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“Imagined Identities, Imagined Nationalisms: Print Culture and Egyptian Nationalism in Light of Recent Scholarship.” A Review Essay of Israel Gershoni and James P. Jankowski, Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945, Cambridge Middle East Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Pp. 297

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

D. Smith Charles
D. Smith Charles
Affiliation:
Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. 85721-0880, USA.
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Extract

Anthony D. Smith has argued that the idea of the “nation-state” conflates two historical and ideological processes that, even with Western European history serving as the paradigm, were often distinct. Nor was there any uniform evolution in these processes from one stage to the other. For Smith this has meant that “Eastern Europe and the Third World have all been trying to imitate a rather singular model whose ethnic homogeneity, like its parliamentary institutions, simply cannot be transplanted. They have been pursuing a Western mirage … [where] even in the West, the much soughtafter marriage of state and ethnie has not turned out to be all that happy and enduring.” Smith assumes that true nations are based on ethnie, meaning a shared memory of culture, language, and history identified with specific territory stretching into the past that creates both a bond within the group, the precursor to nationhood, and a sense of distinction against other such groups. Here he opposes those whom he calls the “modernists,” who may argue with one another about what constitutes nationalism but agree that it reflects the development of nationhood in the modern era and is not an inevitable extension of ancient historical and cultural bonds.

Type
Articles:Creating National Identities
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , November 1997 , pp. 607 - 622
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

NOTES

Author–s note: I thank Edmund Burke III, Julia Clancy-Smith, Richard Eaton, and R. Stephen Humphreys for their critical analysis of earlier drafts of this essay, and Carl Petry for his bibliographic assistance.

1 Smith, Anthony D., “State-Making and Nation-Building”, in States in History, ed. Hall, John (New York, 1986), 230Google Scholar.

2 Smith's, classic statement of this argument is The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar. See also Smith's, Theories of Nationalism (London, 1971; 2nd ed., 1983)Google Scholar. Bassam Tibi states that Smith uses the term ethnie to mean “ethnic community in contrast to nation.” Smith actually uses it to signify the historical basis of nationalism—its precursor, not its opposite: cf. Smith, , Ethnic Origin, and Tibi, Bassam, “Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States in the Modern Middle East,” in Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, ed. Khoury, Philip S. and Kostiner, Joseph (Berkeley, 1990), 149, n. 10Google Scholar.

3 Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening (New York, 1938, and later editions)Google Scholar.

4 For example, Dawn, C. Ernest, From Ottomanism to Arabism (Urbana, 1973);Google ScholarMuslih, Muhammad, The Origins of Palestinian Nationalism (New York, 1988)Google Scholar; Khoury, Philip S., Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: The Politics of Damascus, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945 (Princeton, 1987);Google ScholarTibi, Bassam, Arab Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry, ed. and trans. Sluglett, Marion Farouk and Sluglett, Peter (New York, 1981);CrossRefGoogle ScholarKhalidi, Rashid, Anderson, Lisa, Muslih, Muhammad, and Simon, Reeva, eds., The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York, 1991);Google Scholar Khoury and Kostiner, Tribes and State Formation; and the two works by Tauber, Eliezer, The Emergence of the Arab Movements and The Arab Movements in World War I (London, 1993)Google Scholar, which are directly concerned with refuting Antonius and challenging the findings of Dawn. An excellent summary of scholarship on the period before World War I is Khalidi, Rashid, “Ottomanism and Arabism in Syria Before 1914: A Reassessment”, in Origins of Arab Nationalism, ed. Khalidi, , 50–69Google Scholar.

5 An exception is Khalidi, Rashid, “Ottoman Notables in Jerusalem: Nationalism and Other Options,” in Palestine and the Arab–Israeli Conflict, ed. Smith, Charles D., a special issue of Muslim World (January–April 1994): 1–18Google Scholar.

6 By “social sciences” I mean political science and sociology. Important exceptions to this criticism are Ben-Dor, Gabriel, State and Conflict in the Middle East: Emergence of the Postcolonial State (New York, 1983);Google ScholarWaterbury, John, The Egypt of Nasser and Sadat: The Political Economy of Two Regimes (Princeton, 1983);CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Ayubi, Nazih N., Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East (London, 1995)Google Scholar. But compare Mitchell, Timothy, “The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics,” American Political Science Review 85, 1 (1991): 77–97;Google Scholar and Mitchell, Timothy and Owen, Roger, “Defining the State in the Middle East: A Workshop Report,” in 3 parts, Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 24, 2 (1990): 179–83;CrossRefGoogle Scholaribid. 25, 1 (1991): 25–29; and ibid., 26, 1 (1992): 39–43. There is only one footnote with a brief bibliographical reference in the three articles and no mention of the relevant literature in the discussions. Owen's, discussion in State, Power & Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (London, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar does offer an introduction to the scholarly literature. Compare also Zubaida, Sami, “Nations: Old and New. Comments on Anthony D. Smith's ‘The Myth of the “Modern Nation” and the Myths of Nations,’” Ethnic and Racial Studies 12, 3 (1989): 329–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and his “Theories of Nationalism,” in Power and the State, ed. Littlejohn, Gary et al. (London, 1978), 52–71Google Scholar, with his Islam, the People and the State (London, 1989)Google Scholar, which, though reflecting familiarity with the theoretical literature, makes little mention of it in notes or bibliography. Of particular note is the work of Joel Migdal, who is familiar with the literature on the state by historians as well as that by the social scientists. See his Strong Societies and Weak States: State-Society Relations and Capabilities in the Third World (Princeton, 1988)Google Scholar, and his “The State in Society: An Approach to Struggles for Domination,” in State Power and Social Forces: Domination and Transformation in the Third World, ed. Migdal, Joel, Kohli, Atul, and Shue, Vivienne (New York, 1994), 7–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But Migdal's major publications devoted to Palestine and Palestinians make no mention of scholarly literature on either state-society relations or nationalism. See Migdal, Joel, ed., Palestinian Society and Politics (Princeton, 1980),CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Migdal, Joel and Kimmerling, Baruch, The Palestinians (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

7 For example, Rashid Khalidi in Khalidi, Rashid, Anderson, Lisa et al. , The Origins of Arab Nationalism (New York, 1991)Google Scholar, vii. See also Tibi, , “Old Tribes and Imposed Nation-States,” in Tribes and State FormationGoogle Scholar. Tibi acknowledges that distinctions should be made between the terms “nation” and “state,” and criticizes scholars' treatment of the terms while still using the two together, especially on 143 ff. and continuously in Arab Nationalism, as does Zubaida in Islam, the People and the State.

8 For a good summary of the debates, see Smith, Ethnic Origins; Hall, John A., Coercion and Consent: Studies on the Modern State (Cambridge, 1994);Google Scholar and Mann, Michael, ed., The Rise and Decline of the Nation-State (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar. A succinct summary of the differences between Smith and the modernists can be found in Zubaida, “Nations: Old and New.”

9 Gellner, Ernest, Thought and Change (London, 1964), 168–69Google Scholar.

10 For Gellner, , see his Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar in addition to his Thought and Change. For Kedourie, , see his Nationalism (London, 1960Google Scholar, and later editions) and Nationalism in Asia and Africa, ed. Kedourie, Elie (London, 1971)Google Scholar. Roger Owen draws a dichotomy between Gellner, and Kedourie, in his State, Power & Politics, 81–85 and n. 4Google Scholar, whereas Anthony D. Smith sees their views as identical with respect to the imagined quality of nationalism (“Ethnicity and Nationalism,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 33, 1–2 [1992]: 3)Google Scholar.

11 Smith, Anthony D., “The Origins of Nations,” Ethnicity and Racial Studies 12, 3 (1989): 361Google Scholar.

12 Smith, , Ethnic Origins, 212Google Scholar. See also his “State-Making and Nation-Building,” especially pp. 239 ff.

13 Hobsbawm, Eric and Ranger, Terence, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1983)Google Scholar, and Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York, 1983)Google Scholar.

14 Smith, , “State-Making and Nation-Building,” 243–45Google Scholar.

15 Quoted in Carter, Nick, “Nation, Nationality, Nationalism and Internationalism in Italy, from Cavour to Mussolini,” The Historical Journal 39, 2 (1996): 545CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Carter also notes that scholars of Italian history stress “the existence after unification of two mutually exclusive Italies—‘legal’ Italy (the liberal state) and ‘real’ Italy (the nation),” a dichotomy recognized by contemporaries (ibid.). In short, the nation and the state remained separate entities.

16 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 15Google Scholar. Anderson borrows here from Seton-Watson, Hugh, Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, Colo., 1977), 5Google Scholar.

17 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 47, 40Google Scholar, where Anderson stresses that this process occurred later in the Islamic world.

18 Baron, Beth, The Women's Reawakening in Egypt: Culture, Society, and the Press (New Haven, Conn., 1994), 14Google Scholar. Baron's analysis illustrates a profitable use of Anderson's idea of imagined communities, but she does not employ the vehicle of print culture in a work discussing the role of the press and journals in spreading new ideas.

19 Smith, , Ethnic Origins, 28Google Scholar.

20 Hall, John A. and Ikenberry, G. John, The State, Concepts in Social Thought (Minneapolis, 1989), 2Google Scholar. A good brief discussion exists in Owen, , state, Power & Politics, 3–7Google Scholar.

21 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 26Google Scholar.

22 These differences do suggest fertile ground for questioning the literature on nationalism in light of recent Egyptian history rather than seeking to fit that history to the literature, a topic to which I will return.

23 For ʿAzzam and the broader question of Egyptian Arab nationalism, see the two-part article by Coury, Ralph, “Who ‘Invented’ Egyptian Arab Nationalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 14, 3 (1982): 249–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and ibid., 14, 4 (1982): 459–79. Coury's articles are noted in Redefining the Egyptian Nation, but his arguments are not addressed directly.

24 Gershoni, Israel and Jankowski, James P., Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 1930–1945, Cambridge Middle East Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 65, n. 66, and in Haykal, Muhammad Husayn, al-Sharq al-Jadīd (The New East) (Cairo, 1962), 67–68Google Scholar.

25 (Albany, 1983). The authors list the book in their notes and bibliography but do not address its arguments.

26 C. D. Smith, Islam, chap. 5.

27 See, for example, Smith, C. D., Islam, especially 89–95, 152Google Scholar.

28 An explanation of this focus may lie in the fact that Gershoni's doctoral thesis, accepted in 1977, was titled “The Evolution of the Egyptian National Image, 1919–1948.” There he first discussed a shift from Pharaonic-based nationalism to what he called “supra-Egyptianism.” A good deal of this book seems to reflect assumptions found in that thesis, to which the material is made to fit.

29 Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 40Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., 48–49.

31 Cf. Gershoni, and Jankowski, , Redefining the Egyptian Nation, 212–16Google Scholar, and Anderson, , Imagined Communities, 39Google Scholar, where he refers to the “secular, historically-clocked, imagined community,” the product of print culture that he juxtaposes to the religiously sanctioned communities of the past.

32 Baron, , Women's Awakening, 191Google Scholar.

33 Zubaida, , Islam, the People and the State, 145–50Google Scholar, assumes that print capitalism continually encouraged secular ideas in Middle Eastern countries because the new language of journals, modern standard Arabic, differed from “the language of sacred texts” and thereby created “a unified field of exchange and communication” (p. 148). Though arguable, the use of Arabic in itself continues a link to the sacred texts and does not preclude the reassertion of Islamic values in the new Arabic, as happened in the 1930s and occurs today. Zubaida considers Islam to be part of the “modern political field” (pp. 152 ff.), but does not address the issue of print capitalism in this context, only with respect to the secular culture that created the modern political field.

34 Compare Haarmann, Ulrich, “Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 43 (1980): 55–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Cook, Michael, “Pharaonic History in Medieval Egypt,” Studia Islamica 57 (1983): 67–104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Haarmann argues for an Egyptian sense of distinctiveness in the Middle Ages, within a broader Islamic community, disputing the thesis of Cook and Crone, Patricia in Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge, 1977)Google Scholar. Cook challenges Haarmann's contention, using different sources, but in my view does not effectively refute him. See also F. Robert Hunter, who notes that Ali Mubarak, as a modernizer in the late 19th century, spoke of the nation—waṭan—in “a territorial sense” and harked back to Egypt's glory under the pharaohs: “like other reformers, Mubarak looked to a national past which antedated Islam” (Hunter, F. Robert, Egypt Under the Khedives 1805–1879: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy [Pittsburgh, 1984], 136–37)Google Scholar.

35 This theme appears clearly in the work of the Egyptian geographer Jamal Hamdan. Hamdan stresses the uniqueness of an Egyptian nation, waṭan, based on its geography and continuous history since the Pharaonic period, but he ultimately rejects waṭanīyya as too restrictive in favor of an Arab qawmiyya of which Egypt was a part based on its Arab culture and overwhelming Islamic adherence. Published in 1970 and written in the heyday of Nasser's Pan-Arabism, Hamdan's work stresses Egyptian dominance in its Arab sphere as seen in the 1920s and 1930s. His work accentuates that sense of dualism, of the possible compatibility of different identities suggested at the beginning of this essay with respect to Arab and regional loyalties, with land an essential feature of definition. See Hamdan, Jamal, Shakhṣiyyat Miṣr (Egypt's Personality) (Cairo, 1970)Google Scholar, and his later four-volume work of the same title (Cairo, 1980).

36 Smith, , Ethnic Origins, 25Google Scholar. See Reid, Donald Malcolm, “Cromer, and the Classics: Imperialism, Nationalism and the Greco-Roman Past in Modern Egypt,” Middle Eastern Studies 32, 1 (01 1996): 1–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism: The Struggle to Define and Control the Heritage of Arab Art in Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 24, 1 (1992): 57–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 A recent effort to do just that with regard to Skocpol's, ThedaStates and Social Revolution (1979)Google Scholar is Cole, Juan R. I., Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's ʿUrabi Movement (Princeton, N.J., 1993)Google Scholar.