#british protectorate

[yearningforunity]

Sifting Tea

Women at work in a processing plant on Edward Hulton's tea plantation in Nyasaland, 7th July 1956.

[berberanews]

Halgankii Soomaalida ee Gumaysi Diidka ahaa 1862-1920. 

Qaybta 4raadBishii abriil dabayaaqadeedii 1909 ayaa ergo ay dowlada ingiriisku soo dirtay yimid berbera waxeyna guda galeen wareysi iyo wax baarid, wadaadkana waxey udireen waraaqo iyagoo weydiisanaya waxyaalo kala duwan oo nabada iyo heshiiska kusaabsan, Sayidku waraaqihii dambe uu ingiriisku soodiray Kama soo jawaabin.  Bishii nofeembar 1909 ayuu ingiriisku wuxuu goaan kugaaray inuu kabaxo…

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[movies-derekwinnert]

A United Kingdom *** (2016, David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Nicholas Lyndhurst ) - Movie Review

A United Kingdom *** (2016, David Oyelowo, Rosamund Pike, Jack Davenport, Tom Felton, Nicholas Lyndhurst ) – Movie Review

David Oyelowo stars as Prince Seretse Khama of the British protectorate of Bechuanaland, (now Botswana) who causes a big political and personal rumpus when he meets, romances and then marries white London woman Ruth Williams in the late Forties.

Oyelowo is ideally cast and ultra solid in his portrait of honest, good hearted determination, juggling love with duty, though Rosamund Pike seems a…

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[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Ironically, the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 and the Veiled Protectorate that followed did much to bolster notions of Egypt's national independence. During the early years of the occupation, the situation of Egypt vis-a-vis the British and Ottoman Empires was characterized by two fictions. Public discourse pretended that the Ottomans retained a measure of control over Egypt and that Egypt retained a measure of independence from Britain. In official correspondence, Egypt was carefully and consistently referred to as al-qutr al-misri, the "Egyptian region." It was also referred to with safe synonyms for "region," such as tarafand diyar. In the interests of pragmatism, oppositional political strategy was structured around opposition to British imperial control. The nationalist discourse that emerged in the 1890s appeared to instrumentalize (or even marginalize) Ottomanism in order to address the BritishY Nevertheless, it seems that the Veiled Protectorate instilled its narrative of light, almost imperceptible rule successfully: Britain's influence over Egypt's citizens is obscured in historical memory.

Although Britain drew most nationalist political fire, the Ottoman Empire remained the key referent for Egypt's elite political and intellectual culture, even as late as the turn ofthe century. Egyptians were active observers of, and indeed participants in, the Ottoman reform movements of the early twentieth century. Egypt is often portrayed as a site of exile for Young Turks, but it was not merely an inert foreign land. Just as the United States of America remained (and remains) in the cultural, economic, and indeed political sphere of the British empire long after independence, so too did Egypt remain part of the Ottoman commonwealth. This commonwealth was most visible in the writings of a small intelligentsia. The Ottoman Empire experienced a brief episode of constitutionalism and limited representative government in 1876 and another starting in 1908. Egypt, meanwhile, had no constitution or elections until the 1920s. Government was for bureaucrats, not citizens, and political discourse was the realm of journalists and a handful of elite activists.

A whole literature endeavors to define Ottomanism, and it is by no means unusual that this elusive label should fail to fit Egyptians exactly. Ottoman citizenship, the central concern of this chapter, had its first legal articulation in 1869.  The idea of citizenship was foreign to the nineteenth- century Ottoman Empire; the great Egyptian chronicler of Napoleon's 1798 invasion merely transliterated the term: sitwayan. The Arabic jinsiya (related to "genus") came to designate "nationality." Even the neologism for national citizen (muwatin) does not designate the rights-bearing liberal subject of a certain vision of Western citizenship. Subjecthood, on the other hand, has a more stable Arabic and Ottoman vocabulary, in common usage during the nineteenth century. The Arabic/Ottoman term tab'iyat/tabiiyet derives from tabi'/tabii, meaning subject (of a state or sovereign). But the truly stable term is the eighth-century reaya, for "flock" or "subjects."

The relationship of shepherd (the Ottoman sultan) and flock (his subjects) was based on protection and loyalty rather than sovereignty and allegiance. This tie was bolstered by the sultan's role as caliph, or earthly head of the Islamic commtmity. Even when his secular powers were limited, the Ottoman sultan maintained spiritual dominion, to which Egypt signaled its symbolic loyalty. The province was given the right to mint its own currency in 1834 (a mark of monetary autonomy), but this token of independence bore the sultan-caliph's name (his tugra) until 1914. The same name was invoked at Friday prayers throughout this period. On this basis, more recent scholarship argues that as late as 1905, "in the final analysis, the majority of Egyptians considered themselves to be Ottoman subjects," and those interested in forging an independent Egypt pursued a policy of de-Ottomanization as a result. Ottoman wars were increasingly defined as Islamic, and enthusiastic moral and material support from Egyptians during the Italo-Turkish war over Libya (1911-1912) were the last great sign of Egypt's Ottoman affiliation. The fact remains, however, that the sultan's direct control over his Egyptian flock was definitively supplanted by his own governor during the 1830s. After that point, Ottoman sovereignty was reduced to suzerainty and symbolic payment of tribute; no more Egyptian troops fought Ottoman wars.

If the sultan retained only spiritual and symbolic authority over his Egyptian subjects, his nominal subalterns enhanced direct sovereignty at the provincial level. The upstart governor Mehmet Ali and his descendants used the techniques of modern control to extract ever more military, agricultural, and public works labor from Egyptians. The debt crisis of the 1870s and British occupation of the 1880s transferred much of this dominion to the European comptrollers who directed the Egyptian economy. The Egyptian state, ftguratively controlled by the Ottomans and literally controlled by the British, communicated with its subjects through its officials. These agents of the "local government"- tax collectors, police, and local headmen - articulated economic, legal, and military subjecthood at the local level.”

- Will Hanley, “When Did Egyptians Stop Being Ottomans? An Imperial Citizenship Case Study.” in Willem Maas (ed.), Multilevel Citizenship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. pp. 89-109.

[jonathansalembaskin-blog]

What War?

Today a war started and ended.

Great Britain had recognized Zanzibar’s independence since 1858, but it wasn’t until tensions with neighboring German colonies moved Sultan Ali bin Said to declare his country a British Protectorate in 1890. This gave the…

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