الفهرس 
Denshawai (1906)4 in Cultural HistoriographyOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
Abstract
Denshawai (1906) is an exceptional incident in the history of the British Occupation in Egypt. Its exceptionality lies in shaking the tenets of the British Occupation. The resignation of Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer (1841-1917) after his twenty-four year rule as the British Consul General is to mention a few of the affecting consequences of the incident. It also resulted in reviving the Egyptian nationalist movement that was dormant for about twenty four years since the Urabi Revolt (1882). The turbulence that Denshawai (1906) caused to the British Occupation in Egypt does not only lie in the mere campaigns initiated by Mustafa Kamel, but rather in the strong opposition and the ardent criticism that the Occupation received from the liberal British citizens such as George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) and Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1840- 1922) who realized the atrocities of the Empire. Consequently, this thesis deals with the exceptionality of Denshawai (1906) by applying cultural historiography, as an interdisciplinary theory apt to analyze the selected texts produced on it dividing them into imperialist and anti-imperialist. The thesis proves that Denshawai (1906) is a multi- layered cultural matrix on its own by applying cultural historiography in the light of Juri Lotman’s concept of the artistic text as a sequence of intersected elements on various levels, in addition to Hayden White’s, three modes of interpreting the historical narrative, namely the mode of emplotment, the mode of explanation and the mode of ideological implication.
The structure of the thesis itself is divided as such: an introduction of cultural historiography, Chapter One: Denshawai (1906) in Cultural Historiography, Chapter Two: Denshawai (1906): Imperialist Cultural Historiography and Chapter Three: Denshawai (1906): Anti-Imperialist Cultural Historiography. A conclusion follows.
The introduction sets the ground of cultural historiography as an interdisciplinary theory that contains a conglomeration of critical approaches such as: anthropology, literary history, art history, historical studies, reader response and mythology along with other disciplines (Burke 135). It figures out the mission of the cultural historian, which lies mainly in investigating agents and victims from the past to study the mechanisms of their oppression (Poster 10). It also highlights the phases through which cultural historiography appears in its latest version which flourished in the 1980s and 1990s. Having an introduction on cultural historiography and highlighting its features stresses the national need for applying a cultural historiographical approach to the historical texts to add a qualitative content to the studies of humanities.
Regarding the interpretation of the historical narratives, Hayden White provides a pattern of interpreting them. He states that any historical narrative is to be composed of three modes: the mode of emplotment, the mode of explanation and the mode of the ideological implication. First, the mode of emplotment indicates the writing style of the historical narrative. It can be satire, tragedy, comedy or romance or any other emplotment form. Second, the modes of explanation are the idiographic, the organicist, the contextualist and the mechanistic. Third, the mode of the ideological implication denotes the historian’s inclination in his narrative being conservative, liberal, radical or anarchist.
The thesis follows a certain pattern in displaying its component chapters. It starts from the Egyptian cultural historiography of Denshawai (1906) then moved to the English cultural historiography of it, highlighting the latter’s two stances of imperialist and anti-imperialist in two successive chapters. In this regard, Chapter One examines Denshawai (1906) in the Arab cultural historiography in general and the Egyptian in particular. It offers the narrative of Ahmed Shafiq Pasha of the incident followed by the narrative of the official document issued by the Foreign Office to provide direct evidence on the atrocious policy of the Occupation in Egypt with its lame excuses, prove the Occupation’s duality and highlight how it re-signifies the events to serve the interests of the Empire. Both texts narrate Denshawai (1906) non-fictionally with two opposing ideological implications. Shafiq’s ideological implication is liberal and the Foreign Office’s is definitely conservative. Furthermore, both texts follow the organicist mode of explanation since they adopt the part-part structure focusing on the causes and the effects of the incident with two opposing ideological stances. Moreover, the chapter presents relevant selected poems by Ahmed Shawqi, Hafez Ibrahim and Salah Abdel Sabour in addition to a set of newspaper articles published mainly by Lewa newspaper. Visual representation is also present in the photos Melik offered materializing the moment of hanging the people of Denshawai. White’s three modes of emplotment, explanation and ideological implication are applied to the previously mentioned texts as well. The selected texts are narrowed down into English imperialist and anti-imperialist to formulate chapters two and three respectively.
Chapter Two deals with the imperialist texts produced on Denshawai (1906). In this regard, Edward Said’s connection between culture and imperialism is relevant. He states that culture as well as imperialism is constantly dynamic and complex exactly like the historical experiences and that they can never be pure (Said, Culture and Imperialism 14). Such interdisciplinarity and dynamic nature of culture, imperialism and the historical experiences help analyze the selected English imperialist texts on Denshawai (1906) namely, Lord Cromer’s Modern Egypt (1907), John Romich Alexander’s The Truth about Egypt (1911), Edward Grey’s Twenty Five Years, 1892-1916 (1925) in addition to selected official documents issued by the Foreign Office and a set of pro-imperialist English newspaper articles compiled by the British Newspaper Archive. The chapter also applies cultural historiography in the light of Juri Lotman’s concept of the artistic text and Hayden White’s three modes of emplotment, explanation and ideological implication.
Chapter Three offers an untraditional contrapuntal reading of Denshawai (1906). Having anti-imperialist texts produced by British politicians, poets, dramatists and journalists deconstructs the core of the traditional ideological implication of the anti-imperialist critics. They are known to be belonging to the marginalized class and desperate to be heard. Thus, the chapter presents the anti-imperialist critics who deviate from the main stream and revolt against their own Empire because they realize its atrocities. The selected texts that the chapter applies cultural historiography and White’s three modes of historical interpretation to are George Bernard Shaw’s preface to John Bull’s Other Island (1907), Wilfred Scawen Blunt’s chronicle Atrocities of Justice under British Rule in Egypt (1906) and My Diaries: Being a Personal Narrative of Events (1888-1914) (1919) besides, John Romich Alexander’s The Truth about Egypt (1911), Edward Grey’s Twenty Five Years, 1892-1916 (1925), Sir Valentine Chirol’s The Egyptian Problem (1921), Lord LIoyd’s Egypt since Cromer (1933) and a set of anti-imperialist English newspaper articles compiled by the British Newspaper Archive. These texts prove that the anti-imperialist reading of Denshawai (1906) is defiant to the mainstream notion of the anti-imperialist criticism. Thus, the introduction and the three chapters of the thesis represent a full-fledged historico-cultural analysis of Denshawai (1906) to add a qualitative content to the studies of humanities when it comes to the historical texts.