Here we are officially at the end of one month of class. Today we’re going to be talking about Egypt’s revolution. You read a pretty detailed chapter in BAS about contemporary Egypt. What I’d like to do today, after our visit from Prof. Rist to talk about studying abroad this summer, is to highlight some historical themes about Egypt. So, we’ll talk a bit about the things that you geo-tagged from this chapter, and then watch a music video that was circulating during the first days of the Tahrir uprising.
So, here are some broad themes that I’m going to talk about in a kind of free-ranging “lecture.”
- Formation of Egypt as an ancient and modern nation.
- Colonialism, Ottomanism and centralization.
- Industrialization, decolonization, and the rise of Abdul Nasser’s Arab socialism.