Past Read: Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945

Gershoni, Israel and James P. Jankowski. Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP: 1995)

Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930-1945 (1995) picks up where The Search for Egyptian Nationhood left off, demonstrating the dynamism and complexity of ideas simmering throughout the rising Egyptian effendiyah classes. Urbanization, the global depression, the continuing expansion of journalism, literacy, and state education, all percolated throughout the 1930s, leading to a more sharp sense of disillusionment and resentment toward Western ideas and a concomitant increase on the part of this new middle class intelligentsia to ideas relating to Arab and Islamic identity. Thus Gershoni and Jankowski deftly weave together a cultural history of the ideas of the effendiyah and major intellectuals relative to the primary ideological concerns of the time: nationalism, Arabism, Egyptianism, and their relationships to Islam and tradition. Part one of the book focuses on “Egyptian Islamic nationalism,” represented in Hasan al-Banna’s Muslim Brotherhood; “integral Egyptian nationalism,” represented in Ahmad Husayn’s Young Egypt; and “Egyptian Arab nationalism,” represented in a synthesis of players from multiple parties: Egyptian territorial nationalism drew adherents from a diverse field. Part two focuses on the ways in which players applied the ideologies of part one, focusing on the Islamic caliphate, Palestine and Zionism, and the Arab League.