Urabi Revolt - Aftermath

Aftermath

While the British intervention was meant to be short term, it in fact persisted until 1954. Egypt was effectively made a colony until 1922. Both the British and the Khedival government did their best to discredit Urabi’s name and the revolution, although among the common people Urabi remained a popular figure. The government used the state media and educational system to denounce Urabi as a traitor and the revolution as merely a military mutiny. The historian Mohammed Rif’at was one of the first to call the events a thawra or “revolution,” but he claimed that it lacked popular support. Other historians in Egypt supported this thesis, and even expanded on it, sometimes suffering government censure. During the last years of the monarchy, authors became more critical of the old establishment and especially of the British, and Urabi is sometimes portrayed as a hero of freedom and constitutionalism

Urabi's revolt had a long lasting significance as the first instance of Egyptian anti-colonial nationalism, which would later play a very major role in Egyptian history. Especially under Nasser, the revolt would be regarded as a glorious struggle against foreign occupation. The Urabi revolution was seen by the Free Officers movement as a precursor to the 1952 revolution, and both Nasser and Neguib were likened to ‘Urabi. Nasserist textbooks called the Urabi revolution a “national revolution,” but ‘Urabi was seen as making great strategic mistakes and not being as much of a man of the people as Nasser. During Nasser’s experiment with Arab socialism; the ‘Urabi revolt was also sometimes put in a Marxist context. Also during Sadat’s infitah period in which there was growing, controlled, economic liberalization and growing ties with the Western bloc, the government played up the desire of the ‘Urabists to draft a constitution and have democratic elections. After the 1952 revolution, the image of ‘Urabi, at least officially, has generally improved, with a number of streets and a square in Cairo bearing his name indicating the honored position he has in the official history.

Historians have in general been divided, with one group seeing the revolt as a push for liberalism and freedom on the model of the French Revolution and others arguing that it was little more than a military coup, similar to those made about the 1952 movement. Among Western historians, especially British, there was a traditional view that the Urabi revolution was nothing more than a “revolt” or “insurrection” and not a real social revolution. By far the most influential Englishman in Egypt, Lord Cromer, wrote a scathing assessment of the Urabist in his Modern Egypt. While this view is still held by many, there has been a growing trend to call the Urabi revolution a real revolution, especially amongst newer historians who tend to emphasize social and economic history and to examine native, rather than European, sources.

The earliest published work of Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory—later to embrace Irish Nationalism and have an important role in the cultural life of Ireland—was Arabi and His Household (1882), a pamphlet (originally a letter to The Times newspaper) in support of Ahmed Orabi and his revolt ("Arabi" being an archaic mistransliteration common in English at the time). Juan Cole, a Professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has recently published an appraisal of the Urabi revolt.

Historians have also been divided over the reasons for the British invasion, with some arguing that it was to protect the Suez Canal and prevent "anarchy", while others argue that it was to protect the interests of British investors with assets in Egypt (see 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War).