Colonial Triangle: Egyptian Nationalists, British Occupation, and Meiji Japan in the Early Twentieth Century

A “colonial triangle” existed in the first decades of the twentieth century between Egyptian nationalists, British occupation forces in Egypt, and the modern Japanese state.  The most enduring discursive tool used in the nationalist press to argue for British evacuation and independent Egyptian statehood was the example of Meiji Japan.  Arab writers stressed the need to emulate Japan’s modern, compulsory, universal, and patriotic education system as one factor that would contribute to Egypt’s success in achieving independence.  Ironically, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 bound Britain and Japan together militarily, complicating the discourse.  A deeper exploration of these Egyptian nationalist ideas surrounding anti-Western colonial resistance, liberation, nationhood, and modernity reveals an “incomplete” or “truncated” anti-colonialism in Egypt prior to the First World War.