With such a medley of races, creeds, and cultures, and with so prolonged a tradition of foreign domination, Egypt might seem a most unlikely _milieu_ for the growth of nationalism. On the other hand, Egypt has been more exposed to Western influences than any other part of the Near East. Bonaparte's invasion at the close of the eighteenth century profoundly affected Egyptian life, and though the French were soon expelled, European influences continued to permeate the valley of the Nile. Mehemet Ali, the able Albanian adventurer who made himself master of Egypt after the downfall of French rule, realized the superiority of European methods and fostered a process of Europeanization which, however superficial, resulted in a wide dissemination of Western ideas. Mehemet Ali's policy was continued by his successors. That magnificent spendthrift Khedive Ismail, whose reckless contraction of European loans was the primary cause of European intervention, prided himself on his "Europeanism" and surrounded himself with Europeans.
Indeed, the first stirrings of Egyptian nationalism took the form of a protest against the noxious, parasitical "Europeanism" of Khedive Ismail and his courtiers. Sober-minded Egyptians became increasingly alarmed at the way Ismail was mortgaging Egypt's independence by huge European loans and sucking its life-blood by merciless taxation. Inspired consciously or unconsciously by the Western concepts of "nation" and "patriotism," these men desired to stay Ismail's destructive course and to safeguard Egypt's future. In fact, their efforts were directed not merely against the motley crew of European adventurers and concessionaires who were luring the Khedive into fresh extravagances, but also against the complaisant Turkish and Circassian pashas, and the Armenian and Syrian usurers, who were the instruments of Ismail's will. The nascent movement was thus basically a "patriotic" protest against all those, both foreigners and native-born, who were endangering the country. This showed clearly in the motto adopted by the agitators--the hitherto unheard-of slogan: "Egypt for the Egyptians!"
Into this incipient ferment there was presently injected the dynamic personality of Djemal-ed-Din. Nowhere else did this extraordinary man exert so profound and lasting an influence as in Egypt. It is not too much to say that he is the father of every shade of Egyptian nationalism. He influenced not merely violent agitators like Arabi Pasha but also conservative reformers like Sheikh Mohammed Abdou, who realized Egypt's weakness and were content to labour patiently by evolutionary methods for distant goals.
