Good Victorians

A friend of mine, we’ll call him Charlie, returned to Cairo because he fell in love with an Egyptian girl while studying abroad a year and a half earlier. For so brazenly pursuing a relationship with an Egyptian, I was always surprised by how disdainfully he talked about the country. To him it was a regressive place. He asked me once if I thought a culture could be immature. We started talking about the attitudes of young Egyptian men, many of whom hiss and cat call after women, especially foreigners. Charlie attributed this behavior to a kind of societal sexual frustration. He explained that in his opinion because the majority of women were covered, and the sexes forced to lead separate social lives, this isolation kept the men from fully maturing, so that even the adults behaved like adolescents. This trend reproduced itself with each generation, thus affecting all of society, or so he argued.

Over the last two hundred years, how many foreigners in Egypt have posed similar theories? Charlie could have been a member of Lord Cromer’s staff at the turn of the twentieth century – hypothesizing on the best method of “dealing with the natives,” and paying particular attention to protecting white women’s bodies. If there is any continuity, perhaps it is Western fascination with Arab-Muslim sexuality (not that all Egyptians are necessarily Arab or Muslim – but that is an issue for another essay, because most foreigners forget about the significance of Egypt’s Coptic population).

During the conversation, I found Charlie’s blatantly hierarchical language off-putting. To me, good history is a lesson in humility, that prevents one from labeling something as better merely because it is different. Yet, I had also been wrestling with some of Charlie’s frustrations. In the days leading up to this conversation, I had been thinking about what enlightenment meant—what does it really mean to think for oneself? After all, weren’t enlightenment ideals the basis for Western society’s emphasis on civic duty and civil society? And one of the things that frustrated me most was how wealthy Egyptians did not seem to identify with their impoverished countrymen, or feel a sense of obligation towards them. I saw so many foreigners dedicated to helping the poor, yet where were the Egyptians—of course, the foreigners get more recognition for this kind of work, while Egyptians remain far more invisible in the process. Still, wealthy Egyptians seemed painfully aloof.

On Oct. 12, I wrote in my journal: Complaints about Egyptians… There are many—you hear them regularly, but they are coupled with a desire to explain the reasons for them—usually described as a lack of basic skills Westerners begin learning from an early age. –[One American friend of mine] was talking yesterday about a woman who works at the church whom she asked to help paste some pictures on paper—in the time [the American woman] did seven, this woman had done one—but you learn basic motor skills at such an early age back home… what happens here instead? …

The problems for Egyptians are very real—and would prevent working in a job that could not ultimately be replaced by a machine. The wealthy see the problems and send their children elsewhere (usually to international schools, and then abroad)—the class divide is striking. Is it the middle class that envisions society as corporate—that draws the interests of the high and low together? It seems without its existence real power remains in the hands of foreigners—in terms of government and economy. And at the same time, on a very local level, foreigners here comprise the middle class.

For all the moralizing, self-righteousness and false consciousness that the middle class has been accused of, one has to think that at least they tried to direct their energies toward the less fortunate, examined their position, and sought a method of betterment. They shared some sense of identity that tenuously crossed the class border—while that crossing ultimately reinforces the border—it establishes a connection, a link in a network—and it would appear that for civil society to exist, such links are a necessity.

It would be easier to invoke Mary Wollstonecraft, and claim that the middle-class is simply more natural and that is why Egypt needs a strong one. To do so would prove the larger point of my essay, that at the very point where our understanding runs out we feel compelled to make blanket statements and simple diagnoses. I find Charlie’s observations misguided, and my other American friend’s sentiments somewhat discomforting. But they are both honest and real attempts to deal with a system, or network of systems, that they see as producing inequality. In doing so, they expose the border between the foreign and the local—they see a way of life at work, but they do not know what rules it operates by, and are struggling to justify it to their own norms. There is something valuable in the attempt, because if sought in earnest, it can foster greater understanding, however awkward. It seems like a lot more can be said about being different, and accepting it as such, rather than attempting to justify every curious variable.

Instead these differences are often instances where clashes between cultures produce truth claims that are then used in the construction of hierarchies. But if they are viewed as points where once kind of cultural understanding runs out and another begins, they are also places of great opportunity, particularly for a historian.

Historians’ material is loaded with statements like those made by my friends—many are far more provocative. These materials have fruitfully been “read against the grain.” A related, but slightly altered approach would treat these sources as half of a dialogue. When these broad, generalizing claims surface, they can be read as incomplete or inadequate attempts to speak for both sides of the interaction. Looking at them this way helps show the kinds of questions the person is wrestling with, rather than focusing on the conclusions they draw. This interpretation focuses on the interaction between cultures, and helps show how connections are formed.

I would argue that reading against the grain, while useful is some respects, treats the producer of the source as too stable. It is not just that the source should or cannot be read for the colonized person’s agency, but that such readings can be taken a step further. The interaction between people should be treated like a relationship—something that shapes both sides.

One of my sources is a gardening book written by an English woman, and in it she makes recommendations for the best way to treat the Egyptian gardener. This source can be read to understand the gardener’s role in an English household in Egypt, and his (they were and still are exclusively male) agency in shaping the place. But taken too far, the author of the text starts to disappear. She and the gardener are no longer equally human, because she becomes more lens than reality. A sensitive reader can see where her comments push on the borders of her own understanding, and these points show not only the gardener’s agency within the home, but also how this interaction shaped her and became part of her story. Such a reading takes both sides into account, and requires being able to address both English and Egyptian sources. This is something I hope to do in my own work. More than that, however, I hope it will be the way forward for future research on the history of empire. These interactions need to be examined for their mutual influence, and show the formation of connections—whether or not those relationships ended in violent opposition is secondary, but such results cannot be assumed a priori.