The British Occupation 101
many of them fraudulent. But the Dual Control would
have deserved well of Egypt if it could only have carried
on until an Egyptian constitutional government had had
time to organise. Unluckily the Control came into sharp
collision with the Nationalist movement in its first stage.
The first movement of the Egyptian people towards
self-government is represented by the campaigns of
Mehemet AH. The second, which we now approach, was
more pacific but less successful. Possibly because it was
more popular, and acted not through an autocracy or
even through an aristocracy, but mainly through the army,
and also because it had to overcome the opposition of
the Powers, and not that of the Porte. That the move-
ment never was recognised in Europe as a national
renascence was due to the two liberal Powers, England
and France, being preoccupied with their strategic and
financial interests in Egypt, and to their being persuaded
that this political movement was irreconcilable therewith.
Misconception of the movement was also due to its own
incomplete and unconvincing character. For after fifty
years of practically independent existence the Egyptians
were only just beginning to give their nationalism political
expression. And any other expression it never had had
and has not yet had. Moreover, like all national move-
ments, that of Egypt derived from different currents of
opinion, and was divided into different channels of ex-
pression. And none of these was strong enough by itself
to wash down the weirs with which vested interests had
obstructed its course. Finally, the Dual Control had
removed real grievances that might have raised such a
head of revolt as would have united all its currents and
swept all obstacles away.
The three components of Egyptian nationalism that
would have had to unite to form a national government