In Maʿadi, near Cairo: locating global history in British-occupied Egypt, 1878-1962

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Egyptian Delta Land and Investment Company (Delta Land) broke ground on Maʿadi, a new residential development seven miles south of Cairo. The company organized Maʿadi as a town-and-country space, offering well-to-do residents the leisure of the country only a short train ride from the city center. Miniaturizing Haussmann’s Paris, the space included a series of wide, tree-lined boulevards that met at garden-filled midans (Arabic for roundabout). Residents then built large villas and spacious gardens along the town’s smaller streets. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, these places became home to a mixture of former British colonial civil servants, European commercial expatriates, influential Egypt-born Jews, and upper middle-class Egyptians. Asking how the establishment of Maʿadi was possible, who supported Delta Land’s venture, and what kind of social life and culture formed within the town, Maʿadi’s history alters the focus of the Egypt’s early-twentieth century political narrative. More than a story of growing Egyptian national independence in the face of British imperial decline, Maʿadi’s history identifies a shared society and culture among the country’s multinational elite, which continued to flourish despite major political changes. While the country saw two world wars and a nationwide revolution in the first half of the twentieth century, Maʿadi continued to thrive under Delta Land’s leadership. Identifying the means of the town’s ongoing growth, Maʿadi’s history locates in a single place British imperial compromise, ongoing Ottoman influence, Europeans rivalries over Egypt, and Egyptian nationalists’ use of this multinational context when claiming independence. Significant change only came to Maʿadi in the years following the Second World War, when a military coup ousted Egypt’s king and gradually looked to reorient the country’s geo-political relationships. Even then revolution came to Maʿadi gradually, as residents organized to preserve the social and cultural norms associated with the town. As Egypt’s new regime embraced a socialist Pan-Arab ideology, however, Maʿadi could not abide in its earlier form. With Egypt’s place in the world changing, Maʿadi was absorbed into the sprawl of greater Cairo and increasingly appeared as the relic of a former elite who had lost their place of influence.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Annalise J. Kinkel DeVrie