Denshawai (1906) and Cultural Historiography: A Study of Selected Imperialist and anti-Imperialist Texts

Abstract

Denshawai (1906) is an exceptional incident in the history of the British Occupation in Egypt. Its exceptionality lies in shaking the tenets of the British Occupation. The resignation of Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841-1917) after his twenty-four year rule as the British Consul General is to mention a few of the affecting consequences of the incident. It also resulted in reviving the Egyptian nationalist movement that was dormant for about twenty four years since the Urabi Revolt (1882). The turbulence that Denshawai (1906) caused to the British Occupation in Egypt does not only lie in the mere campaigns initiated by Mustafa Kamel, but rather in the strong opposition and the ardent criticism that the Occupation received from the liberal British citizens such as George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1840- 1922) who realized the atrocities of the Empire. Consequently, this thesis deals with the exceptionality of Denshawai (1906) by applying cultural historiography, as an interdisciplinary theory apt to analyze the selected texts produced on it dividing them into imperialist and anti-imperialist. The thesis proves that Denshawai (1906) is a multi- layered cultural matrix on its own by applying cultural historiography in the light of Juri Lotman’s concept of the artistic text as a sequence of intersected elements on various levels, in addition to Hayden White’s, three modes of interpreting the historical narrative, namely the mode of emplotment, the mode of explanation and the mode of ideological implication.