La genèse de l'esprit national égyptien (1863-1882) by Muḥammad Ṣabrī
"La genèse de l'esprit national égyptien (1863-1882)" by Muḥammad Ṣabrī is a historical study written in the early 20th century. It investigates how Egyptian national consciousness formed under Khedive Ismaʿil, tracing the links between fiscal crises, administrative reforms, the Arabic press, Islamic reformist thought, and intensifying Franco-British involvement that set the stage for the 1881–82 uprising. Drawing on unpublished memoirs and multilingual contemporary sources, it reconstructs the political and intellectual currents that
converged into a modern national movement. The opening of the study sets out the author’s aim to clarify a complex period through rare sources: unpublished memoirs (especially those of Muhammad ʿAbduh), early opposition newspapers in Arabic, and French and English press and eyewitness accounts. It then sketches a long backdrop to modern Egypt, arguing for the deep continuity of an “Egyptian type” that became arabisized in language and religion while remaining demographically indigenous, moving rapidly from Greco-Roman suppression through the Arab conquest and successive dynasties to Ottoman and Mamluk rule. The French expedition is presented as a civilizing jolt, while Muhammad ʿAli’s reforms—national army of fellahin, irrigation, industry, schools, and missions to Europe—ignite a “national instinct” and a rising middle stratum. Saʿid Pasha’s fiscal and social measures (tax reform, peasant property, freer commerce, national conscription) further normalize state-society relations but introduce two future pressure points: foreign debt and the Suez Canal. At the start of the first chapter, the narrative turns to Ismaʿil’s dazzling early years and then mounting financial chaos: extravagant court spending, predatory loans, the Moukabala scheme, costly firmans bought at Constantinople, and the catastrophic 1873 loan. Britain’s purchase of canal shares and the Cave mission usher in joint but rival French-British schemes of financial control; Cave’s report acknowledges real material progress yet urges debt consolidation at lower interest under external oversight, with a view to stabilizing revenues and protecting the fellahin. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.html.images | 804 kB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.epub3.images | 370 kB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.epub.images | 381 kB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.epub.noimages | 359 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.kf8.images | 653 kB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.kindle.images | 589 kB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77424.txt.utf-8 | 691 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/77424/pg77424-h.zip | 330 kB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Ṣabrī, Muḥammad, 1894-1978 |
|---|---|
| Contributor | ʻUrābī, Aḥmad, 1841?-1911 |
| LoC No. | 64058903 |
| Title | La genèse de l'esprit national égyptien (1863-1882) |
| Original Publication | Paris: Libraire Picart, 1924. |
| Credits | Galo Flordelis (This file was produced from images generously made available by Google Books) |
| Language | French |
| LoC Class | DT: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Africa |
| Subject | Egypt -- History -- Tawfīq, 1879-1892 |
| Subject | Egypt -- History -- Ismail, 1863-1879 |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 77424 |
| Release Date | Dec 8, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 260 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |