Introduction xv
The explanation that will be advanced in the following
pages is that a mass-mind and mass-movements did exist
in Egypt from its first emergence as a State over a
century ago ; that this mind and these movements were
always obscurely operating thereafter, and did eventually
create the modern nation as we now see it; but that,
owing to ^peculiarities in the people of Egypt and in its
position, these operations were subconscious ; and that
the development of a national consciousness was the last,
instead of, as usual, the first phase of national develop-
ment. Thus, during all the earlier part of its passage into
our political system, we can only calculate the position of
this new comet by noting how it affects the courses of
those known spheres into whose orbit it enters.
The story of Modern Egypt must therefore begin
from the Napoleonic wars, and not from the Great War.
And it will have to indicate the nature of the new nation
indirectly through its effects on the personalities and
Powers with which it comes in contact. It must show
how, from Napoleon and Mehemet AH down to Cromer
and Allenby, the power of foreign rulers in Egypt has
been partly personal and partly popular. And how they
succeeded only in so far as they conformed to an
Egyptian public opinion that was often entirely over-
looked and never enough understood. Wherefore the
modern method of writing history, which is to ignore
personalities and policies, to illustrate developments from
the lives of the common people, and to explain it by
economic factors and moral forces is inapplicable to
Egypt. For except that cotton has replaced corn, the
economics of Egypt are very much as they were in the
days of Pharaoh and his foreign financial adviser Joseph.
Its implements and industries are nearly all the same—
the plough, the hoe, the shadouf. Until a very few years