Twelfth Global Studies Conference

Abstract

The scholarship on Egyptian nationalism supports a narrative that depicts Egypt emerging as an independent political entity in the mid-nineteenth century and steadily marching towards becoming a sovereign nation-state in the first decades of the twentieth century. There has been little focus, however, on the role that Ottoman imperial culture played in the emergence of Egyptian nationalism, even though the most recent literature emphasizes the significance of empires and imperial cultures in the process of nation-state formation around the world. To fully understand the context from which Egyptian nationalism emerged, Ottoman cultural consciousness in Egypt from the mid-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries must be analyzed. Based primarily on documents from the Ottoman Archives as well as Arabic-language newspapers, this paper takes Ottoman orders and medals as important cultural symbols while using them as an analytical tool to examine the relationship between Istanbul and the ruling and intellectual elite in Egypt. It argues that even though Egypt was gradually becoming politically more autonomous within the Ottoman Empire, the Egyptian ruling and intellectual elite continued to operate within the Ottoman cultural network. The paper situates Egypt firmly within the Ottoman context and demonstrates how the development of a distinct Egyptian national identity was not an isolated process but took place within the framework of Ottoman imperial culture. Moreover, underlining the role that imperial cultures played in the formation of nation-states, the paper also contributes to the debates on the emergence of nation-states in the Middle East as well in the wider post-colonial world.