933, Sedki presented an unconstitutional decree to the then Speaker of Parliament, Wisa Wasif, and he refused to sign it, riots broke out in the towns and villages. In addition, there were calls for violence from the Muslim Brotherhood, which incited against Jews and Coptic Christians.

Sedki crushed the revolt with police violence. In parliament, he was able to get the majority of MPs behind him through bribery. He sentenced the leading protesters to heavy fines and exiled some of them to Sudan. On 27 October 1930, he announced that he would draft a new constitution that would significantly expand the powers of the king and the government. However, he met with fierce criticism in the press and the opposition parties refused to cooperate with him in any way. They boycotted the 1931 parliamentary elections and violence erupted again. Sedki then arbitrarily appointed people he had selected as new members of parliament.

From 1932 onwards, Sedki became increasingly radicalised politically and began to establish a dictatorship. The work of opposition political parties and associations was restricted under his rule, press censorship was introduced and numerous alleged and actual opponents were arrested or murdered. From 1933 onwards, Sedki was empowered to issue decrees with the force of law and was formally accountable only to the monarch. During this time, he also had a personality cult conducted around him.

The creeping seizure of power met with resistance from Fu'ad I, who had effectively been played up against the wall by Sedki and no longer carried any weight in Egyptian political life. Parts of the government, led by the Minister of Justice Ali Maher Pasha, also turned against the dictatorship. In September 1933, Sedki was dismissed by the king and the dictatorship was replaced by an authoritarian monarchy.

Economic crisis, return to democracy, reconciliation with Great Britain

After the New York stock market crash in October 1929, the world economic crisis also hit Egypt from 1930 onwards. Foreign trade fell considerably and the country could hardly export cotton. Industrial production also fell by more than 60 %. There was a short-lived hyperinflation and unemployment rose to a quarter of the population by 1935. The situation was particularly disastrous for the peasants. Producer prices for agricultural products fell by 50 % from 1929 to 1933, causing production to decline and impoverishing many people.

The severe economic crisis in Egypt was to be solved by Abdel Fattah Yahya Ibrahim Pasha. On 22 September 1934, Fu'ad I appointed him as the new prime minister. During his term in office, he tried to cope by creating jobs, regulating the financial markets and introducing social insurance. However, the wages of the Egyptian workforce remained low. Workers' unrest ensued and the Egyptian Communist Party, founded in 1921, emerged for the first time as a significant political force. In November 1934, Fu'ad I deposed Abdel Fattah Yahya Ibrahim Pasha. The new prime minister on 15 November was Muhammad Tawfiq Nasim Pasha, who, however, continued the measures of his predecessor instead of taking a new course.

The National Socialist seizure of power in the German Reich in 1933 also led to a burgeoning of fascism in Egypt. The Egyptian branch of the National Socialist foreign organisation NSDAP/AO had already existed in Egypt since 1926. Since the group was not very successful at first, Hitler successfully threatened to boycott Egyptian cotton after the transfer of power. The Egyptian government then made a U-turn on its previously anti-Nazi policy and condemned the anti-German boycott movement in the country. In the face of the German threat, the Egyptian press now also pilloried the Jews as destroyers of the Egyptian economy, although such campaigns stopped again as early as 1936. In 1935, the Nazis opened a branch of the German Intelligence Bureau in Cairo as a propaganda and intelligence centre. Just three years later, the German Reich had risen to become the second largest importer of Egyptian goods.

In October 1933, Ahmed Husayn founded the ultra-nationalist Young Egyptian Party, which advocated the founding of a new Egyptian empire and laid claim to Egypt's 1922 borders. The party had a paramilitary organisation in the form of the so-called Green Shirts and was mainly oriented towards National Socialism with its radical anti-Semitism. The party and the Muslim Brotherhood subsequently became more and more popular and gained political weight. As a result, the Wafd Party and the Egyptian parliament urged Fu'ad I to abrogate the 1930 constitution in 1935, supposedly to prevent another dictatorship. After initial hesitation, the king agreed.

On 30 January 1936, Ali Maher Pasha of Fu'ad I's Wafd Party was appointed Prime Minister. On 28 April 1936, after 14 years of rule and at the age of 68, the king died. He was succeeded by his sixteen-year-old son Faruq. He returned to Egypt from his studies in Britain on 6 May. At first, a Regency Council consisting of Muhammad Ali Tewfik, Adli Yakan Pasha, Tawfiq Nasim Pasha, Aziz Ezzat Pasha and Sherif Sabri Pasha assumed guardianship of the young king. On 29 July 1937, the council was dissolved and Faruq was declared fit to rule.

In the parliamentary elections of May 1936, the Wafd party again won a majority in parliament and Faruq, who like his father rejected the democratic order of the state, had to appoint Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha as prime minister on 6 May. Nevertheless, there was some cooperation between the monarch and the government. Faruq announced a comprehensive reform programme at the beginning of his reign and entrusted Nahhas Pasha with its implementation. The government amnestied all participants in political protests arrested between 1930 and 1933, granted financial credit to all peasants and reduced taxes for all citizens. In terms of foreign policy, the government sought a balance with Great Britain. Nahhas Pasha resumed talks with the British and successfully negotiated a treaty that settled the dispute between the two nations that had been going on since 1924 and made them allies. Through the Anglo-Egyptian Peace Treaty of 26 August 1936, Britain relinquished certain reserved rights in Egypt and gradually withdrew its troops except for the Suez Canal Zone, while securing the right to access Egypt's transport and communications system in the event of war. In addition, the Egyptian army was placed under the supreme command of the King and the previous office of Sirdar was abolished, and instead of a High Commissioner, an ambassador was sent to Egypt as the British representative. On 14 November 1936 Miles Lampson (High Commissioner) and in 1937 Charlton Watson Spinks (Sirdar) had to vacate their posts and the Kingdom of Egypt was finally able to shake off British rule, although British influence remained considerable.

New foreign policy, full employment, eve of the Second World War

On 26 May 1937, Egypt joined the League of Nations and reoriented its foreign policy. It aligned itself with the Western democracies and once again moved away from the fascist Kingdom of Italy and the National Socialist German Reich, to which Egypt had increasingly aligned itself since 1933. Responsible for this was Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil, who was appointed the new prime minister by Faruq on 29 December 1937, after Nahhas Pasha had almost fallen victim to an assassination attempt by the Young Egyptian Party. Mahmoud maintained good relations with the British royal family and was a supporter of the Egyptian-British alliance of 1936. Under his government, Egypt condemned the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the previous Italian conquest of Ethiopia in 1935/1936. Tensions subsequently arose with Italy and conflict flared up again between the two countries over the final demarcation of Egypt's borders with the colony of Italian Libya. Italy also demanded that Egypt extradite supporters of the overthrown freedom fighter Umar al-Mukhtar who had fled to the country during the reconquest of Libya between 1923 and 1931. The Egyptian government refused and Italy erected a barbed wire enclosure 270 to 300 km long and four metres wide with fortified checkpoints on the border with Egypt.

The new course met with rejection from a considerable part of Egyptians. The Wafd party, which had been in opposition since Mahmoud's appointment, also rejected it. The ruling Liberal Constitution Party (حزب الاحرار الدستوريين, Ḥizb al-aḥrār al-dustūriyyīn), which split from the Wafd, was subsequently put under increasing pressure by Faruq and moderated its course again. Thus Egypt did not condemn the German-Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War and kept a low profile in the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1939. Nevertheless, Egypt had discredited itself in foreign policy terms with the later Axis powers as well as with the Western democracies, whose appeasement policy (above all the Munich Agreement of 1938) Mahmoud did not want to support, and only maintained good relations with the United States, which also made it possible to end the economic crisis in Egypt. Mahmoud relied on economic-liberal structural reforms and Egypt reached full employment again in 1937/1938. The liberal government also revived and continued the Wafd Party's modernisation programme, which had stalled in 1930 and was aborted in the turmoil of Ismail Sedki Pasha's dictatorship. The standard of living, especially in Cairo and the countryside, rose considerably thereafter. With an average per capita income of 1,300 US dollars, the country approached the European average. Whereby there were great differences between the north and south of the country. In today's Southern Sudan, there was no sign of the development and the majority of the population continued to live in poverty. In Khartoum, on the other hand, a comprehensive urban renewal took place on behalf of Faruq. Large parts of the city were demolished and numerous European architects were brought in for the redesign. Egypt was able to return to the international stage on 16 March 1939. The marriage of Faruq's sister Fausia to the Iranian crown prince and later Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had created a strategic alliance between Egypt and Iran and Turkey. From then on, Iran supplied Egypt with extensive raw material supplies (especially oil), while Egyptian officials helped to build up Iran's then underdeveloped infrastructure. The alliance survived the Second World War and effectively lasted until the couple divorced on 18 November 1948.

On 18 August 1939, Mahmoud of Faruq was replaced by Ali Maher Pasha, who thus became prime minister for the second time. Ali Maher was also a member of the Liberal Constitution Party, but was critical of Britain and advocated permanent neutrality for Egypt. Nevertheless, like his predecessor, he condemned the Nazi Nuremberg Race Laws and offered persecuted German Jews a new home in Egypt. He tried to keep his country out of the burgeoning Middle East conflict.

Upper Egyptian-Libyan border as of 1926


Saad Zaghlul, important social reformer and Prime Minister in 1924. In Egypt he is called Zaeem al Ummah (Leader/Father of the Nation).


Port Said, painting by Alexander Yakovlev 1927


Fu'ad I with the Belgian King Albert I and his wife Elisabeth Gabriele in Bavaria at Misr railway station visiting an industrial exhibition in Cairo, January 1930


Modern city map of Cairo, 1933


The Shinnawi Palace in al-Mansura, built in 1928


Official portrait of King Faruq


The King after his enthronement in the Egyptian Parliament, 1937


A banquet at the Abdeen Palace on the occasion of the wedding of King Faruq and Queen Farida of Egypt. People photographed from right to left: Princess Nimet Mouhtar (1876-1945), Faruq's aunt (paternal); King Faruq (1920-1965), the groom; Queen Farida (1921-1988), the bride; Melek Tourhan (1869-1956), widow of Hussein Kamil; Prince Muhammad Ali Ibrahim (1900-1977), Faruq's uncle (paternal).


Prime Minister Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil reached a settlement with Britain during his second term until 1939

World War II

Neutrality and British occupation 1940

In September 1939, the Second World War began in Europe with the German invasion of Poland. King Faruq announced the general mobilisation of the army in the same month. The general staff under Aziz Ali al-Misri sent most of the units to the Libyan-Egyptian border in order to repel a possible Italian attack and possibly advance into the territory of the colony of Libya. However, the Italians were far superior in material and men to the only 100,000 Egyptian soldiers.

Italy finally entered the Second World War on the side of the German Reich after the Wehrmacht's successful campaign against France on 10 June 1940 and declared war on Great Britain and France. Benito Mussolini wanted to use the war to reestablish the Imperium Romanum around the Mediterranean and also laid claim to Egypt and Sudan. On 10 June 1940, the East African campaign began with Italian attacks on neighbouring British colonies. Egypt was thus drawn into the Second World War and Italian troops advanced into its territory. They occupied the now Sudanese towns of Kassala, Gallabat, Kurmuk and Qeisan.

On 13 June 1940, in response to the invasion, the Egyptian parliament broke off all diplomatic relations with Italy, but declared that it would remain neutral in the war. On 13 September, the same steps were taken towards the German Reich. On 28 June 1940, Ali Maher Pasha was dismissed as Prime Minister for refusing to break off relations with Italy. Hassan Sabry Pasha became the new head of government. Shortly afterwards, Britain invoked the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, which allowed the occupation of the Suez Canal if it was threatened. The Egyptian army had nothing to oppose this. Faruq protested against the occupation but was stopped cold by the British. Protests by the parliament and the population were also ignored and partly suppressed. In Alexandria and Cairo, the British interned the Italian minority for sympathising with the enemy.

In August 1940, there were uprisings and protests against the British occupation policy. Italy used this as an opportunity to attack the seemingly unstable and militarily weakly defended country from the north in September, thus tying up the Egyptian-British troops in a multi-front war.

Invasion of the Axis Powers

After minor fighting on the Libyan-Egyptian border on 9 September 1940, with a series of air raids on British border posts, the Italian invasion of mainland Egypt began on 13 September. Benito Mussolini had demanded this advance from the Italian commander-in-chief in Libya, Rodolfo Graziani, in order to wrest the Suez Canal from the British, occupy Egypt and thereby link the Italian possessions in North and East Africa. The cautiously advancing Italians advanced within a few days to about 100 kilometres into Egyptian territory, where they halted and set up fortified camps due to the destruction of their supply routes by British aircraft and warships. There they collided with the top of the British forces in Egypt, whose headquarters were in Marsa Matruh. On 16 September, the town of Sidi Barrani was occupied, bringing the Italian hold on the country to its maximum.

On 14 November 1940, Prime Minister Hassan Sabry Pasha died. He was succeeded by Hussein Sirri Pasha, who was said to be sympathetic to the Axis powers. Nevertheless, he supported the British counterattack with Operation Compass, which began on 8 December 1940. On 10 and 11 December, Sidi Barrani was recaptured by British units. The Italian invasion of Egypt had thus failed. On 11 December, Rodolfo Graziani and his troops had to retreat to the Libyan-Egyptian border, where the British also arrived the next day and captured around 38,000 Italian soldiers. Within the next 10 weeks, they advanced about 800 km into Libyan territory, destroying 400 tanks, capturing 1292 guns and capturing about 130,000 prisoners of war.

During the entire Italian invasion of Egypt and the subsequent clashes from 9 September 1940 to 9 February 1941, the British and their allies lost only 500 men and suffered 1373 wounded and 55 missing. For the Kingdom of Italy, the enterprise was a disaster.

The news of the Italian defeat in Egypt and the unsuccessful attack on the Kingdom of Greece, which soon claimed the full attention of the Royal Italian troops due to strong Greek resistance, and the attack on Taranto in October 1940, forced Hitler to intervene. In February 1941, he sent the newly formed German Africa Corps under the command of Erwin Rommel to Tripoli, where it prepared to attack together with the Italians. On 31 March, the advance began, the main thrust of which was directed towards Marsa el Brega in order to be able to establish a bridgehead for the capture of the Kyrenaika. The German-Italian advance stopped in mid-April at the Egyptian border town and fortress of Sallum, east of Tobruk. On 10 April, the Afrika Korps launched the siege of Tobruk.

In November 1941, the Allies launched Operation Crusader to end the siege. The attack proved successful and after a complex series of battles they reached Berga on 6 January 1942. The siege of Tobruk finally ended on 27 November and the Axis forces withdrew from Cyrenaica up to and including El Agheila. King Faruq and the Wafd Party placed enormous expectations on the victory and sought to reintegrate the territories ceded to Libya in 1926 and 1934 respectively, but to no avail.

In November 1941, the British were also able to regain the initiative in East Africa. The fighting ended with the abandonment of Italian East Africa and freed Egypt from the grip of the two-front war. On the night of 18-19 December 1941, however, an attack was launched on Alexandria by combat swimmers from a special unit (Decima Flottiglia MAS) of the Italian Regia Marina on the base of the British Mediterranean Fleet. Six Italian torpedo riders grounded the two battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant with explosive charges. As a result of this attack, the balance of power in the Mediterranean shifted in favour of the Axis powers for several months.

In May 1942, the Afrika Korps launched Unternehmen Theseus. This offensive was able to push the British back as far as Egypt.

On 20 June 1942, the Axis forces attacked Tobruk again. The attack resulted in the capture of large quantities of fuel and ammunition. The British were unable to hold the city and surrendered on the evening of 21 June. A day later, Rommel again crossed the Libyan-Egyptian border, where he stopped on 24 June. On 26 June, the Battle of Marsa Matruh took place, where Rommel was able to capture the city on 29 June. The fall of Marsa Matruh was a great victory for Rommel. Now his troops were only 200 km away from Alexandria and captured important war material. On the same day, the small town of El Dabaa was taken, from where Panzerarmee Afrika was to advance on El Alamein (112 km west of Alexandria and 592 km east of Tobruk).

The first battle of El Alamein began on 1 July. The fighting lasted for about four weeks in July 1942 and ended with a British victory, because the British 8th Army concentrated mainly on weakening the Italian troops in order to weaken their German allies in the long term.

From the government crisis in 1942 to the end of the war

In February 1942, when the Afrika Korps began a successful offensive towards Egypt, conflict broke out between the British and the Egyptian royal family for the first time since the death of King Fu'ad I in 1936. King Faruq wanted to reappoint the nationalist Ali Maher Pasha, who was hated by the British, as prime minister, but then decided to keep the previous government under Hussein Sirri Pasha in office. When the British government got wind of this, it called for the formation of a new government under Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha of the Wafd Party to provide stability in the administration in the face of the African campaign. When Faruq tried to prevent the appointment of an-Nahas by postponing it, the British ambassador in Cairo Miles Lampson summarily had the king's palace surrounded by British troops with tanks on 4 February, whereupon Faruq relented. This act illustrated to the Egyptian military and the local population Faruq's powerlessness in the face of the British and severely damaged his reputation. But the Wafd Party, which had once again won an absolute majority in the March 1942 elections and had once been the standard-bearer of Egyptian nationalism, also became a symbol of collaboration with the British.

After the government crisis, anti-British and pro-German demonstrations and acts of sabotage took place in Alexandria and Cairo in early 1942. High-ranking officers, such as the general staff of the Egyptian army established secret contacts with the Italian and German staff. There were also numerous Axis sympathisers among the Egyptian elite around Faruq. Nevertheless, cooperation with the Axis was largely limited compared to other Arab countries. There were no boycotts directed against Jews, physical attacks did not occur and the practice of religion was not hindered. Moreover, Faruq refused to hand over the Egyptian Jews to the Axis in the event of victory.

The UK leadership successfully tried to pacify the Egyptian people as a result of the protests. The Wafd Party was then able to regain prestige and continued to be the dominant political force until it was banned in 1952.

From 23 October to 3 November, the decisive battle of El Alamein took place, ending in a British victory and leading to the capture of over 30,000 soldiers on 6 November. Bernard Montgomery, who had been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the 8th Army by Prime Minister Winston Churchill on 13 August 1942, was the commander of the British troops. The battle marked an important turning point in the Second World War and was the first major victory for British Commonwealth forces over the German army. Today, some historians believe that, with the Battle ofStalingrad, it was one of two major Allied victories that led to the total defeat of the German Empire in 1945.

After the complete withdrawal from Egypt, Libya also had to be abandoned by the Axis powers in January 1943. The defeat in the Tunisian campaign on 13 May 1943 also marked the end of the African campaign. Subsequently, from 22 to 26 November 1943, the Cairo Conference took place between the US Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and the Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The three heads of government agreed on the Cairo Declaration on the war aims towards the Japanese Empire in the Pacific War.

Shortly before his fall on 10 October 1944, Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha organised a meeting of representatives from seven Arab states in Alexandria in September. On 7 October of the same year, the founding of the Arab League was decided with the signing of the "Alexandria Protocol" (so-called Memorandum of Understanding). Further preparatory meetings were held in Cairo in February and March 1945. On 11 May 1945, the Kingdom of Egypt became one of the founding states of the League. The emerging Egyptian dominance (the seat of the organisation was in Cairo and the first Secretary General was an Egyptian, Abdel Rahman Azzam) led to increased tensions with Saudi Arabia.

An-Nahhas was succeeded by Ahmed Maher Pasha of the liberal-monarchist Saadian Institutionalised Party (حزب الهيئة السعدية). Under Maher Pasha, his party and Faruq were able to expand their popularity. In January 1945, the party obtained an absolute majority in the parliamentary elections by boycotting the Wafd Party. On 24 February, Mahir Pasha declared war on the German Empire and Japan. However, Egyptian troops did not take part in any combat operations and only flew reconnaissance flights against Italy until 1943. Shortly after the declaration of war, the prime minister was assassinated in parliament by a member of parliament, and on 26 February Mahmud an-Nukrashi Pasha was appointed as his successor as prime minister.

As one of the victorious powers, Egypt was visited on 13 February 1945 by Franklin D. Roosevelt visited. Other state guests were Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie, Saudi King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud and Winston Churchill.

The British battleship HMS Howe (32) with a felucca in the Suez Canal, 14 July 1944.


Faruq with ministers after the 1942 crisis


Cairo street scene during the war 1941


Territories and Colonies of the Kingdom of Italy 1941


Ali Maher Pasha shortly before his release around 1940


Italian Advance into Egypt and the British Operation Compass

The post-war years 1945-1947

On 24 October 1945, Egypt, including Sudan, became a founding member of the United Nations and one of the first members of the UN Security Council. At the end of the same year, an anti-minority company law was passed by the parliament, according to which 75 % of all employees of a company had to be Egyptian (in a factory 90 % of the workers) and that 51 % of the capital had to belong to an Egyptian. As a result, many foreigners lost their assets. Their special jurisdiction was also abolished and all inhabitants of the kingdom were declared equal citizens, whereby the nobility retained its high social prestige and could continue to assert its dominant role in the military, diplomacy and higher civil administration. However, the reforms admittedly came too late; many young Egyptians were disillusioned after the war with parliamentary democracy, which was supposedly "managed" by the British, and with the inaction of the Egyptian political elite. Moreover, the war led to a deep economic and political crisis. The mass of the people had to cope with a rising illiteracy rate. Endemic diseases spread throughout the country and the health system collapsed. In addition, per capita income fell and unemployment rose. The large landowners (in 1952, about 4000 families, who made up only about 1% of the total population, owned 70% of the total arable land) also increasingly oppressed the peasants and minor famines occurred in the countryside. Foreigners also became impoverished and some emigrated. This created an atmosphere of rebellion and unrest. The first outbreak of violence was the Cairo pogroms of 2 and 3 November 1945, in which Egyptian Jews were excluded from Egyptian society for the first time since the founding of the kingdom. Although King Faruq condemned the events and, together with Prime Minister Mahmud an-Nukrashi Pasha, met with the Grand Rabbi Chaim Nahum of Egypt and Sudan, the events were not dealt with legally.

This was followed in November 1945 by a failed assassination attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood on an-Nahhas, the leader of the Wafd Party. In January 1946, a diplomat who had helped draft the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 was killed. On 9 February, an initially peaceful student demonstration ended in several deaths, and on 21 February, students and workers stormed a British barracks in Cairo, with 23 Egyptians shot dead by the British. The tense situation was fuelled by the Young Egyptian Party and Muslim Brotherhood. The two organisations looted numerous foreign shops, set fire to entire buildings, staged protests against the monarchy and carried out several terrorist attacks in Cairo and Alexandria. To put an end to the protests, Faruq Ismail appointed Sedki Pasha as head of government on 17 February 1946. Sediki thus took office for the second time and crushed the protests with police violence. He was thus able to restore a certain stability to Egypt.

During the unrest, foreign relations with the West increasingly deteriorated. In 1946, Egypt granted asylum to the former Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, who was wanted as a war criminal in several European countries. In the same year, the country accepted the former King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III, who, after the end of the First World War, condoned the seizure of power by Benito Mussolini and the Fascist Party and the subsequent establishment of a dictatorship, which he maintained until 1943. In addition, the country did not impose economic sanctions against Francisco Franco's regime in Spain, although it had agreed to UN Security Council Resolution 4. British-Egyptian relations, which had been strained since the occupation of the country in 1940, also cooled steadily. Egypt demanded a renegotiation of the 1936 treaty and denied the British the right of access to the Egyptian transport and communications system as had been agreed in 1936.

A reception of Islamic revolutionary personalities in Cairo in 1947. The photograph shows, among others, Hasan al-Bannā, Aziz Ali al-Misri, Mohamed Ali Eltaher and other Egyptian, Algerian and Palestinian representatives.


A French stamp for Alexandria, 1946

Downfall

Defeat in the Palestine War, ban on the Muslim Brotherhood 1948, destabilisation of the government

On 14 May 1948, David Ben-Gurion declared the independence of the State of Israel on the basis of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine of 29 November 1947, which Egypt had rejected, when the British Mandate over Palestine officially ended.

King Faruq and the Egyptian government initially took a more conciliatory stance towards the new state. Fearing a coup d'état or a takeover by the Muslim Brotherhood, and in order to prevent the states of Transjordan and Saudi Arabia from gaining power, they decided, together with the other Arab states of Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and Iraq, to form a military alliance and attack Israel without declaring war on 15 May. Faruq's goal thereafter was to annex the southern territories of the Palestine region. To this end, the Egyptian government sent an expeditionary force of about 20,000 men into the fighting. It consisted of five infantry battalions and one tank battalion. The regular units were supported by about 2,000 volunteers, mainly members of the Muslim Brotherhood who had already infiltrated the mandate area before the war began, and some Sudanese.

The commander of the Egyptian expeditionary forces, Major General Ahmed Ali al-Mwawi, planned two main directions of attack. The smaller part was to advance through the Negev Desert via Be'er Sheva towards Jerusalem. This advance reached Ramat Rachel on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem on 23 May and was only brought to a halt here by Israeli troops. Meanwhile, the second major part of the Egyptian forces advanced along the coast towards Tel Aviv, meeting determined resistance in the Jewish settlements on the way. This advance was also finally halted north of Ashdod. In the air and on the water, the initiative was also lost. The Royal Egyptian Air Force (REAF), which in May had still been bombing Tel Aviv with Sde-Dov airport en masse, lost many of its best pilots and numerous aircraft due to the deployment of effective Israeli air defence. The country's navy engaged in some minor naval battles with the new Israeli navy early in the war. By the beginning of 1949, however, their operational capabilities were largely exhausted, whereupon Israeli ships bombarded Egyptian coastal installations from Gaza to Port Said.

The final twist in the war came on 8 July 1948 at Kibbutz Negba, when Egyptian troops launched a pre-emptive strike on the village. Although neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage, the Egyptian army was effectively depleted thereafter and suffered increasingly from a lack of ammunition. In October, the country still tried to impose a blockade, but this failed on 15 October with the destruction of the airfield at El-Arish by Israeli air forces, and considered the use of mustard gas as a last resort. On 22 October, Israeli troops finally advanced into Egyptian territory, whereupon the British government under Prime Minister Clement Attlee intervened and forced Israel to withdraw from Egypt. On 6 January 1949, the last Israeli soldiers left Egyptian soil.

On 24 February, a ceasefire agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt in Rhodes, in which the country officially withdrew from the war. Egyptian troops then withdrew from the Negev Desert, retaining control only over what is now the Gaza Strip, where an "Arab government for all Palestine" was proclaimed by Mohammed Amin al-Husseini on 22 September 1948, but completely dependent on Egypt. The other Arab states followed Egypt's insistence on a ceasefire agreement and gradually gave in. On 20 July 1949, the Palestine War ended.

Despite relatively favourable ceasefire conditions, the Egyptian defeat had enormous consequences for the country. In foreign policy, Egypt was discredited as the most powerful Arab country and could not prevent Jordan (which annexed the West Bank) and Saudi Arabia from gaining influence. Domestically, the unrest of 1946/47 flared up again. In a renewed wave of violence, Jews were targeted by targeted bombings and their businesses destroyed in June and July 1948. The European inhabitants of Alexandria and Egyptian Christians also became targets of the Muslim Brotherhood's terror. The riots continued to some extent until 1952 and claimed several hundred lives, including 70 Jews.

The government's response to the pogroms and the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood came with its ban on 8 December 1948. The government of Mahmud an-Nukrashi Pasha suspected that the Muslim Brotherhood was planning a revolution and considered them a threat to the ruling elites. Moreover, the Brotherhood had its own hospitals, factories and schools, which were subsequently nationalised. The state also confiscated their considerable assets. This was followed by a brutal wave of repression from the government. From 1948 to 1950, tens of thousands of Brotherhood members were arrested and many of them were tortured or murdered in prisons. In November 1948, 32 prominent Brotherhood leaders were arrested and the organisation's spiritual leader Hasan al-Bannā, after living under close police surveillance for months, was shot dead in Cairo on 12 February 1949 by order of the royal family.

Despite brutal reprisals and the institutionalisation of strict press censorship, the Egyptian government was severely destabilised by the unrest and largely lost control of the country. In March 1948, the Muslim Brotherhood assassinated Judge Ahmed El-Khazindar Bey and, on 28 December, Prime Minister Mahmud an-Nukrashi Pasha. An assassination attempt on his successor, Ibrahim Abdel Hadi Pasha, failed. There were also repeated violent attacks directed at the police and strikes by workers and peasants. It marked the beginning of the decline of the kingdom, culminating in the 1952 revolution.

Nationalism in transition

The defeat in the Palestine War exhausted the ideology of Egyptian nationalism that had prevailed until then and briefly led to the loss of Egypt's hegemonic power in the Arab and Islamic world. Arab nationalism and pan-Arabism, which had emerged in the course of the general emancipation of the colonial peoples and aimed at unifying the Arab countries, became an acceptable alternative for many who, disillusioned with Egyptian nationalism, were looking for an ideological complement. Ideological emphases also began to shift and the democratic element lost weight in favour of left-revolutionary and republican ideas. One example was the formation in 1949 of the so-called "Free Officers Movement", a group of armed army officers led by Muhammad Nagib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. A momentous element of the new nationalism, however, was the suppression of ethnic minorities such as the Copts, Jews and Europeans that began afterwards. Religion also played an increasingly important role. In the provinces of southern Sudan, for example, an increasingly ruthless aggressive Arabisation and Islamisation was pursued, which ultimately deprived the monarchy of the complete support of the population in the black African areas.

When the Arab League was founded, it was also decided to boycott the Yishuv, the Jewish settlements in Palestine, from 1 January 1946. Prominent Islamic clerics, such as the Grand Mufti al-Husseini, aggressively campaigned for the expulsion of all Jews from Palestine, thus also fuelling Arab nationalist sentiment directed against Israel as an enemy. Egypt played a pioneering role in the Arab League's boycott of Israel from 1948 to 1979.

Another sign of rising nationalism was the general effort to renegotiate the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty. The aim was to get the British forces to leave completely or at least to reduce their numbers. However, the British were determined to station at least 80,000 troops around the Suez Canal Zone.

The Egyptian-British negotiations began in 1946, with Faruq sending Prime Minister Ismail Sedki. When he returned from the negotiations in London with a draft treaty that the nationalist groups branded absolutely unacceptable, pressure from the street led to the resignation of the government in December 1946, already demonstrating the powerlessness of the monarchy. No agreement could be reached under subsequent governments either.

On 8 October 1951, the Egyptian parliament under Prime Minister Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha unilaterally denounced the 1936 treaty, triggering mass demonstrations in support of Egyptian independence and providing the monarchy with one last remedy. Egypt was thus able to fully free itself from the British sphere of influence, although its foreign policy nevertheless remained pro-Western to a certain extent. In particular, proximity to the former colonial powers Italy, France and Great Britain was sought.

On 16 October 1951, in order to further fuel nationalism and restore popular support for the monarchy, Faruq accepted the title of King of Egypt and Sudan offered to him jointly by the Egyptian parliament, an-Nahhas Pasha's government and senior Sudanese dignitaries, which until then had only been the unofficial title of Egyptian monarchs. At the same time, he denounced the Anglo-Egyptian condominium and demanded that British troops withdraw from Sudan. Britain refused and the condominium was effectively allowed to continue until 1956. The coronation of Faruq proved advantageous domestically and brought renewed support for the Egyptian monarchy. In Sudan, the unionist forces were additionally won over to the project and monarchism was also strengthened there. In foreign policy, however, this step led Egypt even further to the sidelines. Many countries protested against it or did not even recognise Faruq's new claim to power and called on Egypt to grant the Sudanese the right to self-determination.

The defeat in the war also led to a decisive strengthening of Sudanese nationalism, which had already developed after the First World War and had its carrier base in the northern provinces of Sudan. The nationalists now sought a breakaway from Egyptian-British rule and advocated a centralised republican national government in Khartoum.

The first Sudanese nationalist movement was founded in 1921 by the Muslim Dinka Ali Abd al Latif. It fought for an independent Sudan in which power would be shared by tribal and religious leaders. In 1924, presumably as a protest against Egyptian independence, it organised large-scale demonstrations in Khartoum. Ali Abd al Latif was then arrested and subsequently exiled to Egypt. A subsequent mutiny by a Sudanese army battalion was crushed and the movement briefly paralysed by the brutal repression of the colonial rulers.

In the 1930s, nationalism emerged more strongly in Sudan, as in Egypt. The most popular demands were to limit the power of the British governor-general and for Sudanese participation in political life in Egypt, where almost exclusively purely Egyptian parties were represented in parliament. However, such a change required the consent of the British government and the Egyptian king. Neither Britain nor Egypt agreed to the change, as both countries feared a reduction in their influence vis-à-vis the other power. Moreover, the British considered themselves as the protecting power of the opponents of a unification of the whole of Sudan with Egypt. The nationalists feared that as a possible consequence of the constant friction between the condominium forces, Sudan would be divided and northern Sudan would be added to Egypt and southern Sudan to the protectorate of Uganda or British Kenya. Although the 1936 Treaty of Alliance removed most of the conflicts and set a timetable for the end of British military occupation, negotiations over the future status of Sudan failed. The treaty also led to increasing tensions between the unionists and their opponents. While Sudanese cleric and Muhammad Ahmad's son Abd al-Rahman al-Mahdi advocated independence under him as the self-proclaimed "King of Sudan", in the early 1950s the young leader of the Islamic order Khatmiyya Ahmad al-Mirghani placed himself at the head of the proponents of unification. The two leaders and their political camps fought each other, especially after Faruq's proclamation in 1951, with unofficial support from Britain and Egypt respectively. However, the nationalist, independence-seeking groups proved to be much more radical.

Beginning of the Cold War and decolonisation

Among the countries that did not recognise Egypt's claim to rule in Sudan was almost all of Western Europe and the United States and the Vatican. Thus, at the beginning of the Cold War, Egypt finally had the USA and Great Britain against it. Although King Faruq and the Egyptian government repeatedly affirmed the saturation of the nation, Egypt's policies did not seem quite predictable to these states. Moreover, the US government under its President Harry S. Truman considered Egypt to be an extremely corrupt and unstable country that could easily fall under Soviet influence. To prevent this, "Project FF (Fat Fucker)", aimed at overthrowing King Faruq, whose authoritarian style of government they were mainly disillusioned with, and installing a pro-Western republican government led by the Free Officers Movement, supported by both the Americans and the Soviets, was developed by the Central Intelligence Agency. It was initiated by Kermit Roosevelt Jr. and Miles Copeland Jr. but never implemented.

In September 1947, Egypt officially asked the US Embassy in Cairo for help in training the Egyptian armed forces. However, the request was rejected.

Despite a relatively non-aligned foreign policy, there was a great fear of communism and Stalinism among the Egyptian elite. In particular, the rapid succession of communist takeovers in Eastern Europe from 1944 and in China after the civil war in 1949 forced Egypt to practice its own containment policy, which was modelled on that of the USA and aimed at containing communist expansionist policies in the Arab and Islamic regions. In the Greek Civil War between communist insurgents and the royalist government, Egyptian authorities interned communist-minded Greeks of the local minority and Greek prisoners of war deported from Greece. Allegedly, the Egyptian general staff even offered to deploy ground troops.

Due to the economic crisis of 1946, communism had also gained strong support inside Egypt. Especially the urban working class and the younger generation of Egyptians had communist sympathies. The government, still weakened by the Palestine war, therefore asked the Muslim Brotherhood for help and hoped to turn it into an anti-communist bulwark. In return, the Brotherhood was rehabilitated in 1950 and most of the prisoners were released. The Young Egyptian Party was also supported and its supporters carried out armed "punitive expeditions" against "red" trade union houses, newspaper editorial offices, workers' homes, cultural houses, cooperatives and individuals. After some time, the more than 20 different small socialist and communist parties and organisations had already been largely eliminated as a political factor. In addition, trade unions were massively losing members and influence. The only major "red" party that withstood the unofficial state terror was the Democratic Movement of National Liberation (الحركة الديمقراطية للتحر الوطنى), founded in 1947, whose membership in 1952 was around 2,000-3,000, making it the largest communist organisation in Egypt and the Arab world. It also sought a revolution to overthrow the monarchy and was therefore persecuted. Nevertheless, the party could never really develop into a real threat to the royal house.

Due to some reports from foreign Egyptian communists, the Soviet Union became aware of Egypt from 1950 onwards. Although it also railed against the owning class in Egypt, it nevertheless sought political solidarity.

In 1950, the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin commissioned the construction of the Mogamma, today's Egyptian Central Administration Building, and offered development cooperation. The motive could be seen as being able to exert considerable influence on Egypt and its region and to link the kingdom to the Soviet system of rule. However, Egypt refused, thus making it more difficult for the Soviet Union to build long-term relations and instead concluded a non-aggression pact with it. At the same time, however, although the kingdom had not recognised the overthrow of the Yugoslav monarchy, it maintained good relations with Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito, who was also non-aligned and hated by Stalin. Egypt had thus established itself as a non-aligned power in the beginning Cold War, a policy that is still maintained today.

At the same time as the Cold War came the beginning of the decolonisation of the European possessions. Egypt adopted a neutral position here as well. On the one hand, the Egyptian government had great interest in a British withdrawal from Africa and the entire Middle East. On the other hand, there were fears about how the new states would relate to Egypt and fears of new conflicts in the region (e.g. Palestine War or First Indo-PakistaniWar). They also did not want to give up the good relations with France, which directly bordered Egypt with its colony of French Equatorial Africa.

On 24 December 1951, Egypt's western neighbour Libya became independent. The Egyptian government and Faruq tried to influence the new kingdom. The aim of this campaign was to get Libya to recognise Egypt's claims to Sudan. Faruq even offered Libyan King Idris I economic aid. Although economic improvement followed, economic development was slow and Libya, as a poor and underdeveloped country, remained dependent on foreign aid.

Coup d'état 1952 - "Revolution of 23 July

Due to increasing corruption and mismanagement, King Faruq's popularity declined again from 1952 onwards. The majority of the military now also opposed the king and began to disregard his orders and directives on their own authority. Already during the winter of 1951-1952, the General Staff discreetly gave orders to support attacks on British positions in Cairo, Alexandria and around the Suez Canal. One particularly devastating attack by the insurgents took place in Ismailia. It resulted in the deaths of several British soldiers and struck at the heart of British shipping. On 25 January 1952, another incident at a police station led to the death of 50 Egyptian auxiliary policemen. The inaction of the king or his court also led to such a strong backlash against the monarchy among the population that Faruq could no longer ignore it. When he visited parts of Cairo, he was met in part by sheer hatred.

To escalate the situation, the Free Officers (but presumably the Muslim Brotherhood), who had placed themselves at the head of the revolutionary movement in the military, had allegedly ordered fires to be set all over Cairo. Local fire brigades were prevented from extinguishing fires by passers-by. In the American and Soviet press, the events became known as the "Cairo Fires" (حريق القاهرة) and gained international attention. In Egypt, this event, which led to the deaths of 26 people and the destruction or looting of over 750 buildings, is called "Black Saturday".

After the desired success did not materialise (Faruq had given Prime Minister an-Nahhas the supreme command of the armed forces and had him declare martial law), and neither the masses nor the military, which had succeeded in restoring order, had risen up against the government, the revolutionaries, who saw the event as an ideal breeding ground, postponed the coup. There were plans to wait until 1954 or 1955.

To restore his authority, Faruq dismissed the government of Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha on 27 January 1952 after accusing it of failure to fight the fires. In the months that followed, the king largely bypassed parliament, appointing and dismissing three short-lived governments (Ali Maher Pasha (27 January - 1 March), Ahmad Naguib Hilali Pasha (2 March - 29 June, again 22 - 23 July) and Hussein Sirri Pasha (2 - 20 July)). These governments were able to stop the downward spiral once again. However, this could not hide the discontent of younger Egyptians with the country's old and feudal class society, which was unique in the Arab world. Corruption also remained omnipresent.

On 16 July 1952, Faruq's planned parliamentary elections were cancelled because he feared an anti-monarchist majority in parliament. This move caused indignation even among his last supporters and outrage in the democratic camp. Abroad, Faruq was even accused of wanting to establish a royal dictatorship, but this has been refuted.

In the early morning of 23 July 1952, the military finally began to carry out a bloodless military coup against Faruq. The leaders were the two Free Officers Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser and General Muhammad Nagib. The coup was originally planned for 5 August, but was betrayed to Faruq and the government. So the coup plotters decided to launch a pre-emptive strike. In doing so, the Free Officers, with less than 100 officers, succeeded in pinning down the royalist forces in the army and police and secured the support of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Young Egyptian Party and the communist Democratic Movement for National Liberation. Finally, at 7:30 a.m., the Egyptian people were informed of the events by General Naguib and the revolution was declared. Uprisings against the monarchy subsequently broke out all over the country and a campaign against Faruq was launched in the press. Tens of thousands of demonstrators, mainly students, then made their displeasure known in the big cities.

Faruq then fled Cairo, which had been under revolutionary control since 6 o'clock, to Alexandria. There he resided in the Montaza Palace and, through representatives, surprisingly asked the United States for help. The latter refused, although the US embassy and the CIA office there had already been informed about the coup in advance. On 25 July, the Egyptian army also occupied Alexandria and the king became a prisoner of the new revolutionary government. On 26 July, having lost all power, he was officially declared deposed and placed under house arrest in the Raʾs-at-Tīn palace.

There were several debates among the Free Officers about the fate of the king. While some (including General Naguib and Nasser) considered it the best solution to send the monarch into exile, others argued for putting him on trial for alleged "crimes against the Egyptian people". In the end, Faruq was forced to abdicate in favour of his six-month-old son Fu'ad II and went into exile in Italy at 6pm that same evening.

The so-called "Revolution of 23 June" (ثورة 23 يوليو 1952), as it is still called in Egypt and Sudan, did not mean the end of the Egyptian-Sudanese monarchy, as is often wrongly assumed. The original plan of the Free Officers, drawn up in 1951 and consisting of six points, did not aim to abolish the monarchy. Its points were, for the time being:

• The abolition of the aristocracy and the nobility
• The implementation of land reform
• More social justice
• Revival of industrialisation
• Complete liberation from the Western sphere of influence
• Strengthening and idealising Arab and Egyptian nationalism.

Military dictatorship of the "Free Officers" under Fu'ad II. (1952–1953)

Members of the Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council (RCC)

Muhammad Nagib: Chairman Gamal Abdel Nasser: Vice-Chairman Abdel Latif Boghdadi Abd al-Hakim Amer Gamal Salem Salah Salem Zakaria Mohieddin Khaled Mohieddin Anwar as-Sadat Hussein el-Shafei Hassan Ibrahim Kamal el-Din Hussein Abdel Moneim Amin Ahmed Shawqi Lutfi Wahid Kamal el-Din Rifaat Youssef Seddik Ahmed Anwar

After the seizure of power, the Free Officers established a military dictatorship with Fu'ad II, who was crowned the last king of Egypt and Sudan in parliament on 26 July 1952, as de jure head of state. A Regency Council took over the guardianship of the young king.

The first prime minister of the new regime became Ali Maher Pasha. But the real power lay with the newly formed "Egyptian Revolutionary Command Council" (RCC), of which Nagib was the chairman. Faruq had also given him supreme command of the armed forces.

The Command Council immediately began removing royalist forces from political life and important positions in the state. The police were also infiltrated and became a tool of repression for the new regime. However, the so-called commissars of the revolutionary leaders, who had replaced the old elite, lacked administrative experience.

Towards the end of August 1952, the Command Council decided to abolish the aristocracy and the privileges and titles of the Egyptian and Sudanese nobility. Also, all old political parties (including the Wafd Party) that opposed the dictatorship were forcibly dissolved and many politicians and followers of the old regime were arrested. On the night of 5-6 September, the regime had 64 politicians, including three former prime ministers, arrested in a large-scale purge. After this event, Prime Minister Ali Maher resigned in protest. Nagib became the new head of government. He had thus finally emerged as the real ruler of Egypt.

The day after the change of prime ministership, the government announced the implementation of a land reform on 8 September. As part of the reform, virtually all the lands of the mostly aristocratic large landowners were expropriated without compensation. The reform allowed a person to own a maximum of 200 feddan (about 80 hectares) of land. In total, over 1,000,000 feddan, 15 % of Egypt's agricultural land at the time, was redistributed. Farmers were also given seeds and plant and fertiliser free of charge by the state as compensation for previous expropriations. As a result, agriculture experienced a small upswing, but subsequently fell into chaos due to disorganisation.

Another reform was the change of the previous economic structures. The Kingdom of Egypt was to be transformed into a centrally administered economy. The commanders implemented their programme with numerous nationalisations. As a result, numerous industrialists lost their factories or companies. The revolutionary council decided to reverse course in December 1952 and decided to strengthen control over the private sector. Large industrial programmes were also set up, but they did not have the desired success and left Egypt in debt. The state also reduced customs duties on machinery and raw materials and increased the export of goods. In return, the import of finished products was limited. The increasingly important role of the Egyptian state in economic life was thus consolidated.

In order to further consolidate the power of the new regime, the Egyptian constitution of 1923 was suspended on 10 December, and the abolition of the multi-party system marked the final departure from parliamentarism. On 16 January 1953, all political parties that still existed were forcibly dissolved. The only legal party was the newly founded "National Union" with Nasser as General Secretary. On 10 February 1953, a transitional constitution was drawn up and it was announced that democracy would be restored after a three-year "transitional period".

The end of parliamentarism unleashed new, more radical forces. Among the various small communist parties, whose activities continued despite being banned, the 1952 coup sparked controversy. At the same time, however, communist activists who had been imprisoned under the Wafd governments were released. Now forces such as the radical leftist National Liberation Movement were free to develop and even have a political say. But in August 1952, the military launched an attack on a textile factory in what is now al-Buhaira governorate, where they had to suppress a violent strike. The two insurgent leaders were sentenced to death by a military court, despite protests from Moscow and the communist world.

The communists regularly criticised Nasser publicly, accusing him, among other things, of torpedoing the 1951 non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. The subsequent repression of the led to protests by sections of the military, especially young radicalised officers. The government subsequently arrested 35 people and expelled the high-ranking left-liberal officer Youssef Seddik, who was one of the main organisers of the revolution, from the Revolutionary Council.

After the government had largely eliminated the communist opposition, from 1954 it turned against the Muslim Brotherhood Association, which did not consider itself a political party and ignored the ban. The organisation initially maintained good relations with the new government. A Muslim Brotherhood representative was on the Regency Council for Fu'ad II, and the Muslim Brotherhood had even been allocated three ministerial posts. Here, however, the first misunderstandings arose between the Islamists and the military regime. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Hasan al-Hudaibi wanted to exert even more influence on the Free Officers' government, regardless of the discord. To this end, the organisation declared its deviation from illegal activities and former terror tactics. Opponents of such a course were removed from the governing bodies of the organisation. However, the Free Officers responded and in the last phase of the kingdom, Islam gained strength. Thus, the presence of Islam in the public sphere became stronger. Women were obliged to wear a headscarf and new laws were only passed in compliance with Sharia law.

In terms of foreign policy, the new regime approached the Soviet Union and its satellite states. Especially because the Soviet Union was prepared to support the struggle against Israel ideologically and also with weapons. However, the new course was opposed by the USA, which now increasingly turned against the Free Officers.

Policemen arrest pro-Soviet activists outside a British bank


An Egyptian stamp from the day of the revolution


King Fu'ad II, 1952


Large demonstration in front of the old Khedive Opera House in Cairo, 25 January 1952


Prime Minister Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha concluded an Egyptian-Soviet non-aggression pact together with Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov in 1951


The Mogamma, built by Soviet architects from 1950-1952 and today Egypt's central administration building.


The leaders of the Sudanese Unionist Monarchist White Flag League from left to right: Hussein Sherief, Ali Abdelateef, Salih Abdelgadir and Obeid Haj Elamin, around 1923/24.


Demonstrators celebrate the Egyptian-British break in Cairo, 1951


Muslim Brotherhood logo


Mohammed Haidar Pasha, Egyptian Minister of War from 1948 to 1950. He contributed significantly to the military disasters of the army during the war due to poor preparation and was dismissed in 1950.


Map of the UN Partition Plan for Palestine 1947

End of the monarchy

In June 1953, the dissolution of the Regency Council signalled the end of the Egyptian monarchy.

On 18 June, the Revolutionary Command Council voted to abolish the hereditary monarchy and proclaimed the Republic of Egypt. This ended the rule of the dynasty of Muhammad Ali, which had lasted since 1805. King Fu'ad II was sent into exile to his family on the same day. The new head of state of the republic was President Nagib, who was also head of government. In return, he handed over the Ministry of Defence and the post of Commander-in-Chief of the army to Nasser, who was also Minister of the Interior. Nagib and Nasser soon became rivals, however, and two political camps emerged within the revolutionary movement. While the president supported the suppression of the Muslim Brotherhood and communists, Nasser sought their proximity. Nagib also wanted to return to the parliamentary system, which Nasser opposed. The Revolutionary Council, under pressure from Nasser, forced the resignation of the president on 23 February 1954. Only four days later he had to withdraw his move because Nagib still enjoyed great popularity in the army and among the people. On 25 February, he became president again. Nasser, as the new prime minister, had to accept that Nagib remained president.

On 5 March 1954, the Revolutionary Command Council announced the reinstatement of democratic freedoms, the release of prisoners and the re-establishment of parties. It also decided to convene a constituent assembly and adopt a new constitution. However, these reforms did not succeed, as riots broke out across the country on 19 March, and Nagib was forced to finally resign on 14 November 1954 and was placed under house arrest by Nasser. On 23 June 1954, the second anniversary of the 1952 revolution, Nasser became the new president. The Sudanese unionists, in particular the National Unionist Party, which wanted Sudan to be united with Egypt under the monarchy, distanced themselves from the new republic in 1955. Egypt's hopes that independent Sudan would then voluntarily unite with Egypt were not fulfilled. In 1952, Egypt had already granted Sudan the right of self-determination and renounced full sovereignty over Sudan in a British-Egyptian agreement. On 1 January 1956, the Republic of Sudan was proclaimed after a referendum. The new de facto head of state of the republic was the nationalist Ismail al-Azhari as prime minister. Egypt had thus finally had to give up Sudan and two states had emerged from the kingdom's inheritance.

Political system of the empire

The political system of the empire was based on the balance of power between the three major forces in the country: the Egyptian monarchy, the Wafd Party and Britain. This state of affairs lasted until the great government crisis of 1942, after which the British were replaced by the Egyptian army with great political - and after the coup d'état in 1952, economic - influence.

Monarchy and Court

The most important element of the state was the monarchy. The constitution guaranteed the king and the aristocracy considerable room for manoeuvre. It designated the King of Egypt and Sudan (ملك مصر والسودان, DMG Malik Miṣr was-Sūdān) as the sovereign of the state (see monarchical principle) and head of state. It granted him command of the country's armed forces and a free hand in appointing the prime minister, officials in the army and administration, and the ʿUlama', the religious scholars of Islam.

Also, all laws had to be signed by the king after being passed by parliament. The king was also responsible for opening and closing parliamentary sessions and could dissolve it and call new elections. Because of these far-reaching powers, however, the reigning monarch had to take an oath to the constitution.

The king increasingly became a symbol of the empire during the period of the kingdom. If for decades the opinion held that the various khedives and sultans were vassals of foreign powers and that Egypt was dependent on a monarchy that did not appear to be Egyptian, the role of the dynasty that had ruled since 1805 increasingly changed from 1922 onwards. The reason for this was the successful attempts of Fu'ad I and Faruq to slowly and peacefully detach themselves from the British sphere of influence and to pursue an independent course without having to make major compromises (e.g. the claims to Sudan were not relinquished and the demand to pursue its own foreign policy was enforced). Thus, even in the initial phase, anti-monarchist currents in the population could be won over to the new state, and Egypt developed into a strong monarchist nation by the beginning of the Second World War.

For the monarch's decisions, the court and a few close personal confidants from the Egyptian aristocracy, which was very similar to the European high nobility, usually played an important role. As early as Fu'ad I, the monarch exerted considerable influence on personnel policy without, as a rule, intervening in day-to-day affairs. In return, Faruq personally exercised considerable influence on day-to-day politics. In the process, partly competing actors influenced the king and often made his decisions appear contradictory.

Bureaucracy and justice

The Egyptian king had a considerable bureaucratic apparatus at his disposal. It ensured continuity in most domestic political conflicts and was considered a guarantor of the empire's stability. Thus, political decision-makers often had to count on the weight of the higher officials in controversial decisions. In the 1923 constitution, they were guaranteed political freedom. However, a secular monarchist-patriotic attitude was taken into account in their appointment. Thus, left-liberal, Islamist and anti-monarchist politicians could almost never get into administrative posts.

Aristocrats were overrepresented in the higher positions of the civil service. Religion only played a role towards the end of the kingdom. During the liberal initial phase of the kingdom, civil servants of other denominations were also represented. Numerous Jews and Copts occupied important positions in the bureaucracy and in some cases played a decisive role in building the young state.

In addition to a well-organised bureaucratic apparatus, the Kingdom of Egypt also had a modern European "infused" legal system, which was also responsible for the territory of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. British, Italian law and the code civil were considered the main source of legislation. Islamic law, the Sharia, which has been Egypt's main source since 1980, played hardly any role. However, the legal norms were mostly voluntarily shaped in accordance with Sunni Islamic law. There were also four Mixed Courts until 1949, which served to hear civil and commercial disputes between locals and foreigners and between foreigners of different nationalities. In 1949, they were replaced by an Egyptian offshoot of the code civil, which guaranteed the same rights to all citizens, even if they were not citizens of the kingdom, and became the model for the legal systems of all other Arab monarchies.

Although the judiciary was officially independent, and extra clerical judges from the time of the Sultanate were replaced by young, secular judges trained in Europe, the political attitude of the judiciary could be clearly seen in its judgements. While left-wing criminals were sometimes treated with enormous severity, right-wing criminals were given lenient charges or sentences. This also affected the prosecuting authorities. They felt obliged to the state and, in the period of the Cold War, increasingly to the fight against communism.

Constitution

The empire had three constitutions during its 31-year existence, each of which was fully valid in Sudan as well as Egypt:

• the Constitution of the Kingdom of Egypt of 1923
• the 1930 Constitution of the Kingdom of Egypt
• the 1953 Constitution of the Kingdom of Egypt

The 1923 constitution came into force after a referendum on 19 April 1923 and was drafted by a constitutional commission consisting of 30 representatives from all social classes and political parties. In its time, it was considered one of the most progressive of all and was the first successful attempt to establish a parliamentary democracy in Egypt. It is considered the most liberal constitution in Egyptian history.

The 1930 constitution was drafted by Prime Minister Ismail Sedki Pasha, who ruled dictatorially until 1933. It transformed Egypt into an authoritarian monarchy in which the powers of the king and the government were greatly expanded at the expense of parliament. The work of political parties and freedom of the press and of expression were also massively restricted. In 1935, it was suspended after protests.

The 1923 Constitution emerged from the Constitution of the Khedivate of Egypt drafted in 1882. It was significantly shaped by Saad Zaghlul and Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha. On the one hand, it was an organisational statute that delimited the competences of the state organs through which the empire acted and of other institutions of the empire. On the other hand, it defined the competence of the empire vis-à-vis the provinces. The empire was only allowed to act on those matters that were expressly assigned to the empire as a competence in the constitution. In all other respects, the partly sovereign provinces were responsible.

The constitution did have a clear section on fundamental rights. There was a ban on discrimination on the basis of citizenship and protection of minorities. However, the relationship between the subject (citizen) and the monarchy was only roughly defined in law.

The constitution understood the Kingdom of Egypt as a union of partly sovereign provinces. This corresponded to the fact that the kingdom was de facto a federal state, which was based on local tribal leaders, especially in Sudan. The constituent states of the kingdom had distinct powers of their own, although they had no representation in parliament.

The Egyptian monarch held the title of King of Egypt and Sudan. He was entitled to considerable powers that went far beyond what the nationalist-democratic forces in the country had imagined. He appointed and dismissed the government, civil servants and, from 1936/37, commanded the royal navy, air force and Egyptian army. The constitution also provided that the king could, if necessary, restore internal security through the army. This concentration of command power existed before the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936, in which Britain finally granted the supreme command of the armed forces to the Egyptian king, and was often used by Fu'ad I as leverage. However, the king's power was never absolute, but was in the tradition of Egyptian constitutionalism since Muhammad Ali Pasha came to power.

The Prime Minister was equally responsible to the King and Parliament. This circumstance often led to conflicts or misunderstandings between the king and parliament. Parliament also elected the head of government. The King then usually also appointed him, but could also have appointed a person chosen by him.

The counterweight to the government was the Egyptian parliament. It consisted of two chambers, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. The king had the right to appoint 2/5 of the senators and the president of the senate.

The electoral law provided for a general, equal and secret election for men. The legislative period lasted four years. The king could dissolve parliament at any time and call new elections. The core competences of parliament were to enact laws of all kinds and to pass the budget. Thus, the government was finally bound to the parliament and parliamentary democracy was firmly anchored in the state.

However, the 1923 constitution left one important point unmentioned. The claim to sovereignty over Sudan was not included in the constitutional text, although it was a central issue in Egyptian domestic and foreign policy.

The 1953 Constitution was enacted on 10 February 1953. It was intended to organise the transition period from the monarchy to the republic.

Rulers and prime ministers

The Egyptian monarch ruled de facto in personal union as king of Egypt and Sudan. While the title was associated with real political power in Egypt, it was almost purely ceremonial in Sudan.

• Fu'ad I. (1868–1936)
• Proclaimed King of Egypt and Sovereign of Nubia, Sudan, Kurdufan and Darfur on 15 March 1922.
• Died 28 April 1936

• Faruq (1920-1965)
• On 28 April 1936 with the death of his predecessor automatically King
• On 29 July 1937 Coronation as King of Egypt and Sovereign of Nubia, Sudan, Kurdufan and Darfur
• On 16 October 1951 coronation as King of Egypt and Sudan
• On 26 July 1952 renunciation of government and abdication

• Fu'ad II. (1951–)
• On 26 July 1952 Coronation as King of Egypt and Sudan
• Deposed on 18 June 1953

The Egyptian prime minister at the time of the kingdom was elected by parliament and appointed by the king. Most heads of government were representatives of the Wafd Party. The office holders changed very frequently; only a few politicians were able to gain formative influence. From 1926 to 1936 alone, Egypt had 16 different governments. The most politically or economically influential prime ministers were:

• Abdel Khalek Sarwat Pasha, (first Prime Minister and one of the founders of the Kingdom, held office 16 March 1922 to 30 November 1922)
• Saad Zaghlul (leader of the Wafd Party from 1919 until his death in 1927, important independence fighter, social reformer and spiritual father of the 1923 Constitution, held office from 26 January 1924 to 24 November 1924)
• Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha (from 1927 to 1952 leader of the Wafd Party, social reformer and key player in the drafting of British and Soviet-Egyptian treaties and the establishment of the Arab League, held office 16 March 1928 to 27 June 1928, 1 January 1930 to 20 June 1930, 9 May 1936 to 29 December 1937, 5 February 1942 to 10 October 1944, 12 January 1950 to 27 January 1952)
• Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil (reached an Egyptian-British settlement, officiated 27 June 1928 to 4 October 1929, 29 December 1937 to 18 August 1939)
• Ismail Sedki Pasha (ruled largely dictatorially during his first term, taking his cue from Benito Mussolini and restoring political stability to Egypt through a new constitution, held office 20 June 1930 to 22 September 1933, 17 February 1946 to 9 December 1946)
• Ali Maher Pasha (important figure in the nationalist movement, advocated permanent neutrality for Egypt and offered protection and a new homeland to German Jews, held office 30 January 1936 to 9 May 1936, 18 August 1939 to 28 June 1940, 27 January 1952 to 2 March 1952, 23 July 1952 to 7 September 1952)
• Hussein Sirri Pasha (officiated at the height of the advance of German-Italian troops into Egypt during the African campaign, officiated 15 November 1940 to 5 February 1942, also officiated a second time from July 1949 - January 1950 and a third time from 2 July 1952 to 20 July 1952)
• Mahmud an-Nukrashi Pasha (declared war on the German Empire and Japan on 26 February 1945, decided to deploy Egyptian troops in the Palestine War in 1948, was assassinated by the Muslim Brotherhood after the defeat, held office 26 February 1945 to 17 February 1946, 9 December 1946 to 28 December 1948)
• Ahmad Naguib Hilali Pasha (was appointed twice by King Faruq before the revolution. The first time from 2 March - 29 June 1952 and again from 22 - 23 July 1952, the day of the revolution that led to King Faruq's deposition).
• Muhammad Nagib (putsched himself into power together with Gamal Abdel Nasser on 23 July 1952 (see Military coup in Egypt 1952) and established a military dictatorship. In 1953 he became the first President of the Republic, serving from 7 September 1952 to 18 June 1953).

Political parties and mass organisations

Most of the political parties in the kingdom date back to the time of the sultanate or the khedivate. However, there were numerous new foundations and splits.

From 1923 until 1952/53, Egypt had a remarkable experience rich in political and democratic practices; during this period, the Wafd Party was almost continuously the strongest party in parliament. With the outbreak of the July 1952 revolution, the military dictatorship under Muhammad Nagib and Gamal Abdel Nasser sought to liquidate the opposition. A decree dissolving political parties and adopting a one-party system banned all political parties in January 1953.

In the party spectrum at the time of the Kingdom, there were the following parties of importance:

Party	Expression	Foundation
Wafd Party	Egyptian nationalism, royalism, Economic Liberalism, Anti-Colonialism, National Liberalism	1919
Umma Party	Ultranationalism	1907
Watani Party	Egyptian nationalism, anti-colonialism, Conservatism	1907
Liberal Constitutional Party	Left-liberalism, Constitutionalism, Anti-colonialism	1922
Ittihad Party	Egyptian nationalism, religious traditionalism, anti-colonialism	1924
Saadian institutionalised party	Liberalism, Royalism	1938
Egyptian People's Party	Royalism, Representation of the countryside	1930
Egyptian Communist Party	Communism, Marxism-Leninism	1921
"Federal Party"	Federalism, Royalism	?

and a number of smaller Egyptian and Sudanese parties:

• "Egyptian Socialist Party" (founded 1921, anarchist and communist)
• Young Egyptian Party (founded 1933, Islam-fascist, national socialist, radically anti-Semitic)
• "National Unionist Party (founded 1952, unionist, supported the unification of Egypt with Sudan under the monarchy)
• "Umma Party (Sudan)" (founded 1945, separatist)
• "Southern Party" (founded in 1951, separatist, campaigned for more rights for black Africans in what is now Southern Sudan)
• "Anti-imperialist Front" (founded 1952, separatist, anti-colonialist)

The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood did not consider itself a party. It saw itself as a mass organisation. The Brotherhood grew very rapidly after its founding in 1928 and also spread to neighbouring countries. At the end of the 1930s it was still a group of a few hundred, but by 1941 it already had about 60,000 members, and by 1948 about 500,000 members and hundreds of thousands of sympathisers. It was strictly hierarchically organised, had its own mosques, companies, factories, hospitals and schools, and occupied important posts in the army and trade unions. It attached great importance to education and training in the spirit of its Islamic vision of society. In this way, it succeeded in gaining great influence in the Egyptian state. It was banned in 1948, but readmitted in 1950.

External relations

Egypt's foreign policy during the Kingdom was mainly characterised by the pursuit of hegemony in the Arab and Islamic world and a traditionally firm attachment to Western Europe. Egypt maintained good relations with its immediate neighbours such as Greece, Turkey, Iran, France, Italy and Yugoslavia, but also with countries such as Japan and the United States.

In the early years after independence in 1922, the Egyptian government was prevented from pursuing an independent foreign policy. It was determined by the former colonial power Great Britain, which had considered itself Egypt's protecting power since 1882. After the British-Egyptian rift over the assassination of Sudanese Governor General Lee Stack in Cairo on 20 November 1924, relations deteriorated visibly. As a result, the Egyptian government sought recognition as a sovereign state by other great powers.

From the second half of the 1920s onwards, Egypt tried to conclude an alliance with some major European powers. The efforts proved successful. In 1936, the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty was concluded with Great Britain, making both countries equal allies. The treaty had been preceded by the Italian conquest of Ethiopia, which also had no allies. With France, which had a mainly cultural presence in Egypt, there was a de facto alliance based on a border treaty of 1926. Egypt initially maintained very good relations with the Kingdom of Italy, but these deteriorated increasingly from 1932 onwards (see Reconquest of Libya). On 13 June 1940, the Egyptian parliament decided to break off relations with Italy. Italian troops then attacked the northwest of the country (see Italian Invasion of Egypt). After the defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa in 1943, Egypt joined the Allies in spring 1945 and declared war on the German Empire and Japan. On 10 September 1946, Egypt and Italy concluded a peace treaty.

On the eve of the SecondWorld War, the empire's foreign policy was mainly determined by Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil, who exerted considerable influence on it as prime minister. However, his policy, which was initially aimed at a successful settlement with Great Britain, led Egypt into isolation. Since the country opposed both the aggressive expansionist policies of Japan, Italy and the German Empire, but also did not want to support the appeasement policy of the Western democracies. Only relations with the United States remained friendly.

After the Second World War, Egypt became a founding member of the Arab League and the United Nations. Tensions soon arose with the Western powers, for example over Egyptian claims to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and sovereignty over Sudan. Egypt also distanced itself from the Soviet Union because it openly opposed its troop presence in Iran, its support for the communists in the civil war in Greece and its attempted influence in Turkey. There were also conflicts in the Arab region. The Kingdom of Iraq and Saudi Arabia rejected Egypt's plans for the "Unity of the Nile Valley". Nevertheless, the three states, together with Transjordan, Syria and Lebanon, fought against Israel in the Palestine War 1948-1949.

After the Arab defeat in 1949, there was again increased friction with Saudi Arabia. Two camps thus emerged in the Arab League: a religious-conservative one led by the Saudis and a secular-secular one led by Egypt. Egypt and Saudi Arabia subsequently engaged in an unprecedented arms race from 1949 onwards, which consumed large parts of the budgets of both states. In Egyptian politics and in the military, the Saudis were increasingly seen as an "archrival" whose absolutist Islamic conservative monarchy was the absolute antithesis of the modern Western-style Egyptian monarchy. The tensions finally culminated in the civil war in North Yemen from 1962-1970, which became a proxy war.

In the Islamic world, most states recognised Egypt's claim to leadership. In East Africa and the Near East, too, the claim seemed secure. However, countries like Iran, Turkey, Israel or Abyssinia soon developed into serious competitors.

From the early 1950s onwards, the Kingdom of Egypt also provided foreign policy development aid and was active in the training of security forces and the development of infrastructure that accompanied arms exports. The monarchical states of Libya, Afghanistan, North Yemen, Iran and Abyssinia were the main recipients of this aid.

A metal factory built with foreign development aid in the Afghan capital Kabul, c. 1950


The Greek King George II in conversation with Prime Minister Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha and the well-known Egyptian gynaecologist Naguib Pasha Mahfouz, 1942. Cairo was the seat of the Greek government-in-exile from 1941 after the Balkan campaign.


Flag of the Wafd Party


The Queen of Romania Marie of Edinburgh with Howard Carter after the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in Egypt


The Egyptian and Sudanese Royal Crowns


Egyptian revolutionaries of the Wafd Party with a US flag, 1919


Title page of the 1953 Constitution


Catherine Tobin: The Land of Inheritance


The former Palace of Justice of Alexandria was the seat of one of Egypt's Mixed Courts of Justice

Realm parts and countries

The Kingdom of Egypt saw itself as a federation of 12 or, from 1948, 13 partly sovereign provinces. Although officially there was a centralised administration, in practice there was a federalstate order.

The constituent states of the empire had distinct powers of their own. They had their own official language, state symbols, a de facto constitution based on oral promises by the government, and capital, but Cairo had a special status as the supra-regional capital. The provinces of Anglo-EgyptianSudan had some special rights granted to them by the Egyptian government under pressure from local Sudanese tribal leaders and clans. In this way, Egypt attempted to peacefully integrate the Sudanese population into the administration of the empire and remove them from British influence. However, all provinces were financially dependent on the empire's tax system. The kingdom also reserved strong administrative and legislative powers for itself.

Until 1953, Egypt de facto consisted of two (partial) states, which were ruled by the Egyptian king in personal union. The Egyptian motherland was joined by the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, which the Egyptian monarchy administered together with Great Britain. Egypt had never regained full control of the area since the establishment of the condominium in 1899. What is disputed, however, is how much Egyptian influence there was. British officials did control the higher administrative posts and the condominium was administered by a British governor-general. Egyptian officials, however, were overrepresented in all offices from middle management up to the police. Also, the only official language of the territory was de facto Arabic, the Egyptian pound was the only currency and the King of Egypt was the head of Sudan under international law.

Most of the - now Egyptian - provinces were dissolved in 1960/61 by Gamal Abdel Nasser or his successor Anwar as-Sadat. They were replaced by smaller, distinctly centrally administered governorates, each headed today by a governor with ministerial rank. The Sudanese provinces became today's Sudanese and South Sudanese federal states.

In February 1949, after the Palestine War, Egypt was awarded what is now the Gaza Strip in an armistice agreement with Israel. It was only administered by the monarchy, not annexed. The inhabitants of the Strip did not receive any civic rights from Egypt and thus remained stateless.

Provinces of the Kingdom of Egypt
Provinces	Capital	Foundation	Today's state
alhudud alfayida	no (de facto Cairo)	1917	Egypt
muhafazat alqinal	Port Said	1859	Egypt
muhafazat alssahra' algharbia	Marsa Matruh	1917	Egypt
muhafazat sayna'	al-Arish	1917	Egypt
almuhafazat alssuhrawiat aljunawbiat	Charga	1917	Egypt
A'li an-Nil	Malakal	1919	South Sudan
al-Chartum	Khartoum	1919	Sudan
an-Nil al-azraq	Wad Madani	1919	Sudan
Equatoria	Juba	1919	South Sudan
Bahr al-Ghazal	Waw	1948	South Sudan
Darfur	al-Fashir	1919	Sudan
Kassala	Kassala	1919	Sudan
Kurdufan	al-Ubayyid	1919	Sudan
Kingdom of Egypt	Cairo	1922	Egypt, Sudan, South Sudan

 

(Partial) States of the Kingdom of Egypt (de facto) 1947 Area Capital (Inhabitants) Area in km² Inhabitants Egypt (incl. Hala'ib Triangle) Cairo (city centre 2,090,654) 1.010.407,87 19.090.447 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan Khartoum (approx. 90,000, suburbs 230,000) 2.505.800 8.783.000 Kingdom of Egypt total Cairo 3.516.207,87 27.873.447

Economic History

The Egyptian economy changed considerably during the existence of the empire. Technological changes accelerated both industrialisation and urbanisation. Capitalism spread throughout the territory of the empire. At first, economic centres developed mainly around the capital Cairo and the other major cities, before industrialisation also took hold in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan after the Second World War. Although by the end of the Kingdom, the economy had grown rapidly in almost the entire national territory and the overall economic growth was quite comparable to that of European powers, the late onset of this development meant that the Kingdom of Egypt remained backward by international standards. In 1928/28, Egypt, with Sudan, had about 60 large industrial enterprises and had become Africa's first ever industrialised state before the Great Depression. The driving force behind Egypt's industrialisation was the cotton processing industry. Its rise began as early as the 1890s, when numerous new areas of arable land were opened up and could be irrigated year-round. With the 1919 revolution, which saw a short-lived economic boom, Egypt experienced another unprecedented economic boom from 1922 onwards, which lasted until 1930. The Egyptian cotton industry grew uninterruptedly. Before the Great Depression, Egypt had become the second largest cotton exporter in the world after the United States and held a monopoly position in the world market. However, Egyptian production was only one quarter of that of the USA. Thus, Egypt had no influence on the price of cotton products. The Egyptian cotton industry was dominated by local ethnic minorities, such as Jews, Greeks and British. There were only three large indigenous Egyptian industries trading in cotton. The main focus of development was the coastal areas, from where the products were semi-processed and shipped to Europe.

Agriculture

Although Egypt had risen to become the most industrialised country in Africa, agriculture had remained an important foundation of the economy. In addition to cotton, agricultural production was concentrated on sugar cane, maize, rice, millet, potatoes, fruits and vegetables, peanuts, sesame, sorghum and wheat. Before the Great Depression, the distribution of the harvest consisted on average of 40-50% cotton, 25-30% wheat, maize and beans and 10-20% remaining products.

The agricultural land was limited to the Nile Valley, the Nile Delta and the Jazira Plain in Sudan between the White and Blue Nile and some oases. The farmers (fellahs) cultivate the land using cultivation and irrigation methods that are in part thousands of years old. It was only after the Second World War that mechanised agriculture began to be introduced. However, irrigation methods on the Nile were changed from flood basins to year-round irrigation by canalisation from the end of the 19th century. In the process, agricultural cultivation changed from a subsistence to an export orientation, so that, relatively speaking, fewer foodstuffs typical of the country, such as field beans and cabbage, could be harvested and exported throughout the Middle East. Cotton, however, remained the most important product. However, its cultivation, intensified from the 1920s onwards, quickly led to over-exploitation and salinisation of the soil, which resulted in large crop losses and the spread of plant diseases. Diseases like byssinosis, malaria and pests like hookworms spread. In alhudud alfayida province alone, 90 % of the population was affected. Parts of those affected could never be cured and remained weakened for life.

The Egyptian government under Adli Yakan Pasha and his successor Muhammad Mahmoud Pasha sought rehabilitation measures from 1927 onwards to bring the situation back under control. Heavy investments led to the construction of river bifurcations and the financing of educational campaigns. However, the problem could never be completely resolved until the revolution of 1952, when rehabilitation measures were intensified.

Banking and monetary system

The Kingdom of Egypt had a professionally established banking and credit system. However, until its establishment in 1961, the country lacked a central bank, which would have been a steering instrument for all monetary, credit and economic policy in general. Its place was taken by the commercial bank, the National Bank of Egypt, whose capital was mainly British-owned. It had a monopoly on note issuance and acted as the de facto "paymaster" of the government. Several foreign financial institutions also existed in the banking sector, most of them from France, Great Britain or Italy. They primarily handled the import and export transactions of the merchants in the country. At first, the Egyptian state could hardly influence this development. It was not until the later 1920s that a few Egyptian aristocrats and upper-class citizens succeeded in gaining influence over the foreign banks. At the local level in the rural areas, the aristocracy could hardly gain a foothold and the bourgeoisie, together with local money lenders and landlords, dominated the availability of money and credit. However, credit was mostly denied to peasants who urgently needed money to pay taxes between harvest seasons, citing lack of creditworthiness. Only large landowners were granted extensive loans, as their property was large enough to guarantee the necessary security. In order to solve this social emergency and prevent an increasing impoverishment of the lower classes of the population, the state itself intervened in 1927 and made state loans available to the peasants. It was also the state itself that financed the foundation of the bank Banque du Crédit Agricole Egypte in 1931. Foreign investment, which already amounted to about £400 to £500 million in 1929, increased sharply thereafter because of the social security and stability created in the country. Despite the threat of war, £200 million was invested by foreigners in Egypt in 1939 alone. The country continued to attract foreign investors after the Second World War.

The monetary system was pegged to the British pound sterling (£), hence there was a fixed exchange rate between sterling and the Egyptian pound. The latter had only been set as the nation's sole official currency in 1916. Thus, the Egyptian currency was closely linked to the fate of the British currency and monetary policy of the former colonial power. Also, the Egyptian pound was backed by British treasury bonds, which in turn reflected the kingdom's dependence on Britain.

Foreign trade and services sector

After 1922, a comprehensive integration of Egypt into the world market took place. Egyptian foreign trade accounted for 0.8 % of the world market in 1928. This put Egypt ahead of the non-European countries. The country's connection to the world market was mainly based on the export of agricultural goods, semi-processed cotton and high-quality textiles. However, Egypt had no influence on the pricing of its products. Costly imports to modernise the country had in turn made Egypt dependent on the world market. Especially in times of crisis, the economy reacted very sensitively to fluctuations in the world market.

Europe was the empire's most important trading partner. In particular, Western Europe with Great Britain as its largest trading partner. The presence of numerous British troop units in the country during the First World War alone had enabled the development of a comprehensive service sector. Urban middle-class entrepreneurs in particular set up numerous small businesses that later became larger companies. They also managed to sell more products abroad at a higher price through overproduction, which reduced the national debt of the empire, which had grown enormously before the world war, and was able to put the economy of the kingdom on a solid footing.

The service sector grew decisively during the monarchy due to three factors. The first was the development of a comprehensive bureaucratic apparatus, which the political leadership considered necessary to stabilise the young state. The second reason was the expansion of infrastructure and industrialisation. Thus, the civil service rose to become a significant employer.

The third reason for the growth of the service sector was the emergence of tourism. It has a comparatively long tradition in Egypt. The empire offered political security and stability in addition to an abundance of historical sites, luxurious bathing resorts and numerous archaeological sites. This attracted many empires from Europe and America. Most visited the archaeological sites such as the Valley of the Kings or the pyramids. In the black African south of the country, people went big game hunting. In this early period, celebrities such as Winston Churchill and numerous European monarchs were among them. Big game hunting became increasingly popular in the 1920s and 1930s, but remained exclusive. The tourist rush that developed into mass tourism after the Second World War in the final phase of the empire (Egypt counted 0.1 million tourists in 1950) led to the development of a network of luxurious hotels and shops. The aristocracy and the peasants with the workers remained excluded from this development and benefited only a fraction. Most employees had to work for a pittance, although the standard of living in the cities improved significantly.

Raw materials industry

With its possessions in present-day Sudan and South Sudan, the Kingdom of Egypt had considerable mineral resources and occupied top positions worldwide in some industries. The extractive industry flourished during the final phase of the Egyptian-Sudanese monarchy. However, the distribution of profits between Egypt, the British and local Sudanese tribal leaders caused conflicts. The extraction methods proved to be partly outdated.

The oil industry experienced an enormous boom in the kingdom. Egypt had considerable oil reserves in the Gulf of Suez, in the westernmost part of the Libyan desert, on the Sinai Peninsula and in the Sudanese regions of Upper Nile and Bahr al-Ghazal. Oil was discovered in the Gulf of Suez as early as 1869 and production began in 1910. However, most of the deposits were only increasingly developed by mostly foreign companies at the end of the 1930s. Before the Second World War, Egypt had the largest known oil deposits in North and East Africa and in 1939 became one of the world's largest oil producers. Nevertheless, until 1974, only a fraction of Sudan's oil was produced. The same was true for natural gas deposits, which were not produced in Egypt until 1975.

Other raw materials in the empire, such as phosphates, gold and iron, coal, copper, uranium and white sand, like crude oil, were only developed, in some cases extensively, after the country's independence in 1922. The products were then mostly exported semi-processed to Europe or America.

The extraction of mineral resources gave rise to an extensive mining sector, which became one of the most important economic foundations of the kingdom.

Egypt's most important mineral resources at this time were iron, which was important in building its own heavy and armament industry, the gold reserves that first covered the Egyptian pound, and iron ore for large construction projects. The iron was used in the production of cars and trains. This led to assembly line production and mass production of affordable automobiles. In Egypt's big cities, the automobile began to replace horse-drawn vehicles as a means of individual transport from 1930 onwards. In the countryside, animals such as horses or donkeys remained the most common means of transport.

Egyptian iron ore was the basis of the country's construction industry. Large reserves were created. The deposits came mainly from the city of Aswan and allowed the Kingdom of Egypt to become one of the world's largest producers. Production ceased in 1974. Non-ferrous metals, such as copper or zinc, were discovered on the Sinai Peninsula and on the Red Sea coast. Although high reserves were suspected even at that time, the production volume remained low at the time of the monarchy. Only precious metals such as silver, platinum, gold, which had been found in the Arabian desert, were sufficiently tapped and exploited. Platinum was used for the production of laboratory equipment and, from 1949 onwards, also as a casing for the country's own rockets. Silver was used for the production of jewellery, coins and cutlery. However, the Egyptian economy paid special attention to gold and copper. The latter was needed in the development of an advanced electrical industry in the country. Many Egyptians and Sudanese lived at that time without access to storm. Gold was in turn stored as a currency reserve and the Egyptian pound was backed by gold reserves. Egypt was among the world's top in terms of reserves and production volume of gold. The kingdom had become the largest producer of gold on the African continent and in the Middle East.

Despite the abundance of raw materials, one resource remained untouched. Phosphates, which were needed in the development of a chemical industry and in the production of urgently needed fertiliser for cotton, were hardly mined. It was only after the 1952 revolution that mining began. Other raw materials near the phosphate deposits, such as ceramics, gemstones and precious stones were mined for them because they were considered more useful. So jewellery was made from them, which was then sold expensively to Europe. The chemical industry in Egypt nevertheless had its beginnings at the time of the kingdom. Sulphur was discovered in the Gulf of Suez and the entrance to the Red Sea. A modest sulphuric acid industry was established, which laid the foundation for the chemical industry and enabled the production of explosives and chemical fertilisers, as well as pesticides for medicinal purposes and the bleaching of textiles. The latter proved crucial for the industrialisation of the country. The textile industry had been one of the mainstays of the industrial boom.

Also building materials that were important for the production of cement and clay bricks, and sandstone and limestone, which had also been carriers of industrialisation. The empire possessed an enormous abundance of these. From the quarries in the Siwa Oasis or El Alamein, for example, limestone was used as a raw material in the cement, iron and steel industries. But building materials were also important in the paint, plastics, rubber and paper industries, without which the boom in the economy in the 1920s and 30s would probably not have happened.

The uranium deposits in Sudanese marble, gypsum and the Nuba Mountains were of great importance for the military. The deposits were first mined by the British and, from 1951, also by Egypt for its nuclear programme.

Economic crises

Egypt experienced two economic crises in the period from 1922 to 1953. The first was part of the Great Depression and lasted from 1929 to around 1935/36. The second took place after the withdrawal of British forces in 1946.

The world economic crisis reached the Egyptian monarchy as early as 1929. Unlike other countries, it was not triggered in equal parts by internal and external factors. Rather, three components of the crisis affected the country: the world agricultural crisis, the world financial crisis and the British currency crisis. The decisive preconditions for the country's sensitivity were its great dependence on the cotton industry and its close ties to the British Empire. The country's cotton industry was defenceless against the steadily falling cotton prices from 1925 onwards. The crisis accelerated the price decline. The total value of Egyptian cotton fell below pre-World War I levels during the worst years of the crisis from 1932 to 1933. Industrial production in general was drastically curtailed and fell by 60%. The second cause was the country's dependence on foreign capital markets. This had financed the increase in cotton production as well as the expansion of Egypt's foreign trade. Also, since the country's financial system was linked to that of the British, fluctuations in the value of the pound sterling had a direct impact on the Egyptian currency.

The crisis in Egypt began parallel to Black Thursday in 1929. First, the financial crisis began in the country, which was followed by numerous bankruptcies of Egyptian companies in connection with the events on Wall Street in New York. However, the damage was limited because stock market activity in Egypt was still a relatively new and unknown business. On the other hand, the confidence of the population in the political and economic institutions was permanently undermined. The financial crisis, however, was exacerbated by falling cotton prices and measures that Britain itself undertook in its own country. This happened on 21 September 1931, when Britain left the gold standard and the discount rate in London rose to six per cent. As a result, the Egyptian trading exchanges all had to be closed briefly and the Egyptian pound had to go off the gold standard. Admittedly, this step proved advantageous vis-à-vis the main trading partner, Great Britain. It was also advantageous for Egyptian industry, which was now protected against foreign imports. However, purchasing power and the value of the Egyptian pound fell and Egyptian goods prices rose by 10 % to 30 %. Leaving the gold standard led to another problem that had to be negotiated over several years. It concerned the repayment of the Egyptian national debt. Italian and French representatives demanded repayment in gold. Egypt, however, was only willing to repay the debt in paper currency. The dispute was settled in Egypt's favour in 1936.

The Egyptian economy passed through the lowest point of the crisis in 1932/33. During these years, the price of cotton and Egyptian exports were at their lowest. The following year brought another record cotton harvest. At the same time, cotton prices rose by 15 % in 1934. The government's rehabilitation measures also had an effect. It sought to balance the trade and maintain a healthy budget. In its efforts to curb imports and promote exports, it was decisively supported by the Egyptian banking system, which tried to finance exports. In 1936, the monarchy was able to overcome the crisis.

Decline in Egyptian industrial production in international comparison at the height of the crisis
Country	Decline
Egypt	- − 60 %
United States	- − 46,8 %
Poland	- − 46,6 %
Canada	- − 42,4 %
German Reich	- − 41,8 %
Czechoslovakia	- − 40,4 %
Netherlands	- − 37,4 %
Italy	- − 33,0 %
France	- − 31,3 %
Belgium	- − 30,6 %
Argentina	- − 17,0 %
Denmark	- − 16,5 %
Great Britain	- − 16,2 %
Sweden	- − 10,3 %
Japan	- − 8,5 %

The second economic crisis of 1946 was an indirect consequence of the Second World War. The fighting between the Italians and the British, which lasted from 1940 to 1943, completely destroyed the northwest of the country. By 1945, cotton prices had already fallen back to the level of the early 1920s. As a result, the money for a fundamental modernisation of the economy could not be raised. The majority of the population still felt nothing of this. It was not until the withdrawal of the British troops that the general public began to feel the crisis.

The presence of British troops since the occupation of the country in 1940 and the production of numerous war goods for the British in Egypt gave rise to new employers, in whose workplaces several tens of thousands of Egyptians and Sudanese were employed. The hasty British withdrawal, however, gave the Egyptian government little time for effective job creation measures. Thus, the reintegration of the unemployed into the labour market often lasted beyond the time of the Kingdom and was, along with the Palestine War, the main reason for the monarchy's continuous decline in prestige in the post-war period.

Traffic

Egypt had inherited 4500 km of railway network and a comparatively well developed road network from the legacy of the Ottoman Empire. The most important mode of transport was the railway; the network of the Egyptian State Railways, whose route length was around 6500 km around 1950, was the first in the whole of Africa. Rail transport and tram transport in the Kingdom of Egypt expanded rapidly. Already in the predecessor state, the Khedivate and Sultanate of Egypt, the Ottomans and the British colonial power had massively supported the development of rail transport financially for strategic reasons

The railway and road network was concentrated in the Nile Valley and the Nile Delta. The Egyptian government considered investment in a new, improved transport system necessary to accelerate the industrialisation of the country and the transport of the harvested cotton deposits. Another reason was that the military leadership had recognised the great potential of rail transport for military purposes. The government had Egypt's railway network expanded, especially in the 1930s. It tried to integrate important centres such as the capital Cairo, Alexandria, Khartoum, Port Said, Port Sudan, Omdurman, Kassala, Luxor, Giza, Suez, Juba and Wau into the network. For this purpose, mainly British, Belgian, Italian and American companies built the first test lines. On the Sinai Peninsula, the British Palestine Railways company, separate from the Egyptian state railways, operated the Sinai Railway, which was connected to the British Mandate Territory of Palestine and which, between 1920 and 1939, was part of a continuous railway connection from Europe to Egypt - apart from the Bosphorus and Suez Canal crossing. For the now low volume of traffic, one track was initially quite sufficient. A second track was removed in 1923/24. The route ran via Istanbul, Ankara, Aleppo, Damascus, Dera'a, Haifa and El Qantara. There has been no connection to the Israeli railway network or to the European one since the Palestine War, during which the Egyptian army dismantled the railway. The Egyptian state, despite clear regional differences, clearly improved the infrastructure of the empire. Sand drifts in the Sahara and Sinai, however, proved problematic. The sand moved both over and under the tracks, leading to some traffic accidents. As a result, many announced major development projects and large-scale projects could not be implemented. The exception was the expansion of the railway network in Sudan, which was carried out with British aid. From 1923 to 1924, a 347 km long line was built between the small town of Hayya and Kassala. Between 1928 and 1929, a 237 km line from al-Qadarif to Sannar followed, and in 1953, a 227 km link from Sannar to ad-Damazin. A metro in Cairo, which was seen as a solution due to the city's population growth and worsening traffic problems, was also not built. Instead, the expansion of trams in the major cities was pushed ahead. The most important example is the Alexandria tramway, which, although it started operating in 1863, is one of the oldest in the world and the oldest in Africa. In most cases, no expense was spared in the extension of its routes and in the procurement of the latest railcars. The same was true for the Cairo tramway, which became the hub of the African continent and a lucrative source of income in this field.

The road network of the empire remained rather modest compared to the railway transport system. Extensive road networks were only located in and around the major cities. In Sudan, there was only one asphalt road between Khartoum and Wad Madani until 1970. Apart from a few trunk roads, only farm tracks and paths were widespread throughout the empire.

Egyptian maritime and shipping traffic played an important role in the economic rise of the country. The 162 km long Suez Canal between the Mediterranean port of Port Said and Port Taufiq near Suez on the Red Sea played a major role. Several smaller dams and new irrigation systems were also built in the Nile for agricultural reasons. No interest was shown in the construction of the Aswan Dam, which was presented to the Egyptian government and King Faruq in 1948 as a project by the Greek-Egyptian agricultural engineer Adrian Daninos.

Due to its possessions in Sudan as well as on its own coasts, Egypt had several port cities with good seaports. The most important on Egyptian soil were Suez, Port Said and Alexandria, from whose port 60 % of Egypt's foreign trade is transacted today. For this purpose, the Royal Egyptian Navy had numerous ships built and anchored there. The boom was preceded by the cotton boom that began in the early 1920s, which required a better infrastructure to ship the products. Contrary to the original expectations of the country's political leadership, the Egyptian merchant fleet was only able to occupy an important regional position at the beginning of the empire. After the world economic crisis, therefore, the expansion of the most important port cities and the building of a larger improved merchant fleet began, which was able to gain a certain international importance. At the same time, the royal navy was upgraded and modernised, thus beginning Egypt's rise to a maritime power in the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

The most important port for Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was Port Sudan, from where both Egyptian and British shipping companies operated. It too was expanded after the Second World War.

Air traffic in Egypt was still in its infancy during the existence of the empire. Most airfields served military purposes. On 7 June 1932, the private airline Misr Airwork was founded by the Egyptian aviation pioneer Alan Muntz. It was the first Egyptian airline ever. In July 1933, it established the first daily scheduled flights from Cairo via Alexandria to Marsa Matruh. Due to the great demand, the route network was constantly expanded. Due to the increase in tourism, twice-weekly flights were organised from December 1933 along the Nile towards the south, the route Cairo-Asyut-Luxor-Assuan. The cities of Lod and Haifa in Palestine were the first international destinations to be added to the route network in 1934, followed two years later in 1936 by Nicosia in Cyprus and Baghdad in the Kingdom of Iraq. The increasing number of flights prompted Misr Airwork to add more aircraft and staff from 1935 onwards. In 1935, 6,990 passengers and 21,830 kg of cargo were carried. With the outbreak of World War II, the Egyptian state took control of the airline in September 1939 and renamed it Misr Airlines. At that time, the airline had an all-de Havilland fleet of 18 types. In 1949, the company was renamed MisrAir. Between 1949 and 1952, the route network doubled with new destinations in Ethiopia, Greece, Iran, Yemen, Kuwait, Switzerland, Syria and Turkey. The number of employees also increased to over 1000, as did the fleet of modern aircraft. In 1971, the airline adopted the name Egypt Air. Its hub is Cairo International Airport, which was founded in 1942 by the US Air Force as a military airport and, like all other British or US airfields until then, was placed under national Egyptian control by decree on 15 December 1946. The subsequent surge of interest in air traffic led to the reconstruction or new construction of airports in the cities of Alexandria, Khartoum, Marsa Alam and Luxor.

5 Millièmes with the portrait of King Fu'ad I, 1935


Alexandria beach, 1950


Mud brick factory from the Kingdom period in Disuk


Port scene in Port Said during the Great Depression, early 1930s


Electric tramway in Cairo, 1925


A British Avro York transport and passenger aircraft at Almaza Airport in Cairo, 1946.


Dutch postcard of the Nile, 1922

Military

Re-established under Muhammad Ali Pasha in 1820, Egypt's armed forces became the strongest military power on the African continent and in the Near East from 1922 onwards, justifying its status as a major regional power. Their remit was to maintain Egypt's territorial integrity, protect the monarchy and underpin Egyptian claims to the territory through a permanent and strong presence in Sudan.

According to the constitution, the army, the royal navy and the air force (founded in 1928) remained largely under the control of the Egyptian king or government, apart from the approval of the necessary financial means by parliament. The limits of the king's "power of command" were hardly defined. It therefore remained one of the central pillars of the monarchy until the revolution of 1952.

The army was hardly directed against external enemies, as almost all of Africa was in European hands at the time, but was intended by the military leadership to be used internally, for example in strikes, and to establish security. In practice, however, the army was hardly ever used during major strikes or protests and only took full action against the Muslim Brotherhood and communists. Nevertheless, as a threat potential, the army was a power factor in domestic politics that should not be underestimated.

The close ties with the Egyptian monarchy and elite were initially reflected in the heavily aristocratic Albanian- and Turkish-born officer corps, whom the king had reinstated after they had previously been dismissed by the British colonial rulers. Later, too, the aristocracy retained a strong position among the ranks of leadership, although in the middle ranks, with the enlargement of the army and the air force, the bourgeois share became more prominent. The appropriate selection and internal socialisation in the military, however, ensured that the self-image of this group also hardly differed from that of their aristocratic comrades. Loyalty to royalty was, however, lower among the lower ranks and, after the Palestine War in 1949, led to the founding of the revolutionary Free Officers Movement, which was ultimately responsible for the coup d'état against the monarchy in 1952.

Under British rule, when the army was under the supreme command of a British sirdar, society tended to view the military with suspicion. This changed fundamentally after independence in 1922, when the army unofficially supported the insurgents. The military became a central element of the emerging patriotism and rising nationalism. Criticism of the military was considered unpatriotic. Nevertheless, the parties did not support an increase in the size of the army indefinitely. Thus, at the general mobilisation in September 1939, with a strength of about 100,000 men, the military reached its constitutionally mandated strength in times of crisis.

The Egyptian armed forces were in a phase of modernisation parallel to the industrialisation of the country in the following years. In 1928, the parliament decided to establish a separate Egyptian Air Force. On 2 November 1930, King Fu'ad I announced the establishment of the Egyptian Army Air Force (EAAF). On 27 May 1931, the Egyptian government purchased the first five aircraft and decided to establish the Almaza military airfield in the north-east of Cairo. The facility was inaugurated in May 1932. In 1934, the British government sold Egypt ten Avro-626 aircraft, which were the first real Egyptian military aircraft. In 1937, the Egyptian Army Air Force was separated from the joint army command and became a separate component force as the Royal Egyptian Air Force (REAF). New stations were then built in the Suez Canal Zone and Lower Egypt.

The royal Egyptian navy was also constantly expanded. For lack of fuel, aircraft carriers or adequate protection by the air force, and due to the information superiority of other fleets (radar, ultra), the possibilities for action of the prestigious fleet remained limited to combat operations in good visibility and to operations in the central Mediterranean. Due to a poorly organised command structure, the fleet was effectively incapable of action. This was demonstrated by the sinking of twelve sailing ships of the total Egyptian merchant fleet of 27 ships, as well as the steamer Said, by the three German submarines U 81, U 77, U 83. The Egyptian navy had not been able to protect its ships sufficiently during the entire Second World War. The resulting material damage was enormous due to the sinking of numerous important raw materials. As a result, there was a shortage of raw materials to replace lost ships. And contrary to the original assumptions, the new Egyptian air force was also unable to protect the fleet on the high seas in a sufficient manner, on the one hand because the reaction times were too long despite strategically located airfields, and on the other hand because the rivalries between the two branches of the armed forces and the structures created because of them did not allow for smooth cooperation.

The most important and most powerful branch of the armed forces was the Egyptian army, which gained a very strong social significance during the kingdom. The officer corps was regarded by large parts of the population as the "first estate in the state". Their world view was characterised by loyalty to the monarchy and the defence of royal rights; it was conservative, anti-socialist, secular and fundamentally anti-democratic. In 1946, the Egyptian government dismissed all British officers from their service.

The military was undoubtedly also important for internal nation-building. The joint service between Egyptians and Sudanese promoted the integration of the Sudanese population into an empire dominated by Egypt. Even the black African population, which viewed the Muslim-Arab dominated state with suspicion, did not remain immune to the charisma of the military. Until the Second World War, all men between the ages of 19 and 27 had to do military service. However, due to the oversupply of conscripts in Egypt and an army of only 23,000 men in peacetime, only a good fraction of a cohort followed the conscription order and did active military service.

Militarism in Egyptian society had been firmly entrenched since the Muhammad Ali dynasty came to power. Throughout the empire, the new warrior associations became the bearers of a militaristic worldview. Their impact and influence, however, remained small with a few thousand members. Nevertheless, the armed forces had the reputation among the population of being invincible and the actual military strength was overestimated. This was evident in the Egyptian-Arab war of aggression in Palestine, which was decided by the government at short notice without taking into account the state and capacities of the armed forces necessary for the war. Economic, geostrategic and topographical factors as well as the lack of public support for the war were also ignored. Inadequate preparation, leadership, motivation and outdated equipment, especially in the Egyptian land and air forces, led to devastating military disasters after minor initial successes in southern Israel, which consolidated an image of military incompetence internationally and also in Egypt itself and called into question its hitherto unchallenged role as the most powerful Islamic country.

The defeat in the Palestine War, in which the Egyptian army, despite military and financial aid granted by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, was driven back to the area of today's Gaza Strip with heavy human losses by 1949, severely damaged the reputation of the Egyptian military and the officers' trust in the country's political leadership. Nevertheless, this remained minor compared to the monarchy's loss of popular confidence, and the army was soon able to regain popularity. One reason for this was certainly its renewed modernisation, which began in leaps and bounds afterwards. As early as March 1949, Egypt started developing its own missile programme and experiments with new biological weapons. In 1951, with Soviet help, it even began a nuclear programme to develop its own Egyptian atomic bomb. However, the efforts were insufficient. It was not until 1958 that serious steps towards the bomb were taken with the construction of the Soviet nuclear reactor ETRR-1 near the city of Bilbeis.

Some former Wehrmacht officers and SS members played a decisive role in the reconstruction of the Egyptian armed forces after 1948. For example, the former General Wilhelm Fahrmbacher took over the training of the armed forces. A former German captain worked as an instructor in the Egyptian navy. In total, about 50 people from Germany were employed in the military sector in Egypt at the beginning of the 1950s. Wilhelm Voß, general director of the Reichswerke "Hermann Göring" during the National Socialist era, built up a new arms industry in Egypt of rather low capacity. Besides factories for small arms and ammunition, it also involved "first rocket designs". Rolf Engel, a German rocket engineer and former SS Hauptsturmführer, tried his hand at developing smaller rockets, but all of them proved to be non-functional.

The armed forces were administratively divided into several military districts, the boundaries of which corresponded exactly to the provinces of the empire.

Army Military Parade in Luxor, 1926


Flag of the Egyptian Armed Forces until 1952


Egyptian military aircraft on parade over Abdeen Palace in Cairo, celebrating the marriage of King Faruq to Queen Farida of Egypt, 20 January 1938.

Demography and society

The period of the Kingdom saw fundamental demographic, social and societal changes, which also influenced culture and politics to a considerable extent. One characteristic of this was the enormous population growth (1.2 % per year on average). In 1927, 21.224 million people lived in the Reich, in 1937 it was over 23.259 million and in 1947 27.873 million. Not least due to internal migration - initially from the surrounding areas, later also through long-distance migration, for example from the agricultural areas to Cairo or to the coastal cities - the urban population, especially the metropolitan population, grew strongly. Between 1927 and 1937, Cairo grew from about 1 million inhabitants to 1.3 million, Alexandria from 580,000 to 682,000, Port Said to over 100,000 and Khartoum to 70,000. In 1937, 25% of the Egyptian and Sudanese population lived in cities with over 20,000 inhabitants. The migration to the cities took on the proportions of a rural exodus during the Second World War.

The remaining rural areas in Egypt saw an influx of Sudanese. As the population settled along a long narrow strip of cultivable land along the Nile and in the delta, the population density increased by leaps and bounds. In 1927, the population density in Upper Egypt was 474 inhabitants per kilometre and in Lower Egypt 474 inhabitants/km². This led to enormous population pressure.

The ten largest Egyptian and Sudanese cities 1937
City	Inhabitants
Cairo	1,312.091
Alexandria	682,000
Giza	300,000
Shubra al-Chaima	200,000
Port Said	100,000
Suez	80,000
Khartoum	70,000
Luxor	60,000
al-Mansura	40,000
al-Mahalla al-Kubra	30,000

In terms of social history, the empire was primarily characterised by the rise of the working class. The different groups of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers tended to develop a specific self-image of the working population through their common experiences at the workplace and in the secluded residential quarters of the cities. With the emergence of large-scale enterprises, new state services and the growth of trade and transport, the number of white-collar workers and small and medium-sized civil servants also increased. These were careful to maintain a social distance from the workers, even if their economic situation differed little from that of the industrial workers.

The stagnating sections of society included the old urban middle classes. Craftsmen and small businesses often felt that their existence was threatened by industry. However, the reality was different: there were overstaffed traditional crafts; on the other hand, building and food trades benefited from the growing population and urban development. Many trades adapted to developments.

The emerging upper middle classes largely succeeded in imposing their cultural norms after independence, with the economic middle classes (including the big industrialists) leading economically. Nevertheless, the political influence of the bourgeoisie remained limited, for example by the peculiarities of the political system and by the rise of the workers and the new middle classes.

Economically, the existence of the landowning nobility was threatened by the increasing international integration of the agricultural market. The demand of the nobility and the agricultural interest groups for state aid became a feature of domestic politics during the kingdom. At the same time, the Egyptian constitution ensured that the nobility retained numerous special rights. The nobility was also able to maintain its influence in the military, diplomacy and bureaucracy.

A broad modernist movement was also formed in Egypt during this period, including intellectuals such as Tāhā Husain, Salāma Mūsā and the Islamic scholar ʿAlī ʿAbd ar-Rāziq. A strong women's rights movement also emerged, which fought for more equal rights and women's suffrage. Likewise, independence gave the secular forces more impetus. In the 1920s, almost all Egyptian governments were secular or even anti-religious, and reforms such as the separation of church and state were implemented.

National minorities

The Kingdom of Egypt saw itself as a unified nation state. Nevertheless, in 1937 there was a large non-Arabic speaking minority among the then almost 23 million inhabitants. Among them was a European minority, which included about 100,000 Circassians, 100,000 Turks (other estimates put the number of Circassians and Turks at over one million each), 60,000 Greeks, 52,462 Italians, 30,000 Armenians, 20,000 French, 20,000 British, 20,000 Maltese, 10,000 Albanians and a few thousand Germans and Swiss, and a smaller Asian community. These two minorities lived mainly in Cairo, Alexandria and Khartoum. Another minority was formed by the black African population in the south of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. The black African peoples of the Nilotes (especially the Dinka) with their Nilosaharan languages. From 1922, the Egyptian government increasingly pursued a fundamental policy of cultural Arabisation. A central role in this was played by the replacement of the mother tongue with Arabic-language instruction in newly established schools. In this context, mostly secular teachers were also sent in so as not to bring about an Islamisation of the region, in which the Egyptian leadership had shown no interest. Although this improved the education system and gave more people in Southern Sudan access to education, this policy had only limited success or, as critics noted, was even counterproductive, as it turned Black Africans, who had previously been able to live quite well with the tolerant attitude of the Egyptian state, against the new authorities. There was increasing alienation between black Africans and Arabs in mixed populated areas. The minority tried to preserve their own identity and were able to successfully seal themselves off through the British Southern Policy. The conflict that intensified as a result later led to the war of secession in Southern Sudan.

The European minority remained unaffected by the government's Arabisation measures. Their languages were allowed as a second school language. The French language played a special role. It was used in communication, on official Egyptian documents and in diplomacy. De facto, it was, along with English, an official and judicial language of the state. This development did not occur in the case of the Italian or Greek languages. They were spoken, along with the Albanian and Armenian minorities, only by a small isolated population group. The Turkish-Ottoman language lost enormous importance during the Kingdom, losing its status as an official language in 1922. Nevertheless, the European minority had a comparatively large cultural, economic and partly political influence in the state.

Europeans

Europeans had already been present in Egypt since the French Egyptian Expedition. Immigration increased after independence due to industrialisation.

The Italian minority, who lived predominantly in Alexandria and in the so-called Venetian Quarter in Cairo, held important posts in the administration and the military and had a great influence on cultural and economic life in the major cities. Italian architects were important players in the design of cities like Cairo, Alexandria or Khartoum. Italian officials, on the other hand, helped decisively in the establishment of a modern independent Egyptian state in 1922. In 1937, there were 52,462 Italians living in Egypt; by 1940, there were already over 60,000.

Italian-Egyptian relations were unclouded until the Second World War. In particular, the good relations between the ruling Muhammad Ali dynasty and the Italian royal house of Savoy enabled the Italian minority to develop strongly culturally. Many Italians worked as traders, craftsmen or ran some of the largest foreign industrial enterprises in the country. Politically, the majority of the minority organised themselves into a separate Egyptian branch of the Italian National Fascist Party from the 1930s onwards. This led to British authorities interning some 8,000 Italians accused of sympathising with the enemy after the occupation of the country in 1940. In contrast, in the areas of Egypt temporarily conquered by the Kingdom of Italy in 1940, the British minority was interned. In fact, however, many Egyptian nationalist organisations and the majority of public opinion, including the young officers Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar al-Sadat, showed sympathy for the Italian-Fascist ideals against the influence of the British Empire in Egypt and the Mediterranean. Nasser and Sadat were even prepared to organise an uprising in Cairo in the summer of 1942, when Rommel was on the verge of a possible conquest of Alexandria.

During the period of fascism, there were eight public schools and six Italian ecclesiastical schools. The state schools were personally supervised by the Italian Consulate in Alexandria and had a total student population of about 1,500. Other schools had student bodies and there were 22 philanthropic societies in Alexandria in 1940.

In addition to the Italian minority, there was also a large Greek minority, which numbered about 25,000 in 1940. The Greek community lived mainly in Alexandria. There they had an inn for Greek travellers, a hospital founded in 1938 and later a Greek school.

Smaller communities still existed in Cairo (founded 1856), al-Mansura (founded 1860), Port Said (founded 1870), Tanta (founded 1880), Zagazig (founded 1870) and al-Minya (founded 1862).

The first banks in Egypt were created by Greeks and the banking system was expanded during the time of the kingdom. It was also Greek farmers and peasants who cultivated cotton and tobacco through systematic and scientific planning. They improved the quantity and quality of production and dominated cotton and tobacco exports. Notable families in the tobacco trade were the Salvagos, Benakis, Rodochanakis and Zervoudachis. As a result, trade flourished between Egypt and the Kingdom of Greece, where a small Egyptian minority also lived. Other economic sectors of interest to the Greeks were the food industry, wine and soap production, and wood crafts.

Culturally, the minority organised itself in numerous Greek theatres, cinemas and newspapers. The most important Greek newspapers were Ta grammata, Tahidromos and Nea Zoi. The Greek community also produced numerous artists, writers, diplomats and politicians, the most famous of whom were the poet Konstantinos Kavafis and the painter Konstantinos Parthenis.

During the Second World War, more than 7,000 Greeks fought for the Allies in the Middle East and Egypt took in many Greek refugees after the Balkan campaign. The minority's financial contribution to the war reached 2,500 million Egyptian pounds.

The emergence of a Greek aristocracy of wealthy industrialists, large landowners and bankers led to the rise of the minority into the country's political elite. After independence, the Greeks donated large amounts for the construction of schools, academies, hospitals and administrative institutions in Egypt.

One of the oldest minorities was the Albanian community in the country. Albanian immigration to Egypt had already begun at the beginning of the 19th century. At the time of the Kingdom, massive economic development and prosperity attracted many emigrants from the Kingdom of Albania: especially from Korça and Kolonja County. With some exceptions, most of the inhabitants were members of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania. Many of them held high positions in the administration and the military, where the numerically strong noble Albanian officer corps set the tone.

After independence, the Albanian minority once again experienced a period of prosperity. Thus, from 1925 to 1926, the weekly newspaper Bisedimet was published with 60 issues in total, this being the last newspaper in the Albanian language in Egypt. In 1922, the publishing society Shtëpia botonjëse shqiptare/Société albanaise d'édition was also founded. This, together with other associations and publishing houses, was united in 1924 to form the society Lidhja e Shqiptarve te Egjiptit ("League of Albanians of Egypt"). Other such societies followed. Shoqerija Mireberse in 1926 and Shoqeria e Miqeve in 1927.

From 1934 to 1939, the only purely Albanian school in Egypt was operated. However, it had to close again.

During the Second World War, the Albanian minority organised itself politically in favour of the Allies. In 1940, the monarchist Evangjel Avramushi founded the first Albanian cinema in Egypt, called AHRAM. The Albanian community expanded due to the influx of Albanians who had fled Albania after the communist takeover by Enver Hoxha. In 1946, former King Zogu I and the Albanian royal family moved to Egypt and were received by King Faruq. This led to tensions with the People's Socialist Republic of Albania.

There has also been a large Turkish and Armenian minority since the time of the Ottoman Empire. Turkish immigration began to increase after 1922, when the Omani Empire ended. In the process, many nobles and aristocrats fled to Egypt with their fortunes. Around 1930, the Turkish minority comprised between one hundred and three hundred thousand inhabitants. A large part of them lived in Cairo, the others mainly in Alexandria. The Turks held the highest state offices and were over-represented in both the military and civil life of the monarchy and held the dominant position in the higher social groups, especially in the large cities.

Armenians had settled in Egypt after the genocide that began in 1915. The total number of Armenians in Egypt was 12,854 in 1917, rising to over 17,000 at its peak in 1927, mostly concentrated in Cairo and Alexandria. At the beginning of 1952, there were about 40,000 Armenians living in the Kingdom of Egypt. They ran large businesses in all economic sectors and politically organised themselves predominantly for social democracy. In 1950, the minority had six schools of its own. The last one was founded in Cairo in 1925.

The British and French minorities, unlike the rest, hardly participated in the political life of the country. Instead, the British dominated the cotton trade and the French tried to modernise agriculture in Sudan. The French were also among the leading shapers of Khartoum and were present throughout the empire, especially culturally. The French-speaking minority still included about 20,000 Maltese who had settled in Egypt largely during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most spoke French, Italian or English. Favoured by the proximity of the two countries and the similarity between the Maltese and Arabic languages, many Maltese moved to Egypt, especially Alexandria, from 1922 onwards.

In 1926, there were about 20,000 Maltese living in Egypt. Most belonged to the middle class and lived mainly in Alexandria and Cairo.

Next to the Turks, the most politically influential minority in Egypt were the Circassians. They were deeply rooted in Egyptian society and the country's history. For centuries, the Circassians had been part of the Egyptian aristocracy and held high military, political and social positions. In addition, Circassians were also members of the royal family and represented in the royal court. Queens Nazli and Farida and Princess Fawzia, later wife of the Emperor of Iran, had ancestors of Circassian origin.

The Circassian role in Egyptian cultural and intellectual life in the Kingdom was described by the minority as a golden era. Egyptian cinema at that time was dominated by mostly popular actors and actresses such as Hind Rostom, Leila Fawzy, Mariam Fakhr Eddine, Rushdy Abaza, all of whom came from Circassian families. These families, mostly from the Ottoman Empire, had assimilated over time. However, in 1930, the population still varied between 100,000 and over a million Circassians in Egypt. Most had mixed with the Arab population and belonged to the Adyghe or Abaza families, the largest extended family with more than 50,000 members in the country. It was also one of the richest families in Egypt and played a long-standing important role in Egyptian business life.

All nationalities were relatively stably represented in the Egyptian parliament and, despite their comparatively small numbers, held excessively important political offices in the state. Nevertheless, most Europeans held on to their origins.

The era of the European minority in Egypt ended with the revolution of 1952 and the abolition of the monarchy in 1953 respectively. The new military regime tried to expel or assimilate the minorities through nationalist, socialist and anti-colonialist policies. The Italian minority was reduced to a few thousand members and most Italian Egyptians returned to Italy in the 1950s and 1960s. The exodus of Greeks began with the nationalisation of many Greek businesses in 1957, with many emigrating to Australia, the United States, Canada, South Africa, Western Europe and Greece. Many Greek schools, churches, small communities and other institutions were subsequently closed. The same was true for the Egyptian Armenians and Maltese who were forced to leave the country after the Suez Crisis in 1956.

Black Africans and Britain's Southern Policy

The Europeans were joined by a large black African minority, which was the second largest population group and lived predominantly in the south. In 1950, 2,575,000 people lived in what is now Southern Sudan; by 1960, there were already over three million. They were distributed among more than 60 different ethnic groups with over 80 languages. The most important population groups were the Dinka, Luo, Nuer, Shilluk, Toposa, Lotuko, Acholi, Azande, Bari and Baggara. These peoples inhabited different regions and were sometimes enemies of each other. Therefore, Southern Sudan remained a conflict-ridden region and posed a threat to the stability of the empire. Egypt also did not succeed in making the large agricultural areas usable for itself.

After independence, Egypt also tried to industrialise Southern Sudan by applying new European-Egyptian technology and to bring the underdeveloped economy up to the level of the north of the empire. Also, by replacing the tribes' authoritarian form of social organisation with the liberal parliamentary Egyptian traditions, attempts were made to involve the Southern Sudanese in political life as well, thus "outdoing" the British. In order to resolve the ethnic conflicts, the Egyptians and British reorganised the South Sudanese provinces according to ethnic boundaries.

The British colonial administration in Sudan initially supported Egypt's plans. However, the crisis of 1924 led to a rethink and the isolation of the south from the north. Britain feared that an Arabisation of the south would put the entire country firmly back in Egyptian hands. The official reason was that the South was not ready for modernisation due to constant tribal wars and the slave trade. In order for the so-called Southern Policy ("Southern Policy") to be implemented, the South was effectively separated from the North along indigenous lines. On paper, however, Sudan remained as a single entity.

The Kingdom of Egypt tried to keep at least the economy of the area under its control through some Arab merchants sent to the country. However, the merchants only had limited control over commercial activities in the region, while Arab bureaucrats administered the region independently of the laws of the mother country. Britain tried to counter this by sending Christian missionaries, building new schools and clinics, and providing limited social services. Missionaries came from all over the world, each trying to impose their own brand of Christianity. The British colonial government eventually subsidised the missionary schools. Since missionaries were often favoured in the civil service by the birthers, the Egyptians saw this as a tool of "British imperialism". Also, by sending the few southern residents who received higher education to schools in British East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), division was exacerbated.

The British authorities consolidated the partition in the 1930s and after the end of the Second World War. London also strengthened its separate development policy and replaced the Egyptian Arab administrators with British and expelled all Arab merchants, severing the last economic contacts of the South with the monarchy. The colonial administration also curbed the spread of Islam, which was already present through Arab customs and the wearing of Arab dress. At the same time, efforts were made to revive African customs and tribal life that had been disrupted by the slave trade and Egyptian reforms. Finally, in 1930, all black African peoples in the southern provinces were declared a people to be considered independent from the North, and were supposed to be a precursor to the eventual absorption of Southern Sudan into British East Africa. However, this policy proved fatal and led to the intensification of the previous Black African-Arab conflict in the Kingdom, culminating in South Sudan's independence in 2011. The economic development of the South also suffers to this day because of the then increasing isolation of the region. Added to this were the internal rivalries of the British colonial administration in the country, which had split into a pro-Egyptian-Sudanese camp in the north and an anti-Arab camp in the south.

Other

In addition to the European and large black African minority, an ever-growing relatively young African-Asian community lived in the Kingdom of Egypt, whose members mostly came from the countries of Algeria, Italian Libya, Lebanon, Syria, British India, the Japanese Empire and the Republic of China. However, there were two nomadic desert peoples, the Bedouins and Berbers, who had already lived there for thousands of years.

The most important ethnic group was the Syrian-Lebanese minority (Levantines), who played an important role in Egypt's economy and culture. They also played a pioneering role in the modernisation of Egyptian society. For example, in the establishment of Egypt's own newspaper and printing industry as well as a modern banking system.

In the cultural sphere, Syrian-Lebanese families had an enormous influence. Thus the popular magazine Rose al-Yūsuf and the material culture of Cairo, which was decisively shaped by Lebanese-Syrian architects. The community numbered more than 100,000 members in 1930 and provided civil servants, barbers, shoemakers, drivers, engineers, dentists, doctors, merchants and painters. Their combined wealth comprised 10% of Egypt's gross domestic product. Those who had invested in the capital ran small businesses there for oil, soaps, tobacco or pastries. Others set up important businesses outside the big cities for the production of salt, sodium, textiles, perfume, wood and silk. This economic success led to the founding of their own schools, associations and charitable organisations that were closely linked to the Egyptian monarchy.

An important centre of the community was al-Mansura, where the Levantines provided many lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, bankers and financial agents and owned large cotton farms, real estate, hotels and banks. Most families belonged to the aristocracy and held the title of Count, Pasha, Bak or even Emir. Most Levantines therefore left Egypt with the abolition of the aristocracy in 1953 and moved back to their homelands in Lebanon (especially Beirut) and Syria.

A smaller, more recent community was the Chinese community, which had been in Egypt constantly since the end of the 19th century. Most of the immigrants were Chinese Muslims who wanted to graduate from Azhar University. The earliest state-sponsored Chinese students were sent to Egypt in 1931. These were the first Chinese students in the Middle East. The Republic of China (1912-1949) sent mostly Muslim Hui Chinese to Azhar in Egypt. In 1931, graduates opened a library in Beijing that was named after King Fu'ad I. At that time, Sino-Egyptian relations were at their peak. However, relations cooled sharply after the Second World War. The communist takeover by Mao Zedong in October 1949 led to a rupture and the expulsion of most of the minority.

Since the late 1920s, several Japanese railway engineers and experts lived in Egypt, who were provided to Egypt for industrialisation by the Japanese Empire. They fell into British captivity during the Second World War from 1941 onwards and the minority became less important after the end of the war.

In addition to Southeast Asian and the long-established Lebanese-Syrian minority, Roma, Muslim Indians and Pakistanis from British India moved to Egypt after independence. Although a Roma minority had existed for centuries, it had only achieved regional significance. Independence and the cultural and political freedoms that came with it enabled the Roma to rise in musical entertainment, such as at weddings and other celebrations, where they soon played an important role. The other immigrants from India worked of as guest workers in the industrial factories, but remain socially marginalised. The same was true for the Algerians or other Arabs who increasingly moved to Egypt after the Second World War.

For the Berbers and Bedouins who had already been living in Egypt for a long time, the Kingdom period did not mean a special time. The royal Egyptian government more or less gently tried to modernise their way of life and settle the peoples, but ultimately respected their customs and traditions. The number of Berbers was between 100,000 and 200,000 in 1922, but dropped sharply by 1934 due to the loss of Egyptian territories to Italy.

Religions

Along with the economy and society, the confessional differences also changed during this period of the kingdom. They still shape Egypt today. While the Muslim majority grew enormously due to population growth and Judaism temporarily gained in importance due to the immigration of refugees from Europe, the proportion of Christian Copts in the total population declined. All three religions, however, were affected by a radically driven secularisation, with which especially the Wafd party wanted to modernise Egyptian society.

The largest religious community was Sunni Islam, as it is today. Despite the formal privileging of Islam (state religion), the Kingdom of Egypt saw itself as neutral in matters of faith and abolished its laws with the constitution of 1923. In return for the abolition of all still discriminatory regulations from the Ottoman period for the non-Muslim minorities, it was expected that they should integrate and assimilate in the long term. The Egyptian state also tried to bring the religious institutions that had existed since Ottoman rule under its own control. Until then, Egyptian education, health care, the civil service and the legal system had been in the hands of the high Islamic clergy. The ʿUlamā' (religious scholars) were therefore massively displaced from their role in the public sphere from 1925 onwards and in some cases exiled to remote regions of the empire. This was one of the main reasons why the Muslim Brotherhood, which demanded a restoration of the clergy's privileges, was founded in 1928.

Under the Kingdom, the Egyptian state was largely friendly to its Jewish population, although between 86% and 94% of the Jews in Egypt did not have Egyptian citizenship. The majority of them were members of the European minority and played an important role in building up the economy and administration. The subsequent increase in prosperity and the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 caused the number of Egyptian Jews to rise to between 80,000 and 120,000 due to the immigration of refugees. Many Jewish communities maintained extensive economic relations with non-Jewish Egyptians. The major important Jewish bourgeois families such as the Qattawi, Adès, Aghion, Goar, Mosseri, Nachman, Pinto, Rolo and Tilche also maintained political relations with the Egyptian aristocracy and were financiers of the election campaigns of the major parties. Other middle-class Jewish families, especially members of the Caraean community, ran a purely "ethnic economy" in which their business partners and customers were mostly other Jews.

The Jewish community of Egypt lived predominantly in Alexandria and Cairo (about 55,000 to 60,000 Jews). In the capital, they were mostly settled in the two neighbouring quarters harat al-yahud al-qara'in or harat al-yahud.

In the rapidly rising Egyptian nationalism after 1922, individual Jews took important positions. René Qattawi, leader of the Sephardic community in Cairo, coined the slogan in 1935: "Egypt is our homeland, Arabic is our language". The Egyptian Jewish nationalist movement, which rejected Zionism that sought to establish a national home for the Jews in Palestine, organised itself into several influential associations. At the 1943 session of the World Jewish Congress, Qattawi proposed the economically more attractive Egypt as an alternative to Palestine, which he considered unable to absorb the large mass of Jewish refugees from Europe.

Although Zionism was rejected by the vast majority of Egyptian Jews, the Zionist movement also had important representatives in Egypt. The Jewish scholar Murad Beh Farag (1866-1956) was both a royalist Egyptian nationalist, who was one of the co-authors of the 1923 constitution, and a passionate Zionist. His poem "My homeland Egypt, place of my birth", which expressed his loyalty to royal Egypt, was well received by the people. His book al-Qudsiyyat ("Jerusalemica"), published in 1923, on the other hand, defended the Jews' right to a state.

Other famous Jewish-Egyptian personalities such as Yaqub Sanu or Henri Curiel, who represented a radically anti-monarchist and anti-British, rather communist-oriented direction of Egyptian nationalism, were pushed to the fringes of the community and found few supporters even among Muslim Egyptians.

A turning point for Egyptian Jews came in 1937, when the government of Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha and his successor Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil abolished the tax exemption for foreigners from the countries of Syria, Greece, Italy and Armenia. This also affected the majority of Jews, many of whom were nationals of these countries and some of whom became impoverished afterwards. The exemptions from taxation for foreign nationals had given Jews very positive economic advantages in trade within Egypt. Many European Jews used Egyptian banks as a common destination for transferring money, jewellery and gold from Central Europe after 1933. In addition, Egyptian Jews had often served as a bridge between the communities of their home countries, which had facilitated the establishment of Egypt's extensive economic relations with European countries. Some members of the Qattawi family, such as Aslan Qattawi 'Yusuf, sat on the board of Banque Misr or were diplomats. This showed the close ties between the Jewish, Christian and Muslim populations in the country's political elite, economy and cultural life.

The impact of the escalating Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine in 1936-1939, along with the rise of Nazi Germany, also began to affect Jewish relations with Egyptian society, although the number of active Zionists in its ranks was small. The rise of local militant nationalist Islamist organisations such as the Young Egyptian Party or the Muslim Brotherhood, which were sympathetic to German racial policies, allowed anti-Semitism to gain a social and political foothold in Egypt from 1933 onwards. The Muslim Brotherhood went so far as to circulate distorted reports in its factories and mosques that Jews and British had destroyed the holy sites in Jerusalem and killed hundreds of Arab women and children. Anti-Semitism came to a head in Egypt with the territorial expansion of the German Empire and the Fascist Kingdom of Italy in Europe. Although the Italians and Rommel were not considered anti-Semites, their advance into Egypt saw the rise of anti-imperialist, ultra-nationalist and Islamist Arab associations that rejected either the Egyptian monarchy, the democratic state order or the increasing secularisation of society. During the war, the Muslim Brotherhood distributed thousands of anti-Semitic hate leaflets and propaganda material, which severely damaged the relationship between Jews and Arabs in Egypt.

In the second half of the 1940s, the situation increasingly deteriorated. In 1945, the Jewish quarter of Cairo was severely damaged in a pogrom. As the partition of Palestine and the establishment of Israel drew closer, hostilities intensified. Both the liberal press and sections of the previously tolerant Egyptian elite launched smear campaigns against all foreigners, Jews, Christians and communists. The increasing ethnocentric nationalism also led to discrimination against Jews in acquiring Egyptian citizenship, where bureaucratic hurdles were mostly placed in their way.

The Egyptian government as well as the royal house initially remained neutral on the Palestine question. However, increasing pressure from the street led to a clear positioning of the Kingdom of Egypt on the side of the opponents of a new Jewish state. On 24 November 1947, the head of the Egyptian delegation to the United Nations General Assembly, Muhammad Hussein Heykal Pasha, declared that the lives of 1,000,000 Jews in Muslim countries would be put at risk by the creation of a Jewish state. On the same day, he added:

The Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi told the British Ambassador in Cairo Ronald Ian Campbell, again in 1948, that all Jews were potential Zionists

The founding of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent Arab-Israeli war effectively meant the end of the Jewish community in Egypt. Already during the war, 5,000 Jews emigrated. Later, until 1950, bombings and bloody riots in which several thousand people died led to the emigration of almost 40% of the Jewish population. As a result, the Jewish community lost importance in all areas of the state and became a small insignificant fringe group.

The Christian Coptic community fared similarly to the Jewish community after independence. After 1922, King Fu'ad I appointed many Copts as judges in Egyptian courts and gave them representation in the government. He also involved the minority more in business affairs. Nevertheless, the Copts, who made up 25% of the total Egyptian and Sudanese population in 1922, lived largely in poverty. Only a few occupied truly influential positions in the state. Some prominent Coptic thinkers from this period were Salama Moussa, Louis Awad and the Wafd Party Secretary General Makram Ebeid.

Powerful aristocracy in Egypt and tribal leaders in Sudan

The 1923 constitution cemented the prerogatives of the Egyptian Sudanese nobility and aristocracy that had existed since Ottoman rule and even expanded their power. The nobility remained, as before independence, the "representative" of the nation and shaped the nation with their European lifestyle. The political dominance of this small stratum, which consisted of about 10,000 members and was expanded by the influx of Ottoman nobles who fled to Egypt after the proclamation of the Republic in Turkey in 1922, also remained secure. It dominated parliament until 1952, the newly enlarged civil service and bureaucracy, provided the leadership posts in all major political parties, made up the bulk of all government members and prime ministers, and dominated the military. The land and property ownership of this class was also left untouched after independence, although a popular slogan of the revolution was the demand for more social justice.

The royal house, the Wafd Party and the Liberal Constitutional Party were considered the mouthpieces or representatives of the nobility, which was politically very liberal. The latter had split off from the Wafd Party in 1921 and, unlike the Wafd, represented only aristocratic interests. However, the rising bourgeoisie formed a serious competitive factor for the latter.

The ruling elite in Sudan changed less. After relative calm and stability in the area following the 1924 crisis in the 1920s and 1930s, the Egyptian government in Cairo and the British colonial government increasingly favoured indirect rule by local tribal leaders and based their rule largely on them. The traditional Sudanese tribal leaders, sheikhs and tribes were thereby granted autonomy depending on their degree of authority. The Egyptians hardly interfered in local disputes and allowed largely independent local governments under the supervision of the British district commissioners. In exchange for these new privileges, both the Egyptians and British expected tribal leaders to be loyal to their system of government, with the tribes splitting into three opposing camps. One wanted extensive incorporation into Egypt under a federal system of government, the other an independent Arab-dominated Sudan and the black African tribes an independent Southern Sudan. In contrast to this development was the newly emerging Khartoum bourgeoisie, which received its secular and European-influenced education mostly in Egypt, British East Africa or Britain and saw indirect rule as an obstacle to the country's complete absorption into Egypt or its independence from Britain. Since many supporters of the Sudanese bourgeoisie had made careers in the central administration of the country, they regarded a possible complete transfer of power to the tribal leaders as an attack on their power. Although this put them at odds with the (partly) federalist Egypt, their ideas of full unification of the two countries were financially and ideologically supported by the latter.

Emergence of the bourgeoisie and the working class

From the 1920s onwards, a new mostly bourgeois industrial, commercial and urban bourgeoisie was recruited from the indigenous population, consisting of civil servants, lawyers, businesses, industrialists and intellectuals, who increasingly came into conflict with the aristocracy and the landed aristocracy and exerted a strong influence on the social and economic development of Egypt with Sudan. Their nationalist, secular and European-influenced way of thinking strongly shaped the new Egypt. Their representation for this was the Wafd Party.

The new bourgeoisie grouped itself into three organisations: the Banque Misr, founded in 1920, the Association des Industries, in which mainly members of the European minority joined together, and the Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, an association of Egyptian merchants. All three groups strove for a national economic policy, the development of a domestic industry and the abolition of the foreigners' monopoly on foreign trade. With these positions, the Egyptian bourgeoisie was in conflict with the foreign bourgeoisie, which was supported by the former colonial power Great Britain and represented its interests in Egypt. Until independence, the foreign bourgeoisie almost completely controlled foreign trade, all banking, credit and real estate companies and the newly emerging industrial sector. The Egyptian bourgeoisie therefore had a great interest in the withdrawal of the British and the full state independence of Egypt.

The rapid industrialisation that took place in the 1920s and 30s made the bourgeoisie a broader and powerful social class. In 1936/37, it forced the then Prime Minister Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil to abolish the foreign trade monopoly and pushed back the foreign share of Egyptian industry from 90 % (1914) to 40 % (1939). In 1949, also under pressure from the bourgeoisie, a new legal code was enacted. In the rapidly growing big cities, the middle classes succeeded in imposing new cultural and social norms. Economically, the stratum created a large number of jobs with new industrial plants and service companies.

Parallel to the rise of the bourgeoisie, a new working class emerged, which, like the Egyptian small farmers, belonged to the lower stratum of society and made up a large part of Egyptian society. Apart from the Wafd Party, their political demands for more social justice, democracy and co-determination were hardly heeded or only taken seriously at a late stage. Although important political concessions were made to the working population with the constitution of 1923, in which all men were guaranteed the right to vote, the authorisation of trade unions and the legalisation of the right to strike, their social situation was not improved.

Until before the war, the workers organised themselves in several moderate trade unions that sought a compromise between the class and the bourgeois state, but became increasingly radicalised after the Second World War. Groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, radical communist unions or parties such as became for many of them an acceptable alternative to the Wafd Party, which after initial attempts to improve the social situation of the workers, resorted to repressive means and made itself unpopular with parts of this stratum. The monarchy's reputation also suffered increasingly as a result. In the end, the workers became one of the main supporters of the 1952 revolution.

King Fu'ad I visiting the Misr spinning and weaving mill


Armenian Refugees making Fly-nets, work by James McBey, 1917


King Faruq with senior politicians and military officials at a Ramadan banquet


A Jewish Wedding in Alexandria, 1936


King Faruq with the Coptic Pope Yohannes XIX and the then Secretary General of the Wafd Party Makram Ebeid in Alexandria, 1940


Bedouins wandering through Cairo, historical photograph


Historical Map of Southern Sudan after Emin Pasha


Azande soldiers


The Nile Valley with the major Egyptian cities


The major Sudanese cities


The Swiss café and former chocolate factory Groppi in Cairo, opened in 1920.

See also

• History of Egypt