Revolution in Egypt 1919

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Egyptian Revolution Flag with Muslim Crescent and Christian Cross
Saad Zaghlul Pasha , leader of the Egyptian nationalists
Protests during the revolution
Women with improvised flags at the protests in Cairo
Egyptian and British soldiers on standby

The revolution in Egypt 1919 ( Egyptian-Arabic : ثورة 1919 thawret 1919 ) was a nationwide, initially violent uprising against British rule in Egypt and Sudan . It was triggered by the imprisonment and exile of the nationalist leader Saad Zaghlul Pasha and other members of the Wafd and was carried across the Sultanate of Egypt by all sections of the population, including women and Copts . After a few weeks, the British military was able to restore calm in the country apart from a few outbreaks of violence and assassinations, but the revolution was continued with the means of civil disobedience .

The revolution caused Great Britain to release the Sultanate of Egypt with the unilateral declaration of independence of Egypt on February 28, 1922 as the Kingdom of Egypt under state sovereignty . For Egypt it led indirectly to the constitution of the Kingdom of Egypt of 1923 , at the time the most modern constitution on the African continent. However, Great Britain retained a number of far-reaching rights that were only limited to the Suez Canal zone with the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936 and were finally repealed after the military coup of 1952 .

background

The Ottoman rule in Egypt had existed since 1517 , initially exercised by Muhammad Ali Pasha and the dynasty he founded . In 1882, Khedive Tawfiq, oppressed by the nationalist Urabi movement, asked Great Britain for military assistance. The Anglo-Egyptian War and British occupation resulted in British rule in Egypt , which was exercised by a British Consul General , but formally left Egypt as part of the Ottoman Empire .

On October 28, 1914, the German Rear Admiral Wilhelm Souchon shelled the Russian Black Sea Fleet and Sevastopol under the Ottoman flag . As a result, first the Russian Empire declared war on the Ottoman Empire and then the Ottoman Empire on the Triple Entente . Great Britain deposed the Khedive Abbas II in November 1914 . He was replaced by a sultan appointed by the British, and the British Consul General has now been replaced by a High Commissioner . The Sultanate of Egypt existed as a British protectorate until 1922, when it was founded, the centuries-old Ottoman sovereignty over Egypt ended. The Sultanate of Egypt has been under martial law since its inception, and Great Britain promised to assume all the burdens of war. Egyptian nationalists assumed that the protectorate would only exist for the duration of the First World War , after which bilateral negotiations on Egypt's independence would take place.

During the war, the Egyptian population increasingly suffered from the stresses caused by the war. Food prices rose, cotton prices fell, and Britain's 1914 pledge to bear all the burdens of war went unnoticed. Egyptian nationalism was an attitude of the elite before the war, now the appearance of the British with troop stationing, the obligation of 1.5 million Egyptians for labor service and the confiscation of buildings, grain and cattle for military purposes caused great resentment in the whole population .

On November 13, 1918, two days after the Compiègne armistice , a delegation of Egyptian nationalists led by Saad Zaghlul addressed the British High Commissioner Reginald Wingate . They called for the end of the British protectorate over Egypt and Sudan and for Egyptian representatives to be sent to the upcoming Paris Peace Conference . Meanwhile, a campaign of civil disobedience, organized by the Wafd party , began among the Egyptian population . Wafd officials collected signatures in the towns and villages of a petition calling for Egypt's state independence.

In the face of increasing opposition and in order to counter impending unrest, the British administration arrested Saad Zaghlul and two of his colleagues on March 8, 1919 and initially deported them to Malta .

revolution

The day after Saad Zaghlul's arrest, law students at Azhar University in Cairo organized the first mass protests, which quickly spread to Alexandria and across the country. The Egyptian police and the British military reacted quickly with excessive use of force by firing into the crowd of demonstrators. The insurgents in turn attacked British and European institutions, not only those of the military, but also companies, cultural institutions and parts of the infrastructure such as railway stations or railroad trains. Prisons with imprisoned insurgents and criminals were stormed and the prisoners released. There have been repeated gruesome murders of European civilians by an out-of-control mob.

The protests in Egypt claimed hundreds of lives by the end of March 1919. Public life largely came to a standstill. The unrest in the countryside was particularly violent, with entire villages being burned down, railroads destroyed and companies looted, and attacks on British military installations. The unrest was borne not only by students and the intellectual elite, but also by civil servants, business owners, farmers, workers and religious leaders. The mobilization of women who were able to become politically active for the first time was of particular importance. The support of the revolution by Muslims and Coptic Christians made it clear that Egyptian nationalism had a unifying effect across the borders of religions.

Saad Zaghlul and five other leading members of the Wafd party in exile in the Seychelles , 1922

The unrest lasted about three weeks until the end of March 1919, when the British military under Major General John Shea gained the upper hand and was largely able to restore calm in the country by April 18. After that there were only isolated outbreaks of violence and attacks. On April 7, the British government approved the return of the nationalist leaders exiled to Malta. On April 11, a delegation from Wafd presented a call for Egypt's independence to the Paris Peace Conference. The request was not granted because the United States opposed it. Saad Zaghlul was arrested again with several Wafd officials and now exiled to Aden and finally to the Seychelles . Regardless of the strict postal censorship, Zaghlul repeatedly found opportunities to write letters to his compatriots at home during his exile.

By the end of July 1919, the British Army reported losses of 143 soldiers, and European civilians were also killed. This contrasted with 800 deaths and 1,600 wounded on the Egyptian side. The British-Egyptian protectorate administration reacted harshly, 39 insurgents were sentenced to death and more than 2,000 were imprisoned. The British Prime Minister David Lloyd George sent a commission of inquiry under Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner to Egypt in December 1919 . Their task was to determine the causes of the unrest and to make a recommendation for the political future of Egypt. Milner's report to Lloyd George, his cabinet and King George V was published in February 1921. The commission described Egypt's status as a protectorate as unsatisfactory and recommended its termination.

The phase of open and massive use of violence, which lasted in the big cities until the end of March and ended in April across the country, was followed by a phase of civil disobedience, especially in Cairo. Railway workers, street sweepers and water carriers were on strike. The pupils and students also stayed away from class and demonstrated loudly on the streets of the city. The lawyers first went on strike and then allowed themselves to be moved from the list of active lawyers to the list of retired lawyers in large numbers because of threatened legal consequences. Eventually, the courts were instructed to try without a lawyer if necessary. The Egyptian government officials had still performed their duties as far as possible in March and, out of solidarity, went on strike for at most one day after Zaghlul's arrest. But public administration was soon affected by work stoppages.

Aftermath

On February 28, 1922, the British government, under pressure from the Egyptian independence movement, especially the Wafd (the "Delegation"), proclaimed the end of the Protectorate . The autonomy of the newly created Kingdom of Egypt was completely relative, however, as certain areas of the British Crown were reserved - such as security responsibility over the Suez Canal , national defense and the representation of national interests in foreign policy. After the abolition of the Protectorate, the previous Sultan Fu'ad I was proclaimed King of Egypt to the applause of the people.

Saad Zaghlul returned from exile on September 18, 1923. He was given a triumphant reception in Cairo. In the elections on January 12, 1924, the Wafd party won an absolute majority and two weeks later, Zaghlul became the kingdom's first prime minister. The success of the revolution was not the end of the violence, radical forces among the Egyptian nationalists demanded the complete withdrawal of British troops and absolute sovereignty. The assassination attempt on the Sirdar Lee Stack led to Saad Zaghlul's resignation from the post of Prime Minister in November 1924.

In 1936, with the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of London , the United Kingdom renounced its prerogatives in the Kingdom of Egypt. However, the treaty stipulated that British control of the Suez Canal would be retained for 20 years. After the military coup carried out by Muhammad Nagib and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt in 1952 against Faruk , the Republic of Egypt was proclaimed in 1953 by the " Movement of Free Officers ". These two nationalized the Suez Canal.

literature

  • Martin W. Daly: The British Occupation, 1882-1922 . In: Martin W. Daly (ed.): The Cambridge History of Egypt. Volume 2. Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the end of the twentieth century . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-47211-3 , pp. 239-251
  • Ziad Fahmy: Ordinary Egyptians. Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture . Stanford University Press, Stanford 2011, ISBN 978-0-8047-7211-2
  • Fawaz A. Gerges: The New Middle East. Protest and Revolution in the Arab World . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013, ISBN 9781107470576
  • Ellis Goldberg: Peasants in Revolt - Egypt 1919 . Ed .: International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, No. 2nd 1992.
  • James Jankowski: Egypt. A short history . Oneworld Publications, Oxford 2000.
  • Zaheer Masood Quraishi: Liberal Nationalism in Egypt. Rise and Fall of the Wafd Party . Kitab Mahal Private LTD., 1967.
  • Chirol Valentine: The Egyptian Problem . Macmillan, London 1921, digitizedhttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Degyptianproblem00chiruoft~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D~doppelseiten%3D~LT%3D~PUR%3D
  • PJ Vatikiotis: The History of Modern Egypt . Ed .: Johns Hopkins University. 4th edition. Baltimore 1992.
  • Stephen Zunes: Nonviolent Social Movements. A Geographical Perspective . Blackwell Publishing, 1999.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Vatikitotis: The History of Modern Egypt , pp. 240–243.
  2. ^ Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim: The Egyptian empire, 1805-1885 . In: Martin W. Daly (ed.): The Cambridge History of Egypt. Volume 2. Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the end of the twentieth century . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-47211-3 , pp. 198-216.
  3. ^ Donald Malcolm Reid: The 'Urabi revolution and the British conquest, 1879-1882 . In: Martin W. Daly (ed.): The Cambridge History of Egypt. Volume 2. Modern Egypt, from 1517 to the end of the twentieth century . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, ISBN 0-521-47211-3 , pp. 217-238.
  4. ↑ Ziad Fahmy: Ordinary Egyptians , pp. 117-118.
  5. ↑ Vatikitotis: The History of Modern Egypt , S. 246th
  6. ↑ Martin W. Daly: The British Occupation, 1882-1922 , pp. 245-247.
  7. ^ Zaheer Masood Quraishi: Liberal Nationalism in Egypt. Rise and Fall of the Wafd Party , p. 213
  8. ↑ Fawaz A. Gerges: The New Middle East , p. 67
  9. ↑ a b Chirol Valentine: The Egyptian Problem , pp. 170-189.
  10. ↑ Reinhard Schulze: A Modern History of the Islamic World . IB Tauris 2002, ISBN 9781860648229 , p. 54.
  11. ↑ James Jankowski: Egypt. A Short History , p. 112.
  12. ↑ 800 native dead in Egypt's rising; 1,600 wounded , The New York Times , July 25, 1919, accessed January 31, 2019.
  13. ↑ Martin W. Daly: The British Occupation, 1882-1922 , pp. 249-250.
  14. ↑ Chirol Valentine: The Egyptian issue , pp 190-205.
  15. ↑ Jean-Jacques Luthi: L'Égypte des Rois . L'Harmattan, 1997.
  16. ↑ Vatikitotis: The History of Modern Egypt , S. 264th