Introduction xvii
flourishes, and as soon as she doesn't he falls, but it is
not easy to show how this happened. Moreover, the
people of Egypt have been, on the whole, so inarticulate
and inactive, and their rulers so highly coloured and clear-
cut that it will be hard to keep these supermen in their
proper place as sub-titles. It is not easy to exhibit a Mehe-
met All of a Kitchener as only the manifestation of a mood
in those masses of blue-clad, brown-skinned -fellaheen,
Then we come to the second difficulty in telling the
story of Modern Egypt—that is, the very tortuous track
along which the new nation has reached its goal. New
nations generally have to fight their way to independ-
ence. It has often been a long fight with heavy loss.
But the line followed has been fairly straight and pro-
gress, though fluctuating, fairly steady. But in the case
of Egypt, the first fight for national independence was
fought by Napoleon when he broke up the Mamelukes
and broke Egypt off from the Islamic State in order to
get a base for a new European Empire of the East.
The next fight was when Mehemet Ali drove out both
French and English so as to get a base for a new Asiatic
Empire of the East. Neither of these was a direct or
even an easily discernible advance towards an Egyptian
nation. The third fight was the military rebellion of Arabi
that, whatever its intentions, ended by making Egypt a
part of the British Empire. The fourth fight was that of
the Great War that established a formal British Protec-
torate, and thereby, even more paradoxically, brought
about the birth of an Egyptian nation. There is in all
this, with the exception of the lamentable catastrophe of
Tel-el-Kebir, not one straight fight for independence.
And the final rebellion by which the goal was won was a
mere m£l£e of mobs and murders. There is no material
in this from which an author can create a national epic.