A Review of The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China by David J. Silbey

 Silbey, David J. The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012.

The BoxerRebellion of 1899-1900, a formative event in Chinese history and imperialism within East Asia, was a violent uprising against the rising influence of foreigners. Russian, Japanese, German, American, Italian, French, Austrian, and British troops joined in the campaign to stamp out the Rebellion. In The Boxer Rebellion and the Great Game in China. David J. Silbey’s central theme is the competition between the imperial powers, all attempting to gain more influence in China. Each nation contributed to joint military operations, but each nation’s imperial ambitions determined their actions. Despite eventual success, mistakes during the conflict and the occupation arose as the imperial powers attempted to gain an advantage against each other. Imperial ambitions led to a Great Game in which “Imperial rivalries overwhelmed military good sense” (199). On the northwest frontier, Russia and Britain had long used intrigue and strategy through the Great Game to control Central Asian territories both considered necessary. China remained one of the last imperialistic targets, with each nation vying for an upper hand.

Silbey also examines the violence and motives of the Boxers. Shouting the slogan, “Support the Qing, exterminate the foreigners,” the Boxers massacred Chinese Christians and missionaries and eventually laid siege to the foreign legations within Beijing (34). While the Boxers used extreme violence, Silbey demonstrates that the Rebellion was a logical response from peasants threatened by natural disasters, technology, and foreigners. The expansion of railroads led to the loss of employment for many peasants, who previously worked as laborers and boatmen on the canals. The railway completely refashioned the Chinese economy and displaced multitudes from their occupations. Reporter Wilbur Chamberlain expressed the frustration of the common Chinese laborer, “One railroad takes the place of a thousand or ten thousand coolies, who have, like their ancestors for generations, been carrying freight for a living. These coolies are thrown out of employment.” (39).   In addition to the loss of employment, Chinese farmers faced difficulties from a drought followed by a flood in Shandong province in 1898-1899. Meat was scarce, and most lived just above starvation level (50). Both man-made and natural disasters compounded the misery of the typical Chinese citizen.

Boxers from Alpha History

The presence of Christian missionaries and their Chinese converts caused great anxiety among many Chinese. European nations supported their missionaries and Chinese converts against disputes with other Chinese. While the missionaries brought benefits such as Western education and medicine to China, cultural insensitivity often caused rising temperatures among neighbors. The presence of missionaries created an “alternative power structure” within Chinese communities causing deep resentment among many communities (43). The Chinese government, headed by the Empress Dowager Cixi, found itself constrained by a need for reform and hatred toward foreigners. The Empress feared suppressing the insurrection owing to the great popularity of the Boxers among the majority of Chinese. Concurrently, the Empress feared the consequences of mass unrest but hoped to use the Boxers against foreign outsiders. Hence, the government reacted with confusion.

The military victory of the allied foreign powers was arduous, with the first relief expedition failing and the attempt to capture Beijing more complicated than often reported. While the Boxer massacres of Christians were savage, the foreign reprisals featured rape, looting, and indiscriminate killings. The Boxer Rebellion served as an example of patriotism to future revolutionaries as diverse as Sun Yixian and Mao Zedong (235). For these future leaders, the Boxers became a template on which to draw their own ideals and values. The mistrust exhibited by the foreign powers forecast struggles yet to come.

Any cooperation displayed during the rebellion dissolved into total war with the start of World War I. The efficiency displayed by Japanese troops foretold the defeat the Japanese laid upon the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War. The British and Germans began a naval race, with both nations building giant dreadnaughts. The Boxer Rebellion saw the end of the Victorian Era as QueenVictoria died before the signing

Silbey performs an admirable job in his descriptions of the military campaigns of the Allied powers and draws upon a wide variety of American and British primary sources. However, the lack of sources from other European nations and Chinese sources leads one to desire a more comprehensive work on the Rebellion, drawing upon sources from all the major players. Detailed maps would also be welcome. In addition, while the endnotes are helpful, the lack of a bibliography handicaps the reader in any examination of the author’s sources. Silbey provides an engaging and readable account of this important event in Chinese and Imperial history with an emphasis on the military campaigns. However, a more complete volume utilizing the sources of all the participants is still needed.

Rob Leverett

1 May 2023

 

 

Britain and The End of Empire: An Examination of Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning and Benjamin Grob-FitzGibbon's Imperial Endgame.

Britain and The End of Empire: An Examination of Caroline Elkins' Imperial Reckoning and Benjamin Grob-FitzGibbon's Imperial Endgame.

Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.

Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin. Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire. New York: Pelgrave Macmillian, 2011.

 In 2011, British Prime Minister David Cameron addressed a group of Pakistani students and academics while on a state visit to Pakistan. During a time of questions, a student asked the Prime Minister about Britain’s role in ending the Kashmir dispute with India. Cameron answered, “I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”[1] The Prime Minister’s remarks caused a storm of controversy in Britain as academics, and ordinary citizens debated the impact of the Empire on the world. For years, British citizens admitted that mistakes and atrocities existed within their Empire. But the British took solace that the British Empire was essentially benevolent when compared to the French, Belgians, and other imperial powers. The British also point with pride that the transition to independence for their colonies was much easier than other powers.[2] But the conflict gained further ammunition when the Foreign and Commonwealth Office released thousands of documents found at a government facility in Hanslope Park, divulging the atrocities committed by the British in the final years of rule in Kenya. The records revealed the atrocities committed during the Mau Mau Rebellion, including rape, torture, and denial of due process.[3]

David Cameron from BBC News

The end of the British Empire is the subject of both Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins and Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire by Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon. Elkins examines the British attempt to end the Mau Mau Rebellion through large-scale repression, while Grob-Fitzgibbon looks at the last years of the Empire through case studies of Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, and Aden. Both books challenge the thesis of the benevolence of the Empire during its waning years and offer pictures of atrocities and the struggle to maintain British control.                         

Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian

The end of World War II brought new circumstances to the world stage which challenged the role of Britain. Neither the Conservative or Labour governments relished the role as a junior partner to the USA. They hoped that along with the Commonwealth, Britain would serve as a triumvirate of world powers alongside the United States and the Soviet Union. The British needed a stable Commonwealth of nations standing with the mother country to maintain their status. As the Cold War began to grow in intensity, it became apparent that the Big Three was finished.

Yet, the rivalry between communism and capitalism meant that it was imperative that the colonies within the British Empire remain within the Western orbit. The ability of the British to administer their colonies during the post-war period divides historians. Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon claims that while some imperial apologists point to the British Empire as a success compared to other Europeans, most contemporary historians see the British Empire in the twentieth century as a picture of “decline, disarray, and despondency.”[4] The loss of the Empire demonstrates weakness and defeat as Britain becomes second-fiddle compared to the USA and USSR. Historians see that prior to the 'wind of change' speech delivered by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, the British Empire's final years were a "mismanaged disaster.”[5] The British faced numerous insurgencies dominated by bombings, murders, and terrorist groups leading to uncertainty and indecision. Grob-Fitzgibbon quotes historian Ronald Hyam in his 2007 volume, Britain's Declining Empire The Road to Decolonisation, 1918–1968, discussing the end of the Empire, “Success is not a theme or prediction that history can endorse for the twentieth-century British empire.”[6]

Grob-Fitzgibbon disputes the proposal that the ending of the Empire was a sign of weakness. Rather, he contends that the British decolonization succeeded despite the insurgencies because of their eventual Commonwealth membership. He believes that an examination of imperial strategy reveals that the British successfully secured their colonies for the “Commonwealth in an orderly transfer of power while maintaining British influence in the region and strengthening overall Western dominance in the Cold War world.”[7] Grob-Fitzgibbon presents his study in a chronological fashion by looking at how successive premierships dealt with the attempt to extinguish insurgencies within the colonies. This allows one to see the overall approach and the transfer of administrators and military across the Empire.

A difficulty Grob-Fitzgibbon faces lies in his title, Dirty Wars. Historian Ashley Jackson says that it is difficult to know on which side Grob-Fitzgibbon’s “bread is buttered” since he alternates between a tone of condemnation in his introduction only to present a conservative account of decolonization.[8] The term “dirty war,” implies warfare that lies outside the bounds of a just war, yet Grob-Fitzgibbon insists that his goal was to present a balanced interpretation absent of either praise or denunciation.[9] He desires to show that the groundwork for decolonization began in the 1940s and 1950s, not the 1960s, with a deliberate plan and not an improvised reaction to multiple emergencies.[10] He further contends that the violence accompanying the counter-insurgent campaigns was inevitable despite the liberal aims of decolonization policies. Grob-Fitzgibbon argues that “liberal imperialism can only be sustained by illiberal dirty wars.”[11]

A wounded insurgent being held and questioned after his capture in 1952 from Wikipedia

Grob-Fitzgibbon successfully points to the common strategy used by the British against the different insurgencies in their colonies. Administrators and military officers often rotated to various colonies and trouble spots. General Henry Gurney created British policy against the Zionist insurgency in Palestine in his role as Chief Secretary from 1947 to 1948. He soon afterward served in Malaya from 1948 until 1951, directing military strategy against communist insurgents. In Malaya, Gurney utilized lessons learned in Palestine to gain control in Malaya. While he believed both situations were police issues rather than military problems, he was instrumental in the resettlement of civilians to lessen the support to communist insurgents.[12] The overlap is evident in the impact of Malayan strategies on the tactics used in Kenya. And while the stratagems used were horrific in Malaya, these plans rose to a higher level of horror in Kenya. These were strategies also seen in Cyprus and Aden. The hearts-and-minds policy impacted Kenya when Thomas Askwith arrived from Malaya in 1953 to begin a new campaign. Askwith endorsed self-help programs and community development but found his program sidelined as the colonial government favored punitive measures.[13]                    

Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner for Malaya photo from Wikipedia

Elkins concentrates on the uprising of the Kikuyu towards British rule and the encroachment onto their lands. Land was central to life and culture as the ability to claim land was a sign of manhood for Kikuyu men. The loss of land derived from the arrival of British settlers who acquired large estates in some of the richest land in Kenya. Agricultural policies favored the settler population while many Kikuyu remained within overpopulated reserves. The issue over land led to the Kikuyu taking oaths “in a collective effort to fight the injustices of British rule.”[14] The oathing spread and evolved into the Mau Mau Rebellion. Both Kikuyu men and women pledged to fight against British occupation for land and freedom. Groups of Kikuyu formed armed groups in the forest and attacked settlers and Kikuyu loyal to the colonial government. Attacks and vicious murders against settlers moved the colonial government to take drastic measures against the adherents of the Mau Mau movement. In 1952, the colonial government declared a state of emergency, with the military sent against the Kikuyu combatants in the forest while thousands faced detainment in camps throughout Kenya. The British set up a system called the Pipeline, where the Kikuyu faced screening and often torture to indoctrinate and transform the Kikuyu into subservient citizens. In 1954, the detainment camps greatly increased when the colonial government instituted Operation Anvil which in “Gestapolike” manner detained the Kikuyu population of Nairobi.[15] In addition to those held in detainment camps, even larger numbers were forced into villages controlled by loyal Africans and police. Nearly 1.5 million experienced some form of detainment, comprising almost the entire Kikuyu population.[16]          

Kikuyu detention camp in Kenya, photo from BBC News 

Ironically, according to Elkins, the goal of the British in Kenya was the civilizing mission of the British Empire. The British consoled themselves with the belief that their purpose in Keya was not exploitative but rather a moral duty. The mission of the British Empire was to lift up the savage African to join the modern world.[17] This civilizing crusade allowed the British to direct a brutal campaign of terror against the Kikuyu as they believed the Mau Mau must be crushed before Kenya achieved any form of self-determination. But even after independence, the Colonial Office saw the need to preserve a place in Kenya for whites. The British believed that the European community had a future role in Kenya and were essential to civilizing the nation. The Mau Mau represented savagery at its worst in the eyes of the British, who portrayed the rebels as subhuman. The brutality and savagery of the Kikuyu provided the British with the needed justification for the lack of due process, detention without trial, and torture used against the Mau Mau.[18]

Grob-Fitzgibbon also deals with the leadup to Kenyan independence. He proposed that the British waged dirty wars to maintain control and allow more moderate indigenous rulers to keep former colonies in the Commonwealth and in the Western orbit. He asserts that this policy developed as early as the 1940s, and successfully kept most colonies under British influence. Elkins agrees that the British goal for Kenya was to put in place “hand-cultivated moderates who would help safeguard British interests and protect the settlers after colonial retreat.”[19] For British leaders, independence was impossible until Kenya possessed enough enlightened and civilized leadership to guide the nation. Few within the Colonial Office saw Kenyan independence as a possibility in the near future. While Elkins and Grob-Fitzgibbon agree on the goal of the necessity of keeping former colonies within the Commonwealth and the Western sphere, Elkins contends that the timing of independence was vague at best. For many within the colonial office, independence appeared to be a generation away if not longer.

Grob-Fitzgibbon insists that his goal was not to pronounce a moral judgment upon the conflicts during British decolonization, while Elkins provides condemnation based on the many examples she offers of human rights abuse committed during the attempts to destroy the Mau Mau. The tactics used to defeat insurgents in Malaya also came with human rights abuses, but Grob-Fitzgibbon still maintains the success of British counter-insurgency efforts. He believes that situation in each of the former colonies might have been far bleaker if the British abandoned these countries to the insurgent groups. To an accusation that he possesses a Panglossian approach, Grob-Fitzgibbon relies:

It is unfashionable in the academy today to employ the use of counterfactuals, but in this instance it might prove helpful. Take Malaya, for example, where a determined Communist insurgency, with Chinese backing, attempted to replace the British colonial administration, its strategy following very closely that employed by Communist insurgents in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam. The alternative to a successful British counter-insurgency in Malaya was not a Malayan Republic free of foreign control, but a Chinese-dominated Communist one. Is it Panglossian to suggest that the eventual path followed by Malaysia and Singapore—notwithstanding the very real problems they have suffered—was preferable to the path followed by Vietnam and North Korea over those same years, and in that sense British government actions were successful when judged against their aims?[20]

 

Yet by saying that violence and even punitive tactics were vital in preserving liberal democracy, Grob-Fitzgibbon makes a moral judgment regarding the necessity of democracy and the place of newly independent nations within the Western orbit. Elkins in contrast to Grob-Fitzgibbon points to the need for restorative justice as evidenced by her participation in the lawsuit brought against the British government by five elderly plaintiffs from Kenya’s highlands. Elkins bemoaned the practice by the Colonial Office to destroy documents as colonies gained independence but stressed hope that the discovery of other documents will reveal tactics used in other former colonies such as Malaya and the possibility for restorative justice and repairing injury.[21]

            But in Kenya, Grob-Fitzgibbon however, argues that the relative stability of Kenya compared to other African nations points to the success of British decolonization. He says:

In Kenya,to take another example, the atrocities Mau Mau committed at Lari—not to mention the widespread intimidation and murder elsewhere, most of which was suffered by black Kenyans rather than British settlers—is enough to suggest that an alternative past in East Africa would have more probably followed the example of Rwanda than reverted to a pre-colonial utopia. My argument stems not from naı¨ve optimism about the recent past; quite the opposite. It is only with a deep appreciation of how very much worse things might have been that any notion of success can be supported.[22]

 

Still, the issue of a just war, especially regarding civilians, nags at the question of British decolonization. In Malaya, the British used the tactic of collective punishment in an effort to turn non-combatants against the communist insurgents. Some civilians faced resettlement into new villages to limit support for communists.[23] Historian John Lonsdale offers the issue of just war in a roundtable discussion regarding Grob-Fitzgibbon’s book. He admits that all wars are dirty and contain elements that go against just war theory. While the targeting of citizens is regrettable in insurgent warfare, it is often almost impossible to avoid. Lonsdale explains:

Colonial emergencies could never be such potentially clean warfare; they were ‘a-symmetric’, guerrilla, wars. Their front lines were not lines but kaleidoscopes, scattering conflict around the subject population’s towns and farms, under their beds and in their markets. Terrorists camouflaged themselves as ordinary people; their tactics were sometimes designed to provoke reprisals against the general population, in order to prove their political point. Insurgents knew as well as incumbents that these were wars for public opinion or ‘hearts and minds’[24]

 

In response, Grob-Fitzgibbon restates his principle that “liberal imperialism can only be sustained by illiberal dirty wars.” A liberal society needs the consent of the majority but those who break the rules and refuse to operate within the laws of the system, then “their fate can only be a meeting with illiberal measures. The existence of police forces and prisons attest to this fact.”[25]

            Elkins disputes this and points to a mountain of atrocities that caught the guilty and innocent within an oppressive scenario compounded with torture, rape, and murder. Instead of appreciating a situation that could be worse, Elkins repeatedly points to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Several times, she compares the atrocities committed by the British as comparable to the worst actions committed by Germany or the Soviet Union. The subtitle, The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, brings up the worst carnages of the Soviet Union under Stalin.

            While one might appreciate the fact that British colonies maintained a substance of moderation compared to former European colonies that fell into civil wars and chaos, one can still lament the fact that the British did not recognize that indigenous people had valid complaints. Thomas Askwith remains a sad case of someone who understood that the Kikuyu held reasonable complaints about encroaching settlers and unfair treatment over the actions of the colonial government. The refutation of Askwith, after the rejection of his rehabilitation plans, left him a rejected and solitary figure. But Elkins maintains that Askwith was mistaken about the inherent nature of British rule in Kenya.[26] British rule in Kenya was by its nature illiberal and oppressive and devised to benefit the colonial rulers above all.

British Empire at its peak in 1921, picture from Wikipedia

            The membership of Malaysia, Kenya, and Cyprus in the British Commonwealth provide some validation to Grob-Fitzgibbon that there was an element of success to British decolonization. The ascendency of Jomo Kenyatta to the presidency of Kenya and his denunciation of the Mau Mau movement provide further evidence that Kenya would pursue a conservative direction. With the benefits of independence divided between “Kenyatta’s emerging oligarchy, the loyalists, and those settlers who remained in Kenya,” it appears that British influence remained.[27] But even a quick examination of the history of former British colonies reveals a tendency toward divisions and authoritarianism rather than stable liberal democracies. Malaya, Cyprus, and Kenya remain examples of countries that struggled between instability and democracy. The presidency of Kenyatta was plagued with corruption and authoritarianism and was far from being a liberal democracy. But the atrocities perpetrated by British authorities testify to the problems inherent in imperialism.  Yet, it’s also evident from the court victory achieved by the five elderly victims of British brutality during the emergency that the cruelty and atrocities continue to remain a powerful memory. Elkins paints a powerful picture of a colonial power desperate to crush a native uprising with no clear plan for Kenyan independence. The horrors and tortures portrayed make for a tough read. The problem with Grob-Fitzgibbon’s argument that British anti-insurgent campaigns were a part of a decolonization plan by both the Labour and Conservative governments dating back to 1940 is any examination reveals that the British had no plans for decolonization during the post-war period.  Grob-Fitzgibbon presents a helpful survey of the different post-war insurgent movements and British responses, yet the methods used were cruel and horrendous. The British appear to react to events rather than enact a plan of decolonization. While many former colonies remained with the Commonwealth, liberal democracies within these countries proved to be rare.

Kenya map from https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/kenya 

 

Bibliography

Elkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005.

Elkins, Caroline. "Looking beyond Mau Mau." The American Historical Review 120, no. 3 (June 2015): 852-68.

Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin. "Debate: Further Thoughts on the Imperial Endgame and Britain's Dirty Wars." The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 3 (September 2012): 503-14.

Grob-Fitzgibbon, Benjamin. Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire. New York: Pelgrave Macmillian, 2011.

Jackson, Ashley. "Review." The English Historical Review 126, no. 523 (December 2011): 1588-90.

Kirkup, James, and Christopher Hope. "Cameron: UK Caused Many of the World’s Problems." The Daily Telegraph, April 6, 2011. https://www.newspapers.com/image/754184654/?terms=David%20Cameron%20Pakistan&match=1

Macintyre, Ben. "50 years later: Britain's Kenya cover-up revealed." Times, April 5, 2011. The Times  

Osborne, Peter. "Sorry, But its not Right to Apologise." The Daily Telegraph, April 6, 2011. https://www.newspapers.com/image/754184892/?terms=David%20Cameron%20Pakistan&match=1. 

"Round-Tables." Britain and the World 4, no. 2 (2011): 303-44.

---

[1] James Kirkup and Christopher Hope, “Cameron: UK Caused Many of the World’s Problems,” The Daily Telegraph, April 6, 2011. https://www.newspapers.com/image/754184654/?terms=David%20Cameron%20Pakistan&match=1

[2] Peter Osborne, “Sorry, But its not Right to Apologise,” The Daily Telegraph, April 6, 2011. https://www.newspapers.com/image/754184892/?terms=David%20Cameron%20Pakistan&match=1

[3] Ben Macintyre, 50 years later: Britain's Kenya cover-up revealed," Times, 5 Apr. 2011, 1. The Times Digital

Archive, link.gale.com/apps/doc/IF0504207478/TTDA?u=lln_alsu&sid=bookmark-TTDA&xid=edf2c16e.

[4] Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (New York: Pelgrave Macmillian, 2011), 1.

[5] Grob-Fitzgibbon, 1.

[6] Grob-Fitzgibbon,1.

[7] Grob-Fitzgibbon, 3.

[8] Ashley Jackson, The English Historical Review, vol. 126, No. 523, December 2011, 1589.

[9]Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, “Debate: Further Thoughts on the Imperial Endgame and Britain’s Dirty Wars,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vol. 40, No.3, September 2012, 503.

[10] Grob-Fitzgibbon, “Debate: Further Thoughts on the Imperial Endgame and Britain’s Dirty Wars,” 509.

[11] Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire, 377.

[12] Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire, 196.

[13] Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2005),103.

[14] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 25.

[15] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 121.

[16] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, xv.

[17] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 5.

[18] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 97.

[19] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 60.

[20] Grob-Fitzgibbon, “Debate: Further Thoughts on the Imperial Endgame and Britain’s Dirty Wars,” 508.

[21] Caroline Elkins, “Looking beyond Mau Mau,” The American Historical Review, 120, No. 3, (June 2015), 867. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26577260

[22] Grob-Fitzgibbon, “Debate: Further Thoughts on the Imperial Endgame and Britain’s Dirty Wars,” 508.

[23] Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame: Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire, 106.

[24] John Lonsdale, “Round-Tables,” Britain and the World, 4.2 (2011), 333.

[25] Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, “Round-Tables,” Britain and the World, 4.2 (2011), 343.

[26] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 328.

[27] Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, 361.

A Review: Colonising Egypt by Timothy Mitchell

Mitchell, Timothy. Colonising Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

 In his book Colonising Egypt, Timothy Mitchell examines the process of modernization within Egypt. After a first glance at the title, one expects a detailed study of the circumstances leading to the British occupation of 1882 and the British domination of Egypt after the defeat of the Egyptian nationalistic government. Yet what one discovers is a far more theoretical examination of the process of westernization within Egypt than historical analysis. The book's purpose is not to survey British imperialism in Egypt but rather "a study of the power to colonise."(IX)  Mitchell lays out his goals in the preface when he declares,

Colonising refers not simply to the establishing of a European presence but also to the spread of a political order that inscribes in the social world a new conception of space, new forms of personhood, and new means of manufacturing the experience of the real.(xiv)

 

In the preface, Mitchell clarifies his use and debt to Michel Foucault, Martin Heidegger, and Jacques Derrida as he looks at the meaning of structure and representation. He uses the ideas of these thinkers to explore how the exhibition and European ideals not only mimic the real world but also superimpose a "framework of meaning" upon other territories and people.(xiv)

            Mitchell begins with a look at the World Exhibition of Paris in the summer of 1889 during a visit by the Egyptian delegation on their way to an Oriental Congress in Sweden. The Egyptians found themselves the object of stares while in Europe. Still, the portrayal of Cairo at the exhibit horrified the delegation with its chaos and French notions of life in Cairo. These exhibitions of Oriental life fashioned an image of life in the East that Europeans could quickly grasp. Oriental exhibitions became popular in the 19^th Century and projected the world as a picture to investigate and experience.(6) The presentations of foreign life presented a world that the European could experience in person and created a paradox between representation and reality. The commercialization of the exhibit reflected the "commercial machinery of the rest of the city."(10) The European world outside the exhibition hall also presented an ideal world. When Europeans journey outside their culture, the exhibition view of the world is imposed on other cultures, including Egypt. As Europeans described the Oriental world, they portrayed the world outside their own as if it were an exhibit but as a "dilapidated and mismanaged" display.(22)

Egyptian house in the History of Habitation exhibit, Paris Exposition, 1889. Library of Congress

            Early in the 19^th Century, the world as an exhibit became significant as the military faced reorganization into a new order. Previously armies in Egypt were only temporary and used only occasionally for particular purposes. The new order army, or Nizam Jadid, drafted large numbers of peasants to create a modern army subject to a form of discipline never before seen in Egypt. Mitchell uses the analysis of Foucault in which the state uses the power of control to "infiltrate, re-order, and colonise." (35) He uses the term "enframing" to describe the process of construction, dividing up, and containing neutral space into barracks or villages. Enframing brought a method of control and order to Egyptian spaces. The army's organization became permanent as men lived together in a new disciplined community even in times of peace. Military regulations based upon European organizations saw the transformation of Egyptian soldiers into a machine.

            In addition to the army's reorganization, Egypt also saw the reconstruction and rebuilding of rural villages using model housing to impart discipline. While sources for Egyptian housing were unavailable, Mitchell examined a study of village reconstruction in French Algeria. Mitchell uses the Algerian Kabyle housing to make conclusions about space and order in Egypt, yet spends little space providing documentation on the difference and similarities between the two regions. It's unclear whether documentary evidence exists in Egyptian archives. Like the army's organization, villages were organized into a system of private estates to produce order and discipline. The ordering process was not an arbitrary organization but benefited urban-based landowners and commercial interests.(43) The reorganization of rural villages brought control and standardization. In Algeria, the goal of rebuilding villages was military control, and Mitchell assumes there were similar purposes in the organization of Egyptian villages.

            Mitchell also expounds on the changes brought to urban areas of Egypt, where new methods of organization brought more extensive roadways and open boulevards, leading to a period of new demolition and construction. The elimination of narrow alleys and streets was a cause of crime and disease, while the reordering of the cities brought order to urban spaces.(45) Central to the reorganization of Egyptian cities was the placement of schools and universities into prominent places of urban areas. New schools placed at the center of the city indicated the importance of education in the politics of the new state. Compared to the educational disorder conducted in the local mosques, the new schools emphasized order and discipline. Egyptians adopted the Lancaster school method for Egypt, which stressed a controlled and disciplined educational model. Every hour of the student's day was planned and organized. Students moved from different learning centers at the ringing of a bell. The Lancaster school promised order and obedience to transform the political structure. The new method of enframing with its goal of discipline and order created the need for education.(92) The western forms of education were not forced by Europeans but adopted by the Egyptians before the arrival of the British. This remains another example that the process of conlonisng or westernization began before Eygpt became a British protectorate but began early in the 19^th Century.

            In addition to the need for a modern reorganization of schooling, enframing also needed a restructuring through the implementation of model villages. The model village “introduced a distinction between the materiality of the buildings and the set of ‘directions for use’ required to live in them.”(95) According to Jesuit priest Henry Ayrout, the model village required a link between the village and education. The reorganization of the village at the rural level was a strategy that sought to change the society from the inside out. Changing the structure and material of the village leads to a reeducation of all the inhabitants, beginning with the women. Mitchell depends very heavily upon Foucault pointing to how the reorganization of exact physical space leads to power over people. This power shaped not only the physical but also worked on the mind by reconstructing the interior. With the domination of large private estates, a new class of landless peasants needed to learn the discipline of an hourly worker. In ‘After We Have Captured Their Bodies,’ Mitchell examines the efforts to supervise, discipline, and control the population. The government established a system of policing that supervised and controlled the population through tickets, registration, inspections, and raids.

            Authorities also sought to transform within by changing the way people thought about health and medicine. This required an overhaul of the way Egyptians thought about their health by replacing folk medicine with modern 19^th Century European medicine. This new way of medical thing obligated Egyptians to “impose an alternative idiom of explanation and an alternative medical practice.”(99) Often this led to a rejection of folk medicine even when the folk remedy led to a similar cure as modern practices. The goal of thinking in a new way required use of modern health practices but mostly changed the way people thought about their bodies.

            Changing Egyptian character also required implementation of the Western practices of political science and ethnography. The Egyptian character faced a careful examination and found wanting due to supposed indolence present in the population. Indolence pointed to the lack of civilization and a reason for the deplorable condition of the Egyptian people.(106) Politics served as one tool in the need to change the Egyptian character.

            1882 saw the occupation of Egypt by the British after a bombardment and overthrow of a new nationalist government. As stated, the colonization process began with changes implemented before British occupation, but the British accelerated more concepts for the Egyptians to internalize and apply. But British changes met some resistance from Egyptians as they sought to counter European linguistic revisions.

British conquest of Egypt (1882) from Wikipedia

            Mitchell demonstrates the transformation of Egypt through the illustration of the world-as-exhibition.(179) The work is not a history of imperialism in Egypt but rather an examination in the impact of a Eurocentric and capitalistic framework upon Egypt. The book is very theoretical and makes generous use of thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida, making for a difficult read. His use of Heidegger’s age of world exhibition appears to be an interesting connection but needed more elaboration. Does the transformation of Oriental landscapes reflect the order and logic found in a Cartesian notion of the mind and colonial politics?(178) Mitchell desires his readers to see the world exhibition as the model which transformed Egypt, and his book reflects the complexity of the interaction between Egypt and Europe.