Books
Foreign Policy as Nation Making: Turkey and Egypt in the Cold War, 2018
After the Second World War, Turkey and Egypt were among the most dynamic actors in the Middle Eas... more After the Second World War, Turkey and Egypt were among the most dynamic actors in the Middle East. Their 1950s foreign policies presented a puzzle, however: Turkey's Democrat Party pursued NATO membership and sponsored the pro-Western Baghdad Pact regionally, while Egypt's Free Officers promoted neutralism and pan-Arab alliances. This book asks why: what explains this divergence in a shared historical space? Rethinking foreign policy as an important site for the realisation of nationalist commitments, Abou-El-Fadl finds the answer in the contrasting nation making projects pursued by the two leaderships, each politicised differently through experiences of war, imperialism and underdevelopment. Drawing on untapped Turkish and Arabic sources, and critically engaging with theories of postcolonial nationalism, she emphasises local actors' agency in striving to secure national belonging, sovereignty and progress in the international field. Her analysis sheds light on the contemporary legacies of the decade which cemented Turkey's position in the Western Bloc and Egypt's reputation as Arab leader.
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Revolutionary Egypt: Connecting Domestic and International Struggles. London: Routledge, 2015 (Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Democratization and Government), Jun 2015
Book Preview: https://www.book2look.com/embed/9781317508779
In 2011 the world watched as Egyptia... more Book Preview: https://www.book2look.com/embed/9781317508779
In 2011 the world watched as Egyptians rose up against a dictator. Observers marveled at this sudden rupture, and honed in on the heroes of Tahrir Square. Revolutionary Egypt analyzes this tumultuous period from multiple perspectives, bringing together experts on the Middle East from disciplines as diverse as political economy, comparative politics and social anthropology.
Drawing on primary research conducted in Egypt and across the world, this book analyzes the foundations and future of Egypt’s revolution. Considering the revolution as a process, it looks back over decades of popular resistance to state practices and predicts the waves still to come. It also confidently places Egypt’s revolutionary process in its regional and international contexts, considering popular contestation of foreign policy trends as well as the reactions of external actors. It draws connections between Egyptians’ struggles against domestic despotism and their reactions to regional and international processes such as economic liberalization, Euro-American interventionism and similar struggles further afield.
Revolutionary Egypt is an essential resource for scholars and students of social movements and revolution, comparative politics, and Middle East politics, in particular Middle East foreign policy and international relations.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Connecting Players and Process in Revolutionary Egypt
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
Part I: Contesting Authority, Making Claims: Inside Egypt
1.Reluctant Revolutionaries? The Dynamics of Labour Protests in Egypt, 2006-2013
Marie Duboc
2.After the 25 January Revolution: Democracy or Authoritarianism in Egypt?
Nicola Pratt
3.Re-envisioning Tahrir: The Changing Meanings of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution
Mark Allen Peterson
4. The Iconic Stage: Martyrologies and Performance Frames in the January 25th Revolution
Walter Armbrust
5. From Popular Revolution to Semi-Democracy: Egypt’s Experiment with Praetorian Parliamentarism
Alexander Kazamias
Part II: Contesting Authority, Making Claims: At the Interface
6. Egypt’s Foreign Policy from Mubarak to Mursi: Between Systemic Constraints and Domestic Politics
Raymond Hinnebusch
7.Re-scaling Egypt’s Political Economy: Neoliberalism and the Transformation of the Regional Space
Adam Hanieh
8. The Geopolitics of Revolution: Assessing the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions in the International Context
Corinna Mullin
Part III: Reactions and Recalibrations: Beyond Egypt
9. Between Cairo and Washington: Sectarianism and Counter-revolution in Post-Mubarak Egypt
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
10. Liberation Square, Almost Unnoticed, Returns with a Vengeance: Perceptions of Tahrir and the Arab Revolutions in Turkey
Kerem Öktem
11. Revolutions, the Internet, and Orientalist Reminiscence
Miriyam Aouragh
12. The Egyptian Revolution and the Problem of International Solidarity
Anthony C Alessandrini
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Journal Articles
'Building Egypt’s Afro-Asian Hub: Infrastructures of Solidarity and the 1957 Cairo Conference', Journal of World History, Vol. 30, Nos 1-2, 2019
Despite the recent scholarly recuperation of decolonization struggles, Egyptian contributions to ... more Despite the recent scholarly recuperation of decolonization struggles, Egyptian contributions to the history of Afro-Asian solidarity remain understudied. Instead, scholarship on Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt has focused on high politics at the Arab regional scale. This article examines the building of ‘infrastructures of solidarity’ on multiple spatial scales in 1950s Cairo, and the interactions of state and popular actors at such sites, which produced Cairo as an Afro-Asian hub. It situates the 1957 Afro-Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Conference in this process, alongside the African Association and Afro- Asian Peoples’ Solidarity Organization. Drawing on concepts of translocality and generative solidarity, this article argues that Egyptian activists and intellectuals engaged in solidarity practices on Arab, African, and Afro-Asian scales simultaneously, and in the relational construction of their political imaginaries in turn. Egypt’s case thus offers valuable insights into the nature of popular solidarity networks, and the porousness of state-society boundaries, in contexts of decolonization.
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'Early pan-Arabism in Egypt's July revolution: the Free Officers' political formation and policy-making, 1946–54', Nations and Nationalism, Volume 21, Issue 2, April 2015, pp. 289-308, Apr 2015
Between 1952 and 1970, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt's Free Officers Movement established the para... more Between 1952 and 1970, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt's Free Officers Movement established the paradigmatic pan-Arabist revolution from above. Yet it has become something of a cliché to maintain that the Free Officers had no blueprint of action before seizing power and that they later instrumentalised pan-Arabism in their foreign policy, thinly veiling their actual commitments to Egyptian nationalism and imperialism. By contrast, this contribution underlines the impact of the British colonial context on the Free Officers' political formation and their early identification with pan-Arabism in turn. Drawing on pamphlets, speeches, media output and memoirs, it shows that the Free Officers developed a distinctive form of anticolonial nationalism that emphasised social justice and invoked overlapping Egyptian and Arab identities. Their aspirations for liberation thus entailed a connected foreign policy and nation building programme in which pan-Arabism was a prime – and early – component.
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British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Jan 2015
Many assessments of the trajectory of positive neutralism in Egypt have presented it as a foreign... more Many assessments of the trajectory of positive neutralism in Egypt have presented it as a foreign policy implemented in response to the Cold War context, and ineffective in the shadow of superpower rivalries. This contribution contends instead that positive neutralism developed out of the pursuit of a particular combination of foreign policy and nation building in Egypt, by elites whose political formation was dominated by an anti-colonial rather than Cold War consciousness. This is demonstrated through the analysis of three foreign policy episodes and parallel nation building programmes unfolding between 1952 and 1955. Together they illustrate the origins of positive neutralism in the positions taken by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers on the British presence in Egypt, on regional alliances and the Baghdad Pact, and on development and pan-Arabism in nation building, all before Egypt's participation in the 1955 Bandung Conference after which the policy of positive neutralism was formally adopted. The use of Egyptian documents throughout foregrounds Egyptian agency and motivations in drawing up policy, and enables an evaluation of the contributions of positive neutralism identified in Egypt at the time.
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'Beyond Conventional Transitional Justice: Egypt’s 2011 Revolution and the Absence of Political Will', International Journal of Transitional Justice, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2012, pp. 318-330., 2012
After Egypt's January 2011 revolution ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, a conversation began... more After Egypt's January 2011 revolution ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, a conversation began amongst a number of international and Egyptian human rights groups regarding the need to promote international transitional justice precedents within the Egyptian context and to raise public awareness of them. This note argues that, in many ways, the Egyptian revolution surpassed the bounds of reformist transitional justice agendas. It begins by identifying two specific limitations in their scope: regarding the accountability of external actors and regarding the guarantee of economic and social rights. The article then describes the more far-reaching conceptions for change that were communicated in the key demands and subsequent campaigns of the 2011 revolution. Finally, it argues that Egypt's transition itself has stalled, as the ruling military council lacks the political will to propel transitional justice, rendering such discussions premature. It recommends that international practitioners take their cues from Egyptian actors negotiating these challenges, rather than proceeding without sufficiently questioning the context.
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'The Road to Jerusalem through Tahrir Square: Anti-Zionism and Palestine in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution', Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, 2012, pp. 6-26., 2012
This article addresses an aspect of Egypt’s 2011 revolution almost entirely ignored in most Weste... more This article addresses an aspect of Egypt’s 2011 revolution almost entirely ignored in most Western media accounts: Israel and Palestine as prominent themes of protest. In reviewing Egyptian mobilization opposing normalization and in support of the Palestinian cause starting from Sadat’s peace initiative of the mid-1970s, the author shows how the anti-Mubarak movement that took off as of the mid-2000s built on the Palestine activism and networks already in place. While the trigger of the revolution and the focus of its first eighteen days was domestic change, the article shows how domestic and foreign policy issues (especially Israel and Palestine) were inextricably intertwined, with the leadership bodies of the revolution involved in both.
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Book Chapters
'Nasserism'. In: Ghazal, Amal and Hanssen, Jens, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Middle-Eastern and North African History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016., 2016
This chapter revisits the political phenomenon of “Nasserism,” acknowledging that it has multiple... more This chapter revisits the political phenomenon of “Nasserism,” acknowledging that it has multiple connotations and yet enduring significance across the Arab world. It discusses Nasserism under Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) during his 1952–70 leadership, and Nasserism as the political tradition that survived him. The chapter’s range generates the conclusion that Nasserism has transcended its historical origins. It is now widely employed in political contestation to signal a set of enduring principles and aspirations for sovereignty and dignity across the Arab world. At the same time, it is an important node in critiques of contemporary political centralization and authoritarian rule in Arab republics. Sparking debate between these poles continuously, and as a political tradition with movements in most Arab countries today, Nasserism is set to remain a force to be reckoned with in Egyptian and Arab politics for the foreseeable future.
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Turkey-Syria Relations: Between Enmity and Amity, 2013
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Another Empire? Turkey’s Foreign Policy Transformations, 2012
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Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam and Politics, 2014
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Other Articles
Afro-Asian Visions Blog, 2019
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Jadaliyya, 2020
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Translation
Asymptote, 2021
The extracts here come from Sira Misriyya Ifriqiyya: Mudhakkirat Hilmi Sharawi (‘An Egyptian Afri... more The extracts here come from Sira Misriyya Ifriqiyya: Mudhakkirat Hilmi Sharawi (‘An Egyptian African Story: The Memoir of Helmy Sharawy’)’, the memoir of Helmi Sharawy, published in Arabic by the independent Cairo press Dar Al-Ain in 2019. Sharawy is Egypt’s foremost Africanist, a renowned leftist activist, and a living legend in Arab and African oppositional and academic circles. Sharawy’s memoir charts the transformation of Cairo into a leading Third World capital during the Cold War, through his own extraordinary life story. I was fortunate enough to be invited to edit the Arabic memoir and translate it into English.
In Chapter Three, Sharawy follows the rise of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s. He recalls Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, his challenge to the European colonial powers, and his policies of Afro-Asian solidarity and nonalignment. Sharawy then relates his own unorthodox path into the civil service, where he became responsible for dozens of African liberation movements hosted by the Egyptian state. In the extracts translated here, Sharawy introduces us to the world of the African Association—the headquarters of these movements in Cairo—and how it became a kind of accidental salvation for him. He provides colourful profiles of its chair, Abd Al-Aziz Ishaq, and its supervisor, African Affairs Minister Muhammad Fayiq. He then weaves together the story of the rise in stature of the Egyptian capital, which hosted the first Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in 1957, with his own increasing responsibilities, until his appointment to the presidency’s African Affairs Bureau in 1960.
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Book Reviews
Humanity Journal, 2021
This essay is part of a forum on new histories of the Cold War, written for the Humanity Journal ... more This essay is part of a forum on new histories of the Cold War, written for the Humanity Journal blog and published in September 2021. Humanity co-editor Timothy Nunan invited Susan Colbourn, Reem Abou-El-Fadl, and Stella Krepp to take part in a discussion of Paul Thomas Chamberlin’s The Cold War’s Killing Fields, Lorenz M. Lüthi’s Cold Wars, and Kristina Spohr’s Post Wall, Post Square. In order to open the discussion, Nunan invited the forum participants to submit a short reflection with their initial reactions to the books.
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Journal of Palestine Studies, 2012
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Insight Turkey, 2012
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Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2009
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Reviews of 'Foreign Policy as Nation Making'
Il Pensiero Storico, 2020
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Uploads
In 2011 the world watched as Egyptians rose up against a dictator. Observers marveled at this sudden rupture, and honed in on the heroes of Tahrir Square. Revolutionary Egypt analyzes this tumultuous period from multiple perspectives, bringing together experts on the Middle East from disciplines as diverse as political economy, comparative politics and social anthropology.
Drawing on primary research conducted in Egypt and across the world, this book analyzes the foundations and future of Egypt’s revolution. Considering the revolution as a process, it looks back over decades of popular resistance to state practices and predicts the waves still to come. It also confidently places Egypt’s revolutionary process in its regional and international contexts, considering popular contestation of foreign policy trends as well as the reactions of external actors. It draws connections between Egyptians’ struggles against domestic despotism and their reactions to regional and international processes such as economic liberalization, Euro-American interventionism and similar struggles further afield.
Revolutionary Egypt is an essential resource for scholars and students of social movements and revolution, comparative politics, and Middle East politics, in particular Middle East foreign policy and international relations.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Connecting Players and Process in Revolutionary Egypt
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
Part I: Contesting Authority, Making Claims: Inside Egypt
1.Reluctant Revolutionaries? The Dynamics of Labour Protests in Egypt, 2006-2013
Marie Duboc
2.After the 25 January Revolution: Democracy or Authoritarianism in Egypt?
Nicola Pratt
3.Re-envisioning Tahrir: The Changing Meanings of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution
Mark Allen Peterson
4. The Iconic Stage: Martyrologies and Performance Frames in the January 25th Revolution
Walter Armbrust
5. From Popular Revolution to Semi-Democracy: Egypt’s Experiment with Praetorian Parliamentarism
Alexander Kazamias
Part II: Contesting Authority, Making Claims: At the Interface
6. Egypt’s Foreign Policy from Mubarak to Mursi: Between Systemic Constraints and Domestic Politics
Raymond Hinnebusch
7.Re-scaling Egypt’s Political Economy: Neoliberalism and the Transformation of the Regional Space
Adam Hanieh
8. The Geopolitics of Revolution: Assessing the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions in the International Context
Corinna Mullin
Part III: Reactions and Recalibrations: Beyond Egypt
9. Between Cairo and Washington: Sectarianism and Counter-revolution in Post-Mubarak Egypt
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
10. Liberation Square, Almost Unnoticed, Returns with a Vengeance: Perceptions of Tahrir and the Arab Revolutions in Turkey
Kerem Öktem
11. Revolutions, the Internet, and Orientalist Reminiscence
Miriyam Aouragh
12. The Egyptian Revolution and the Problem of International Solidarity
Anthony C Alessandrini
In Chapter Three, Sharawy follows the rise of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s. He recalls Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, his challenge to the European colonial powers, and his policies of Afro-Asian solidarity and nonalignment. Sharawy then relates his own unorthodox path into the civil service, where he became responsible for dozens of African liberation movements hosted by the Egyptian state. In the extracts translated here, Sharawy introduces us to the world of the African Association—the headquarters of these movements in Cairo—and how it became a kind of accidental salvation for him. He provides colourful profiles of its chair, Abd Al-Aziz Ishaq, and its supervisor, African Affairs Minister Muhammad Fayiq. He then weaves together the story of the rise in stature of the Egyptian capital, which hosted the first Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in 1957, with his own increasing responsibilities, until his appointment to the presidency’s African Affairs Bureau in 1960.
In 2011 the world watched as Egyptians rose up against a dictator. Observers marveled at this sudden rupture, and honed in on the heroes of Tahrir Square. Revolutionary Egypt analyzes this tumultuous period from multiple perspectives, bringing together experts on the Middle East from disciplines as diverse as political economy, comparative politics and social anthropology.
Drawing on primary research conducted in Egypt and across the world, this book analyzes the foundations and future of Egypt’s revolution. Considering the revolution as a process, it looks back over decades of popular resistance to state practices and predicts the waves still to come. It also confidently places Egypt’s revolutionary process in its regional and international contexts, considering popular contestation of foreign policy trends as well as the reactions of external actors. It draws connections between Egyptians’ struggles against domestic despotism and their reactions to regional and international processes such as economic liberalization, Euro-American interventionism and similar struggles further afield.
Revolutionary Egypt is an essential resource for scholars and students of social movements and revolution, comparative politics, and Middle East politics, in particular Middle East foreign policy and international relations.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Connecting Players and Process in Revolutionary Egypt
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
Part I: Contesting Authority, Making Claims: Inside Egypt
1.Reluctant Revolutionaries? The Dynamics of Labour Protests in Egypt, 2006-2013
Marie Duboc
2.After the 25 January Revolution: Democracy or Authoritarianism in Egypt?
Nicola Pratt
3.Re-envisioning Tahrir: The Changing Meanings of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Revolution
Mark Allen Peterson
4. The Iconic Stage: Martyrologies and Performance Frames in the January 25th Revolution
Walter Armbrust
5. From Popular Revolution to Semi-Democracy: Egypt’s Experiment with Praetorian Parliamentarism
Alexander Kazamias
Part II: Contesting Authority, Making Claims: At the Interface
6. Egypt’s Foreign Policy from Mubarak to Mursi: Between Systemic Constraints and Domestic Politics
Raymond Hinnebusch
7.Re-scaling Egypt’s Political Economy: Neoliberalism and the Transformation of the Regional Space
Adam Hanieh
8. The Geopolitics of Revolution: Assessing the Tunisian and Egyptian Revolutions in the International Context
Corinna Mullin
Part III: Reactions and Recalibrations: Beyond Egypt
9. Between Cairo and Washington: Sectarianism and Counter-revolution in Post-Mubarak Egypt
Reem Abou-El-Fadl
10. Liberation Square, Almost Unnoticed, Returns with a Vengeance: Perceptions of Tahrir and the Arab Revolutions in Turkey
Kerem Öktem
11. Revolutions, the Internet, and Orientalist Reminiscence
Miriyam Aouragh
12. The Egyptian Revolution and the Problem of International Solidarity
Anthony C Alessandrini
In Chapter Three, Sharawy follows the rise of Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s. He recalls Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company, his challenge to the European colonial powers, and his policies of Afro-Asian solidarity and nonalignment. Sharawy then relates his own unorthodox path into the civil service, where he became responsible for dozens of African liberation movements hosted by the Egyptian state. In the extracts translated here, Sharawy introduces us to the world of the African Association—the headquarters of these movements in Cairo—and how it became a kind of accidental salvation for him. He provides colourful profiles of its chair, Abd Al-Aziz Ishaq, and its supervisor, African Affairs Minister Muhammad Fayiq. He then weaves together the story of the rise in stature of the Egyptian capital, which hosted the first Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in 1957, with his own increasing responsibilities, until his appointment to the presidency’s African Affairs Bureau in 1960.