Egypt has had a separate existence from the other remnants of the broken up Ottoman Empire.
In 1914, it was detached from the OE and became a British protectorate.
Since a long time, since the time of Mohammad Ali, Egypt has had a different and autonomous political and socio-economic development.
At the end of the First World War, delegates were free to present their views at the Paris Peace Conference but Saad Zaghlul, an eminent jurist was denied the permission by the British, following which Cairo Riots (the thawra - uprising) took place which was a signigicant binding force in Egyptian polity and the protests were state-wide after which Zaghlul was allowed to take the delegation. However, after he made his speech, the same day Britain declared Egypt one of its protectorates.
In Nov 1918: Saad Zaghlul negotiated independence with the Brits and formed the Waft Party "Delegation" Party because of his famous delegation to the Paris Peace Conf.
Zaghloul became increasingly active in nationalist movements, and in 1919 he led an official Egyptian delegation (or wafd, the name of the political party he would later form) to the Paris Peace Conference demanding that the United Kingdom formally recognise the independence and unity of Egypt and Sudan (which had been united as one country under Muhammad Ali Pasha). Britain had occupied the country in 1882, and declared it a protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War. Though Egypt and Sudan had its own Sultan, parliament and armed forces, it had effectively been under British rule for the duration of the occupation.
The British in turn demanded that Zaghloul end his political agitation. When he refused, they exiled him to Malta, and later to the Seychelles.
He was deported to Cyrus, but the Brits later agreed to negotiate with him (between 1920-22) due to the cross-country, cross-class urban-rural protests in favour of his pro-independence stance.
But no agreement was reached and hence a compromise was made on the terms of Egyptian self-rule was found in 1922.
On 28/2/1922, Britain unilaterally declared Egypt independent for lack of a better choice (protests for independence was growing)
4 points of British control in free Egypt were the reason of the compromise:
1. Defence and Foreign affairs remained in Brit control
2. Security of the Suez remained in Brit control
3. Capitulations (Brit privileges) were to be maintained
4. Sudan (north Sudan was thought be a part of Egypt) was to remain separate
A constitutional monarchy was established.
King Fuad was crowned as Monarch. A continuation of Mohammad Ali continued while the Brit landowning and ruling parties and various hues of nationalists corrupted the parliament due to their self interests. The ministers continued to work for their own selves.
The parliament soon lost the people's favor and was discredited and a constitutional parliament never really took off.
Soon a nationalist debate was sparked about religion and identity as archaeological discoveries uncovered the Egyptian Pharaohnic past and various artifacts of Ancient Egyptian past in which the commoners took pride and made them aware of a history beyond Islam and its associated heritage. The 1920s was the Golden Age of nationalism and secular politics in Egypt.
The debates focused on what it meant to be Egyptian (apart from being Muslims or Arabs or parts of former Ottoman Empire)
Watanniyya (the feeling associated with territorialisation as Egypt had now become a region with boundaries) identity and the Role (or lack thereof) of religion in society in Egypt (as opposed to the community feeling of Qaummiya) moving away from more traditional identities.
Egyptian Nationalism went hand in hand with secularisation/secular ideas, a sense of pride in history and past arose as people argued Islam was just one phase in a long and rich history as peculiarities in Egyptian History were recognised, a 6,000 year long history.
P.J.Vatikiotis registers this phase as called such by the intellectuals of that time, as the attack on tradition phase.
The leadership system was more secularised than the Ottoman Empire.
Rule of Sharia was reduced to personal issues and religious endowments (the awqaaf)
The establishment of a constitutional monarchy in the early 1920s, with a parliament and the holding of general elections, formalized and institutionalized the practice of man-made legislation. Once you formalize the practice of man-made legislation, this automatically gives rise to the question, so what is the real role of religion? Should there be any role to religion? Should the secularization of politics be complete? There were some in Egypt in the 1920s, who argued just that. Ali Abd-al Raziq, even though a Sharia judge, published a book on Islam and the Principles of Government, in 1925. And Abd-al Raziq argued that there was no need for a Caliphate in Islam, and that the Sharia was a spiritual and moral law that was unrelated to the earthly governing of men. So, Ali Abd-al Raziq was expelled from the ranks of the Ulama, of the men of religion. But, he wasn't the only person, who engaged in this attack on tradition. Taha Hussein, one of the most famous of Egypt's intellectuals and writers of the 20th Century, Published a book in 1926 on pre-Islamic poetry. And in this book on pre-Islamic poetry, Taha Hussein argued, that the Ulamas traditional, religious interpretation of the Quran and the Sunnah, ought to be corrected. He argued that there should be a much more, rational method of literary criticism introduced into this interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunna. Rashid Rida, who we've already encountered in the group of Islamic reformers, and was one of the mentors of the Muslim brethren that was to be formed shortly. Rashid Rida called him at Apple State, demanded his removal from the university, which did eventually happen, a few years later. And there were others in Egypt who wrote, for example, in favor of Darwinism. And the ideas of evolution, and in support of western civilization as the highest stage of man's spiritual and material development. And they attacked Islamic culture and civilization as dead and useless, and advocated the adoption of western civilization as the only way towards progress. The secularizing reforms in Turkey in the 1920s that we will discuss a little later, strengthened the hand of those who sought the further weakening of the religious establishment. But to this assault on tradition, there was bound to be a response, and the reaction came in the late 1920s and during the 1930s. The Muslim Brethren were established in 1928, by Hasan al-Banna from the town of Ismailia, which is along the Suez Canal. And perhaps it is not accidental that the Muslim Brethren were formed initially in a town along the Suez Canal that, monument to external western intervention in Egypt's affairs. And the Muslim brethren argued, for the development of a modern society that was to be governed by the Sharia. That is, modernity but within the framework of the Sharia, and not without it. Leading modern, modernists in the 1930s, like Taha Hussein and others, retreated hastily, from their previous positions that attacked tradition. And they now, in the 1930s, produced works, on the ethic quality of early Islam, and the genius of the prophet. Effectively abandoning their previous positions, in unqualified favor of western civilization. And these new works on theirs in favor of a more traditional view, were very popular. And they reinforced the conservative forces of the time, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and during the 1930s, there is a steady shift towards Islam, and Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism became very attractive, to the masses of people in Egypt and elsewhere. The initial success of Arab nationalism, should be ascribed to what one could call its neo-traditionalist formula. Arab nationalism, had a strong Islamist undertone. The Arabs, after all, their greatest contribution to humanity, was the religion of Islam. And when the Islamic reformers spoke of the need to reform Islam, they spoke of Arab centrality, to this reformation of Islam. So Arab nationalism, by having this religious link, was much easier. For the masters in Egypt and elsewhere, to accept rather than the more secular extreme form of Egyptian nationalism, or other forms of territorial nationalism, that had no religious content. But, the liberalizing phase of the 1920s, that attack on tradition, that effort to push Islam to the sidelines of Egyptian politics in society, that liberalizing phase, ended in failure.
So let's begin with Egypt, crisis and revolution in Egypt. In 1936 Egypt and Great Britain, after long years of failed negotiations, signed a treaty of alliance.
Egypt was now formally an independent state, though with a special association with Britain which allowed for the British to maintain a military presence in the canal zone for twenty years. And, in the event of a war, Egypt's facilities would be available to the British.
Now that relations with the British were on the back burner, Egypt could turn inwards and to begin to look at Egypt's domestic politics. In 1938, two very important books were published in Egypt.
One, by Mirrit Boutrus Ghali, Siyasat al-Ghad, which means The Politics of Tomorrow. The other, by Hasfiz Afifi, Ala Hamish al-slyasa, On the Margins of Politics Both of these books dealt with Egypt's socioeconomic difficulties.
And they included a pessimistic forecast on population growth, and the dire consequences in the event of insufficient economic development.
Egypt's population, in 1900, was 10 million.
In 1937, it had reached 16 million.
And 20 million were forecast for 1957. But in fact, Egypt reached that number already in 1949. And presently the population of Egypt is 85 million and growing by about one million people a year.
Egypt suffered from a growing gap between resources and population.
These experts in the 1930s called for essential and rapid economic development to keep up with population growth.
But in practice, nothing much was really done about it.
And the Egyptian economy remained stagnant and hardly kept up with the growth rate of population.
Faltering modernization led in the 1930s to an era Islamic revival.
And if we recall from our earlier discussions on Egypt, in the 1920s there had been an attack on tradition.
But in the 1930s, there was a noticeable retreat even by some of the very same intellectuals who had waged the attack on tradition themselves.
The Muslim brotherhood's great appeal, calling for the modernization of Egypt in accordance with the sharia became a very dominant facet of Egyptian politics.
It is interesting to note
that the Muslim Brotherhood was not opposed to modernization.
What the Muslim Brotherhood was calling for was a modernization that would be in accordance with Islamic tradition, not to abandon the one for the other.
The Brotherhood's appeal was very popular and it effectively organized in a country-wide network of branches and paramilitary groups. It developed its own economic ventures and networks of social services.
And the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has a membership in the 1940s of hundreds of thousands and a following of millions. There was no grass roots mass movement like the Muslim Brethren anywhere in the region.
As of the 1920s Egypt had had a problem of political violence which was quite common. Political parties tended to have paramilitary organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood had a paramilitary organization and other political parties tended to have one as well.
After 1945 political violence became endemic in Egypt as the Muslim Brotherhood took a leading role in political assassinations of its Egyptian rivals and actions against the British presence in Egypt.
In December 1948, no doubt influenced by the war in Palestine, after a spat of violence against foreign, Jewish and government targets the Prime Minister of Egypt, Mahumud al-Nuqrashi ordered the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nuqrashi was assassinated later in December by the Brotherhood, followed by the assassination of the Brotherhood leader, Hasan al-Banna in February 1949, no doubt inspired, or ordered by the government.
The continuing chaos into the early 1950s
with Egyptian governments finding it increasingly difficult to assert control became part and parcel of the Egyptian political reality.
When in 1952 the government called in the Army to restore order, the stage was set for the coup d'état of the 23rd of July 1952 which
brought the army to power in Egypt.
This was the beginning of a new revolutionary era not only in Egypt, but in the region as a whole.
This was the end of the monarchy in Egypt and King Faruq, who had succeeded King Fuad in 1936 abdicated a few days after the coup. And the monarchy was finally abolished a year later and Egypt became a republic.
In 1954, the new regime signed the final agreement with Britain on withdrawal. And the British were out of Egypt by 1955, making Egypt at long last a truly independent country.
Who were these officers who engineered the coup of 1952? They were members of what was to become the new ruling class and this was a dramatic change in the power structure in Egypt.
A new ruling elite composed mostly of a new generation of officers who came from lower, middle class origins and often from rural backgrounds as opposed to their predecessors who were usually the sons of wealthy notables.
They were graduates of the military academy of the late 1930s and
unhappy with the general state of affairs in Egypt. Aggravated by the performance of the army in the war with Israel in 1948 some of these officer's formed what was called the Free Officer's Movement in 1949. And it was from then on, with that they were readying themselves to take over.
The leading figure of the Free Officer's, was a young leftenant colonel by the name of Gamal Abd al-Nasser.
In his early thirties at the time he was the son of a postal clerk, just like others of a modest background.
They immediately set about removing the land-owning elite which had ruled since the 19th century.
The constitution of Egypt was abolished in December 1952 and the political bases of the ruling elite such as the political parties were all dissolved and banned in January 1953. The source of their economic power was taken away from them by the agrarian reform. The agrarian reform that redistributed land in Egypt and therefore denied the land owning elite of much of it's wealth.
Before the agrarian reform 70 percent of the arable land in Egypt was in control of only one percent of the population.
So the redistribution of land on a much fairer basis was the most devastating tool for the elimination of the political power of the old land owning elite.
By early 1954, Abd al-Nasser was in complete control and the only competition left, was from the Muslim brotherhood.
As of late 1954, a systematic crackdown on the Muslim brotherhood forced them underground, and for very many years they were unable to play a serious role in Egyptian politics.
The structure of the regime was based on a very powerful presidency, a quiescent and essentially powerless parliament, and a mass state-controlled ruling party. The party had its branches throughout the country. And was a means of state control rather than a vehicle of popular representation. And the party through the years, went on to very different names, the Liberation Rally founded in 1953 was then changed to the National Union in 1956 and then changed again to the Arab Socialist Union in 1962. But it was essentially the same all along, a tool for very effective centralized government.
So the new regime was a centralized government and a centralized economy.
Not so much driven by ideology, but a politically pragmatic, more than an ideologically motivated political system.
The impact of agrarian reform by destroying the old elite was much more political than it was economic.
And population growth soon devoured any of the economic gains that had made, been made by the agricultural reforms.
The Aswan Dam that was completed in 1970 did not meet expectations either.
Initially the dam was presented as a panacea for all the ills of the Egyptian economy, the great symbol of Egypt's modernization. It would expand arable land. It would create hydroelectric power. It would catapult Egypt into the modern era. But in fact, the Aswan Dam changed very little in the end. And again because of the rapid growth of population, it could not really match the pace of the increasing mouths that Egypt had to feed.
It even caused a variety of ecological problems that have been detrimental to Egypt's economy all along.
The centralization of the economy from the mid 1950s onwards was part and parcel of Egypt's growing political independence, its ridding itself of foreign influences, and of creating a very domineering, centralizing, powerful government.
As part of Egypt's confrontation with the Western powers, the Suez Canal was nationalized in 1956. British and France banks were also nationalized at the end of the same year, all part of centralization and nationalization that continued afterwards in order to speed up the industrialization process of Egypt.
But first came the political motivation to create a centralized regime without any serious competition. The ideological explanation, which was very much about the thrust of Arab socialism, was an after thought and a legitimizer, but not the real cause for these political and economic changes.
And the achievements as we have already noticed were limited in the face of growing population. If Egypt population in 1950 was about 20 million, in 1966 it was already 30 million, in 1976, 36 million, in 1986, 50 million, and today as we have already noted, 85 million and steadily increasing.
Massive population growth also led naturally to massive urbanization.
The rural Egypt could no longer sustain the huge population that was being born there and people migrated to the cities in their millions.
Education was a very high priority for the new regime in Egypt, but the achievements were modest, if not poor. The illiteracy rate in Egypt dropped to 53% in 1982. From the very high percentage of 75 that it had been in 1950. Presently, the illiteracy rate in Egypt is approximately 28%, which is a great improvement in comparison to the past. But Egypt is still very low in the international rankings, 160th in the world at present on the rate of illiteracy.
The revolutionary regime allowed for a huge expansion of the universities, but this came at the expense of standards in these Egyptian schools of higher learning.
The universities became the base for the building of a massive bureaucracy as a means of maintaining power and as a source of employment. From 1962 onwards, every university graduate was promised a job in the government, but this was more about ensuring political stability than economic development or bureaucratic efficiency.
The Islamist revival, however, of the 1930s and 1940s, was checked by the officer regime.
And had it not been for the officer regime, the Muslim brethren may have risen to power in Egypt in the early 1950s. But that was not to be the case. And it was the officers who kept him out of power, and it was the officers who also implemented a more essentially secular policy. The Sharia courts, for example, were shut down all together, in Egypt, in 1956. The Sufi mystical orders were formally abolished in 1961, though they continued to flourish in practice. The renowned religious university of al-Azhar in Cairo was brought under strict government control.
In 1914, it was detached from the OE and became a British protectorate.
Since a long time, since the time of Mohammad Ali, Egypt has had a different and autonomous political and socio-economic development.
At the end of the First World War, delegates were free to present their views at the Paris Peace Conference but Saad Zaghlul, an eminent jurist was denied the permission by the British, following which Cairo Riots (the thawra - uprising) took place which was a signigicant binding force in Egyptian polity and the protests were state-wide after which Zaghlul was allowed to take the delegation. However, after he made his speech, the same day Britain declared Egypt one of its protectorates.
In Nov 1918: Saad Zaghlul negotiated independence with the Brits and formed the Waft Party "Delegation" Party because of his famous delegation to the Paris Peace Conf.
Zaghloul became increasingly active in nationalist movements, and in 1919 he led an official Egyptian delegation (or wafd, the name of the political party he would later form) to the Paris Peace Conference demanding that the United Kingdom formally recognise the independence and unity of Egypt and Sudan (which had been united as one country under Muhammad Ali Pasha). Britain had occupied the country in 1882, and declared it a protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War. Though Egypt and Sudan had its own Sultan, parliament and armed forces, it had effectively been under British rule for the duration of the occupation.
The British in turn demanded that Zaghloul end his political agitation. When he refused, they exiled him to Malta, and later to the Seychelles.
He was deported to Cyrus, but the Brits later agreed to negotiate with him (between 1920-22) due to the cross-country, cross-class urban-rural protests in favour of his pro-independence stance.
But no agreement was reached and hence a compromise was made on the terms of Egyptian self-rule was found in 1922.
On 28/2/1922, Britain unilaterally declared Egypt independent for lack of a better choice (protests for independence was growing)
4 points of British control in free Egypt were the reason of the compromise:
1. Defence and Foreign affairs remained in Brit control
2. Security of the Suez remained in Brit control
3. Capitulations (Brit privileges) were to be maintained
4. Sudan (north Sudan was thought be a part of Egypt) was to remain separate
A constitutional monarchy was established.
King Fuad was crowned as Monarch. A continuation of Mohammad Ali continued while the Brit landowning and ruling parties and various hues of nationalists corrupted the parliament due to their self interests. The ministers continued to work for their own selves.
The parliament soon lost the people's favor and was discredited and a constitutional parliament never really took off.
Soon a nationalist debate was sparked about religion and identity as archaeological discoveries uncovered the Egyptian Pharaohnic past and various artifacts of Ancient Egyptian past in which the commoners took pride and made them aware of a history beyond Islam and its associated heritage. The 1920s was the Golden Age of nationalism and secular politics in Egypt.
The debates focused on what it meant to be Egyptian (apart from being Muslims or Arabs or parts of former Ottoman Empire)
Watanniyya (the feeling associated with territorialisation as Egypt had now become a region with boundaries) identity and the Role (or lack thereof) of religion in society in Egypt (as opposed to the community feeling of Qaummiya) moving away from more traditional identities.
Egyptian Nationalism went hand in hand with secularisation/secular ideas, a sense of pride in history and past arose as people argued Islam was just one phase in a long and rich history as peculiarities in Egyptian History were recognised, a 6,000 year long history.
P.J.Vatikiotis registers this phase as called such by the intellectuals of that time, as the attack on tradition phase.
The leadership system was more secularised than the Ottoman Empire.
Rule of Sharia was reduced to personal issues and religious endowments (the awqaaf)
The establishment of a constitutional monarchy in the early 1920s, with a parliament and the holding of general elections, formalized and institutionalized the practice of man-made legislation. Once you formalize the practice of man-made legislation, this automatically gives rise to the question, so what is the real role of religion? Should there be any role to religion? Should the secularization of politics be complete? There were some in Egypt in the 1920s, who argued just that. Ali Abd-al Raziq, even though a Sharia judge, published a book on Islam and the Principles of Government, in 1925. And Abd-al Raziq argued that there was no need for a Caliphate in Islam, and that the Sharia was a spiritual and moral law that was unrelated to the earthly governing of men. So, Ali Abd-al Raziq was expelled from the ranks of the Ulama, of the men of religion. But, he wasn't the only person, who engaged in this attack on tradition. Taha Hussein, one of the most famous of Egypt's intellectuals and writers of the 20th Century, Published a book in 1926 on pre-Islamic poetry. And in this book on pre-Islamic poetry, Taha Hussein argued, that the Ulamas traditional, religious interpretation of the Quran and the Sunnah, ought to be corrected. He argued that there should be a much more, rational method of literary criticism introduced into this interpretation of the Qur'an and the Sunna. Rashid Rida, who we've already encountered in the group of Islamic reformers, and was one of the mentors of the Muslim brethren that was to be formed shortly. Rashid Rida called him at Apple State, demanded his removal from the university, which did eventually happen, a few years later. And there were others in Egypt who wrote, for example, in favor of Darwinism. And the ideas of evolution, and in support of western civilization as the highest stage of man's spiritual and material development. And they attacked Islamic culture and civilization as dead and useless, and advocated the adoption of western civilization as the only way towards progress. The secularizing reforms in Turkey in the 1920s that we will discuss a little later, strengthened the hand of those who sought the further weakening of the religious establishment. But to this assault on tradition, there was bound to be a response, and the reaction came in the late 1920s and during the 1930s. The Muslim Brethren were established in 1928, by Hasan al-Banna from the town of Ismailia, which is along the Suez Canal. And perhaps it is not accidental that the Muslim Brethren were formed initially in a town along the Suez Canal that, monument to external western intervention in Egypt's affairs. And the Muslim brethren argued, for the development of a modern society that was to be governed by the Sharia. That is, modernity but within the framework of the Sharia, and not without it. Leading modern, modernists in the 1930s, like Taha Hussein and others, retreated hastily, from their previous positions that attacked tradition. And they now, in the 1930s, produced works, on the ethic quality of early Islam, and the genius of the prophet. Effectively abandoning their previous positions, in unqualified favor of western civilization. And these new works on theirs in favor of a more traditional view, were very popular. And they reinforced the conservative forces of the time, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and during the 1930s, there is a steady shift towards Islam, and Arab nationalism. Arab nationalism became very attractive, to the masses of people in Egypt and elsewhere. The initial success of Arab nationalism, should be ascribed to what one could call its neo-traditionalist formula. Arab nationalism, had a strong Islamist undertone. The Arabs, after all, their greatest contribution to humanity, was the religion of Islam. And when the Islamic reformers spoke of the need to reform Islam, they spoke of Arab centrality, to this reformation of Islam. So Arab nationalism, by having this religious link, was much easier. For the masters in Egypt and elsewhere, to accept rather than the more secular extreme form of Egyptian nationalism, or other forms of territorial nationalism, that had no religious content. But, the liberalizing phase of the 1920s, that attack on tradition, that effort to push Islam to the sidelines of Egyptian politics in society, that liberalizing phase, ended in failure.
So let's begin with Egypt, crisis and revolution in Egypt. In 1936 Egypt and Great Britain, after long years of failed negotiations, signed a treaty of alliance.
Egypt was now formally an independent state, though with a special association with Britain which allowed for the British to maintain a military presence in the canal zone for twenty years. And, in the event of a war, Egypt's facilities would be available to the British.
Now that relations with the British were on the back burner, Egypt could turn inwards and to begin to look at Egypt's domestic politics. In 1938, two very important books were published in Egypt.
One, by Mirrit Boutrus Ghali, Siyasat al-Ghad, which means The Politics of Tomorrow. The other, by Hasfiz Afifi, Ala Hamish al-slyasa, On the Margins of Politics Both of these books dealt with Egypt's socioeconomic difficulties.
And they included a pessimistic forecast on population growth, and the dire consequences in the event of insufficient economic development.
Egypt's population, in 1900, was 10 million.
In 1937, it had reached 16 million.
And 20 million were forecast for 1957. But in fact, Egypt reached that number already in 1949. And presently the population of Egypt is 85 million and growing by about one million people a year.
Egypt suffered from a growing gap between resources and population.
These experts in the 1930s called for essential and rapid economic development to keep up with population growth.
But in practice, nothing much was really done about it.
And the Egyptian economy remained stagnant and hardly kept up with the growth rate of population.
Faltering modernization led in the 1930s to an era Islamic revival.
And if we recall from our earlier discussions on Egypt, in the 1920s there had been an attack on tradition.
But in the 1930s, there was a noticeable retreat even by some of the very same intellectuals who had waged the attack on tradition themselves.
The Muslim brotherhood's great appeal, calling for the modernization of Egypt in accordance with the sharia became a very dominant facet of Egyptian politics.
It is interesting to note
that the Muslim Brotherhood was not opposed to modernization.
What the Muslim Brotherhood was calling for was a modernization that would be in accordance with Islamic tradition, not to abandon the one for the other.
The Brotherhood's appeal was very popular and it effectively organized in a country-wide network of branches and paramilitary groups. It developed its own economic ventures and networks of social services.
And the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has a membership in the 1940s of hundreds of thousands and a following of millions. There was no grass roots mass movement like the Muslim Brethren anywhere in the region.
As of the 1920s Egypt had had a problem of political violence which was quite common. Political parties tended to have paramilitary organizations. The Muslim Brotherhood had a paramilitary organization and other political parties tended to have one as well.
After 1945 political violence became endemic in Egypt as the Muslim Brotherhood took a leading role in political assassinations of its Egyptian rivals and actions against the British presence in Egypt.
In December 1948, no doubt influenced by the war in Palestine, after a spat of violence against foreign, Jewish and government targets the Prime Minister of Egypt, Mahumud al-Nuqrashi ordered the dissolution of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Nuqrashi was assassinated later in December by the Brotherhood, followed by the assassination of the Brotherhood leader, Hasan al-Banna in February 1949, no doubt inspired, or ordered by the government.
The continuing chaos into the early 1950s
with Egyptian governments finding it increasingly difficult to assert control became part and parcel of the Egyptian political reality.
When in 1952 the government called in the Army to restore order, the stage was set for the coup d'état of the 23rd of July 1952 which
brought the army to power in Egypt.
This was the beginning of a new revolutionary era not only in Egypt, but in the region as a whole.
This was the end of the monarchy in Egypt and King Faruq, who had succeeded King Fuad in 1936 abdicated a few days after the coup. And the monarchy was finally abolished a year later and Egypt became a republic.
In 1954, the new regime signed the final agreement with Britain on withdrawal. And the British were out of Egypt by 1955, making Egypt at long last a truly independent country.
Who were these officers who engineered the coup of 1952? They were members of what was to become the new ruling class and this was a dramatic change in the power structure in Egypt.
A new ruling elite composed mostly of a new generation of officers who came from lower, middle class origins and often from rural backgrounds as opposed to their predecessors who were usually the sons of wealthy notables.
They were graduates of the military academy of the late 1930s and
unhappy with the general state of affairs in Egypt. Aggravated by the performance of the army in the war with Israel in 1948 some of these officer's formed what was called the Free Officer's Movement in 1949. And it was from then on, with that they were readying themselves to take over.
The leading figure of the Free Officer's, was a young leftenant colonel by the name of Gamal Abd al-Nasser.
In his early thirties at the time he was the son of a postal clerk, just like others of a modest background.
They immediately set about removing the land-owning elite which had ruled since the 19th century.
The constitution of Egypt was abolished in December 1952 and the political bases of the ruling elite such as the political parties were all dissolved and banned in January 1953. The source of their economic power was taken away from them by the agrarian reform. The agrarian reform that redistributed land in Egypt and therefore denied the land owning elite of much of it's wealth.
Before the agrarian reform 70 percent of the arable land in Egypt was in control of only one percent of the population.
So the redistribution of land on a much fairer basis was the most devastating tool for the elimination of the political power of the old land owning elite.
By early 1954, Abd al-Nasser was in complete control and the only competition left, was from the Muslim brotherhood.
As of late 1954, a systematic crackdown on the Muslim brotherhood forced them underground, and for very many years they were unable to play a serious role in Egyptian politics.
The structure of the regime was based on a very powerful presidency, a quiescent and essentially powerless parliament, and a mass state-controlled ruling party. The party had its branches throughout the country. And was a means of state control rather than a vehicle of popular representation. And the party through the years, went on to very different names, the Liberation Rally founded in 1953 was then changed to the National Union in 1956 and then changed again to the Arab Socialist Union in 1962. But it was essentially the same all along, a tool for very effective centralized government.
So the new regime was a centralized government and a centralized economy.
Not so much driven by ideology, but a politically pragmatic, more than an ideologically motivated political system.
The impact of agrarian reform by destroying the old elite was much more political than it was economic.
And population growth soon devoured any of the economic gains that had made, been made by the agricultural reforms.
The Aswan Dam that was completed in 1970 did not meet expectations either.
Initially the dam was presented as a panacea for all the ills of the Egyptian economy, the great symbol of Egypt's modernization. It would expand arable land. It would create hydroelectric power. It would catapult Egypt into the modern era. But in fact, the Aswan Dam changed very little in the end. And again because of the rapid growth of population, it could not really match the pace of the increasing mouths that Egypt had to feed.
It even caused a variety of ecological problems that have been detrimental to Egypt's economy all along.
The centralization of the economy from the mid 1950s onwards was part and parcel of Egypt's growing political independence, its ridding itself of foreign influences, and of creating a very domineering, centralizing, powerful government.
As part of Egypt's confrontation with the Western powers, the Suez Canal was nationalized in 1956. British and France banks were also nationalized at the end of the same year, all part of centralization and nationalization that continued afterwards in order to speed up the industrialization process of Egypt.
But first came the political motivation to create a centralized regime without any serious competition. The ideological explanation, which was very much about the thrust of Arab socialism, was an after thought and a legitimizer, but not the real cause for these political and economic changes.
And the achievements as we have already noticed were limited in the face of growing population. If Egypt population in 1950 was about 20 million, in 1966 it was already 30 million, in 1976, 36 million, in 1986, 50 million, and today as we have already noted, 85 million and steadily increasing.
Massive population growth also led naturally to massive urbanization.
The rural Egypt could no longer sustain the huge population that was being born there and people migrated to the cities in their millions.
Education was a very high priority for the new regime in Egypt, but the achievements were modest, if not poor. The illiteracy rate in Egypt dropped to 53% in 1982. From the very high percentage of 75 that it had been in 1950. Presently, the illiteracy rate in Egypt is approximately 28%, which is a great improvement in comparison to the past. But Egypt is still very low in the international rankings, 160th in the world at present on the rate of illiteracy.
The revolutionary regime allowed for a huge expansion of the universities, but this came at the expense of standards in these Egyptian schools of higher learning.
The universities became the base for the building of a massive bureaucracy as a means of maintaining power and as a source of employment. From 1962 onwards, every university graduate was promised a job in the government, but this was more about ensuring political stability than economic development or bureaucratic efficiency.
The Islamist revival, however, of the 1930s and 1940s, was checked by the officer regime.
And had it not been for the officer regime, the Muslim brethren may have risen to power in Egypt in the early 1950s. But that was not to be the case. And it was the officers who kept him out of power, and it was the officers who also implemented a more essentially secular policy. The Sharia courts, for example, were shut down all together, in Egypt, in 1956. The Sufi mystical orders were formally abolished in 1961, though they continued to flourish in practice. The renowned religious university of al-Azhar in Cairo was brought under strict government control.
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