Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East: Social and Cultural Origins of Egypt's Urabi Movement.

• Author: Owen, Roger

By Juan R. I. Princeton Studies on the Near East. Princeton: 1993. Pp. xiii + 341. $49.50. 33[pounds].

In Colonialism and Revolution, Juan Cole returns to the relatively well-worked subject of what, to use a neutral definition, is often called the Urabi movement in Egypt in 1881-82. However, he does this on the basis of a variety of new sources as well as with skillful reference to more general theoretical studies of similar upheavals in Europe and elsewhere. As far as the former are concerned, the most exciting are those taken from the huge number of relevant dossiers in the Egyptian National Archives, notably those on Al-Afghani's chairmanship of a Cairene Masonic Lodge in the late 1870s, petitions from members of Egyptian guilds and an arrest list of men involved in some of the 1882 disturbances, as well as work by Egyptian historians such as Latifah Salim, whose Al-quwa al-ijtima iyyah fi ath-thawrah al-urabiyyah was published in Cairo in 1981. The more theoretical works most quoted are those by Theda Stocpol and Mirislav Hroch.(1)

The result is a richly documented, densely argued study designed to show, first that the Urabi movement constituted a genuine social and political revolution and then just how and why it actually took place. This involves an analysis not just of the reasons for revolt but also of how the different groups of protestors could be mobilized under the general umbrella of anti-European and anti-Turco-Circassian feeling expressed in what Cole describes as "nativist"--that is, a local, religious and patriotic--language. This made the whole process very much more volatile than previous studies by historians like Scholch allow. More debatably, Cole's argument that it extended far into the rural areas allows him to challenge both Scholch and Nathan Brown, who argue against direct peasant involvement in the Urabi movement, and so to characterize it as a truly nation-wide revolt.(3)

My own belief is that, while Colonialism and Revolution opens up many new lines for future research, it fails to make the larger case about the character of the movement it seeks to understand. However, I also believe that this matters less than might be supposed. In the hands of a good historian, the question of definition is of less importance than the light which he is able to throw on the dynamics of the processes of rapid socio-economic change which lie beneath. There is also much to be learned from Cole's heroic attempt to combine what...