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Reviews of Books
its analogue, nationalism, is inherent to the modern
condition makes such a prospect dim at best.
JAMES L. GELVIN
University of California,
Los Angeles
RALPH M. COURY. The Making of an Egyptian Arab
Nationalist: The Early Years of 'Azzam Pasha, 18931936. Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing. 1998. Pp. viii,
528. £35.00.
This encyclopedic political biography of 'Abd alRahman 'Azzam Pasha, the first secretary general of
the League of Arab States, relies on extensive interviews with 'Azzam Pasha and his friends and relatives,
unpublished Arabic and English versions of 'Azzam's
memoirs, 'Azzam's speeches in the Egyptian parliament, his journalistic writings, and political reports of
the British embassy. There are no letters or diaries that
might give us some insight into 'Azzam's private life,
but such matters are not the point of Ralph M. Coury's
book.
Orientalist scholars of Arab politics like Elie Kedourie, Nadav Safran, P. J. Vatikiotis, and Martin S.
Kramer have argued that pan-Arab nationalism was a
British invention, that Arabs who adopted it were
irrational or worse, and that Egyptians in particular
were disdainful of Arabs and Arabism until King
Farouk and his supporters embraced the formation of
the Arab League in 1945 as a vehicle that offered the
king and Egypt opportunity to assert regional leadership. In contrast, Coury shows that 'Azzam Pasha's
Arab nationalist views were not unique among Egyptian political figures of the 1920s and 1930s . He sees
'Azzam and other Egyptian pioneers of Arab nationalism as "elaborating a weapon that reflects the objective necessities and possibilities of the Egyptian bourgeoisie within the Arab circle" (p. 455). Coury argues
that 'Azzam's Arab nationalist commitments are the
result of his formative years as a young man in Libya.
Italy invaded the Ottoman provinces of Tripolitania
and Cyrenaica in 1912. At the end of 1915, 'Azzam left
medical school to join the resistance. He first linked up
with the local pro-Ottoman forces, then the Tripolitanian republic. He served as general secretary of the
National Reform Party and was a leading force in its
newspaper, the Tripolitanian Standard. 'Azzam returned to Egypt in early 1923, after Italy conquered the
urban regions of Tripolitania. Coury's detailed treatment of 'Azzam's Tripolitanian period adds a new
perspective and new information to earlier work on the
development of Libyan nationalism by Lisa Anderson
and Ali Abdullatif Ahmida. It also demonstrates the
fluidity of ideological identities during this turbulent
period. 'Azzam joined the anti-Italian resistance motivated by Ottoman loyalism, commitment to TurcoArab symbiosis, and Islamic solidarity. At the end of
World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed. By his
own admission, 'Azzam turned to Arabism because
"Islamism would not work" (p. 173). Returning to
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Egypt, he was a parliamentary deputy and journalist of
the secularist Wafd Party until he became an independent in 1932. He maintained extensive connections and
interests in the broader Arab world in this period.
Coury is correct that some figures of the Egyptian
upper bourgeoisie, like Tal'at Harb, the director of
Bank Misr, were interested in the broader Arab world
as a potential market for Egypt's nascent industries.
He is also correct that Arab and Islamic sentiment
were factors in Egyptian politics before 1936. But his
argument that 'Azzam's embrace of Arab nationalism
reflected bourgeois class interests is too mechanical.
'Azzam was not, as Coury claims, a member of the
Egyptian ruling elite but rather of the second stratum
of landed notables. Much of the Egyptian upper
bourgeoisie in the interwar period had a cosmopolitan
orientation. They maintained business partnerships
with Europeans and resident Greeks, Italians, and
Jews and were not Arab nationalists. Egyptian Arabism was more than a vehicle to promote the interests
of King Farouk and his political allies. But it did not
gain broad acceptance among the political classes until
after the period covered by this book.
Coury's overstatement of his thesis as well as his
insistence that newer work by Israel Gershoni and
James P. Jankowski shares the same flaws as outmoded
Orientalist scholarship may be due to the fact that
most of the research for this book was apparently done
in the early 1970s. While Coury has read the secondary
literature published since then, he does not seem to
have used the period between the research and publication of his book to place Egyptian Arab nationalism
in its historical context. During the period from the
beginnings of Egyptian nationalism in the 1870s to the
present, pan-Arab sentiments were ascendant for only
about thirty-five years. Egyptian Arab nationalism
gained strength in response to the 1936-1939 Arab
revolt in Palestine and the intensification of the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. It became a powerful force as
the Arab world embraced the militant anti-imperialism
of Gamal Abdel Nasser from the mid-1950s to 1967. In
this perspective, 'Azzam Pasha and Arab nationalism
represent only one of several possible Egyptian politico-cultural orientations-one that has, moreover,
been in decline for over thirty years.
JOEL BEININ
Stanford University
ISAIAH FRIEDMAN. Palestine: A Twice-Promised Land?
Volume 1, The British, the Arabs and Zionism, 19151920. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction. 2000. Pp.
lxxvii, 411. $49.95.
Noted Middle East historian Elie Kedourie appropriately gave his 1976 study of World War I era-AngloArab negotiations the title, In the Anglo-Arab Labyrinth. Over the last quarter century, many have
attempted to lay the same Minotaur to rest. Isaiah
Friedman is one of the most persistent, beginning in
1970 with an article in the Journal of Contemporary
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2002