xiv Introduction
ing pages, much that is puzzling will become plain if we
read it as the story of a captive Cleopatra and of a con-
quering Antony or Caesar.
The first difficulty in telling this story is to know where
to begin. For a conscious Egypt appears for the first
time in the movement or mutiny under Arabi in 1882.
But the national character even of this movement is
violently contested by nearly all contemporary authori-
ties. Probably there would be no general agreement as
to the existence of an Egyptian nation before the Great
War. Yet it is obvious that there had been an inde-
pendent Egyptian State for over a century before that.
How was it that Egypt, which was the first of the
Eastern border-lands to emerge from the Islamic State,
was apparently the last to acquire a national conscious-
ness ? That the Turks have only just arrived at national
independence is explained by their having been involved
as a ruling race in maintaining the imperial and inter-
national institutions of the Ottoman Empire. That the
Arabs have not yet achieved a national State is explained
by their devotion to tribal and traditional systems, and by
their being still divided between the European eclecticism
of Irak and the Eastern exclusiveness of Nejd. The
Berbers of North Africa are divided between French,
Spanish, and Italian States. The peoples of Syria are
racially, regionally, and religiously divided among them-
selves. But the Egyptians were united a century ago in a
prosperous and powerful State that defeated and nearly
destroyed both the reformed Ottoman Empire, the
resurgent Greek nation, and the Arab renascence of the
Wahabis, How is it that Egypt could not only develop
its own independence, but delay the national develop-
ment of its neighbours for two generations before there
were any Egyptians ?