Death at Denshawai: a case study in the history of British imperialism in Egypt

In 1906, five British officers went on a pigeon hunt in a small village in the Western Delta area of the Nile River called Denshawai. The officer in charge, a Major Pine-­‐Coffin, had been there before without incident. This time, however the villagers became incensed. A fire broke out at a threshing floor in the village, and the locals accused the officers of starting it. The localsbecame aggressive towards them, and seized one of the officer’s guns. The gun went off during the struggle, injuring four villagers. At this point the violence increased, and in the aftermath one officer was killed and another severely injured. Lord Cromer, governor of British Egypt, decided to use this incident as a way of teaching the locals to respect British authority and teach the fellaheen (Egyptian peasants) a lesson. The police arrested over fifty of the villagers, charged them with murder, and tried them not under the reformed court systems established by the British, but under a little-­‐used tribunal from twenty years earlier. The investigation, trial and punishments were finished within three weeks of the attack. Four villagers were hanged, and another twenty punished. This was the impetus Egyptian nationalists needed –within a year, seven political parties had formed with the explicit goal of eliminating British rule. Before Denshawai, the urban Egyptians looked down on the fellaheen, and Coptics and Muslims distrusted each other. From this point under the elimination of British rule in 1952, much of Egypt was united against them. Many viewed the trial of the Denshawai fellaheen as a sham. But why? In thirty years of rule, British authorities and the English press in Egypt developed very biased opinions about the rural peasants, and this colored every aspect of Denshawai. In my review of the trial, I believe the way the evidence was collected, the trial conducted, and the lawyers’ arguments on both sides were conducted based on the stereotypes established as “fact” by British authorities. This paper will show the fellaheen stereotypes, documented in memoirs written by British administrators, starting with Lord Cromer, and his subordinates. Once I have done that, I will then prove Cromer had a very strong influence over the major English-­‐language newspaper in Egypt at that time, The Egyptian Gazette. With both the press and administrators shaded with anti-­‐fellaheen biases, I then take a closer look at the investigation of the Denshawai Incident: how evidence was collected, interviews conducted, and witnesses treated, all while focusing on how this was done while the authorities had a preconceived notion about the locals. Finally, at the trial, lawyers for both the state and defendants used these biases in an effort to win the case. The prosecuting attorney, an urban Egyptian, used these biases to try and convince the five-­‐man tribunal to convict all fifty-­‐one arrested to be sentenced to death, while the defense attorneys used those same stereotypes to argue for their innocence. On top of that, one of the defense attorneys used the view the British had of themselves as “just civilizers” to argue for their release, even after admitting their guilt.M.A.L.S.Includes bibliographical referencesby Marc John Carcanagu