The Making of Nationality: Citizens, Foreign Nationals, and (Un)Humans in 1920s Egypt

This paper analyzes the 1929 Egyptian nationality law, which was passed six years after Egypt’s establishment as a constitutional monarchy (still under semi-colonial rule) and determined who was or could become an Egyptian citizen. The law is often interpreted as relatively inclusionary, especially when compared to its successors of 1950 and 1952, which, many argue, set the legal basis for the homogenization of Egyptian society. For example, while based on the principle of jus sanguinis, the 1929 law granted (on paper at least) citizenship to former Ottoman nationals resident in Egypt since the start of the protectorate in 1914. It also allowed “foreigners” to naturalize under certain conditions. In this paper, I explore the law’s exclusionary elements, which I argue are inseparable from the colonial state’s earlier production of a population, one composed of ethnic, national, and religious groups (or combinations thereof) fit along a scale of belonging/unbelonging in Egypt according to notions of race, history, and comportment. These exclusionary elements also prefigured later, more explicitly exclusionary, politics of the monarchy and the Nasser era. I interpret debates in Cairo and London over the law’s shape as well as the text of the law itself in relation to this history of colonial governmentality. In order to analyze the nationality law as it was experienced and practiced, I follow its dissemination and reception as well as track “nationality cases” that determined the status of subjects. The paper ultimately reflects on the emergence of citizenship in a colonial context and the way in which it replaces semi-autonomous communities with a collection of individuals who are categorized by or struggle to attain national status. In Egypt, Muslims came to form a national majority and Copts a national minority (an identification bringing its own exclusions), while others, such as Egypt’s Jews, were largely excluded.