Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Solidarity against Empire in a Colonial Port City

By Rim Naguib

“Alexandria, ordinarily so peaceful on a Sunday, seemed yesterday to be in the very throes of a revolution,” reported the Egyptian Gazette, on January 21st, 1907. The English-language newspaper was referring to the second day of demonstrations that swept through the streets and port of Alexandria, leading to clashes with the local police and an attack on the Russian consulate on the central Ramleh Boulevard. The demonstrations, which spread to Cairo, had been provoked by the arrest of three migrant trade unionists from Odessa, at the request of the Russian consulate in Egypt, with a view to their extradition, on accusations of intended sabotage on a Russian ship. The street rallies were accompanied by meetings, public speeches, petition-writing, as well as physical attempts to free the prisoners and obstruct their deportation. The events made the headlines of the local press, and forced empires to coordinate their repressive machinery. 

A significant movement of internationalist solidarity thus unfolded at the heart of a colonial port city. The event falls through the cracks of history, as its nature escapes both the nationalist and colonialist narratives; its protagonists may be regarded by nationalists as foreigners who enjoyed colonial advantages over Egyptians, and may be dismissed by colonialists as the undesirables; the riff-raff of European migrants who threatened their interests in Egypt. On the other hand, the mobilisations demonstrate forgotten connections between peoples across seas and national borders—between Alexandria and Odessa; ties that were not the work of states or diplomats, but were made up of peoples struggling against powerful empires, moved by similar political and social ideals. Through this little-known event, much is revealed of the nature of colonial governance and the rule of difference, and, notwithstanding, of the possibilities of a movement of anti-authoritarianism and solidarity that cuts across race, communal affiliations and social class, despite the colonial setting that fostered racial hierarchies and communalism, and where internationalist ideas and mobilisations were highly policed.

How did Odessa trade unionists end up in Alexandria?

In 1905, the Russian Empire witnessed vast mobilisations and the formation of various grassroot organisations, particularly trade unions.[1] In Odessa, practically all categories of workers either created a trade union or tried to form one. Among these were the workers on the commercial ships in the Azov-Black Sea basin, who suffered from difficult working conditions and abject poverty, and who were very receptive to anarcho-syndicalist ideas and movements.[2] The most important union among Black Sea workers in 1906 was the Odessa Registratsia and its successor, the Black Sea Seamen’s Union. The latter organised a powerful strike from November 1906 to March 1907, which saw the participation of almost 4,000 sailors and workers of port factories, to protest falling wages and deteriorating working conditions at the Russian Shipping and Trading Company. The strike forced the company to make concessions to the workers, but it was followed by a wave of repression against the anarchist and revolutionary socialist leaders; some were executed, and others sentenced to long prison terms and banishment.[3]

On the other side of the Black and Mediterranean seas, Alexandria had offered a destination for European migrants looking for better lives or escaping war and political turmoil. The Egyptian port city was also acting as a bridgehead to European colonialism; it served as the entrepôt linking the fields of Egypt with the factories of Europe, and consequently had a large proportion of European residents who enjoyed economic advantages and judicial immunity by virtue of the capitulations.[4] At the same time, the city had “multiple authorities and no hegemon”: Egypt was nominally a province of the Ottoman Empire, it was also under British occupation, and to add to this, European consulates exercised a large authority over their nationals because of the system of extraterritoriality.[5] This situation, paradoxically, allowed a degree of freedom for the political outcasts of Europe, who had fled repression in the aftermath of food riots, strikes, demonstrations and insurrections in Europe, but a freedom that was not without risks, as this story will show.

Illustration of workers protesting in front of a ship, am eagle representing the Russian Empire looming in the sky.
Illustration by Rim Naguib.

The anarcho-syndicalist movement thus thrived in Alexandria from the turn of the century until the outbreak of the first world war. It was predominantly Italian, but included Greeks and migrants from the Russian Empire, among other.[6] The anarcho-syndicalists of Alexandria organised labour, initiated educational and civic organisations and edited several anarchist papers. They were anti-state, anti-nationalist, and advocated self-organisation and direct democracy. Their initiatives, like La società internazionale per i soccorsi sanitari d’urgenza (The International Association for Urgent Sanitary Aid, founded in 1902)[7], and the Free Popular University in Alexandria (founded in 1901)[8], brought together the city’s business and intellectual elite with workers and artisans, of various ethnic and national backgrounds.[9] Their press stressed the need for solidarity across cultural and national difference; “Labour has no frontiers or language. Therefore we make no issue of nationality, of religion, or race. All feel the same needs, all suffer the same grief; all have one single aspiration: their own well-being, which cannot be other than the result of the common well-being.”[10] According to Anthony Gorman, “Such sentiments were commonly expressed by anarchists internationally, [but] in Egypt, the reality of a multi-ethnic working class gave this ideal more than rhetorical force.”[11] The city’s ‘vulgar cosmopolitanism’ thus created possibilities for universalist solidarities that challenged the colonial order, as manifested by the events of January 1907.

Down with tyranny and Long live the people!

Reports from the Russian diplomatic mission in Egypt to St-Petersburg had expressed growing concern over the arrival in or transit through Egypt of anarchists and revolutionaries from the Russian Empire. The Russian ambassador to Egypt, Alexi Alexandrovitch Smirnov, wrote in January 1907, “For some time now, our consulate in Alexandria has noted breaches of discipline among the sailors of the Russian Shipping and Trading Company […] It is as soon as they arrive in the port of Alexandria that the sailors fall under harmful influences.”[12] To combat these radical influences, the Russian authorities targeted a migrant from Russia living in Alexandria, Makhar Bostsoev. He was a prominent revolutionary leader in Odessa, a sailor in the commercial fleet and a member of the committee that organised the sailors’ strike in the port of Odessa in November 1906. Bostoev was arrested at the start of the strike as a member of the Revolutionary Socialist organisation. He was charged and sentenced to exile, but managed to escape to Egypt.[13] When he arrived in Alexandria, he continued his activism among the sailors on the Russian merchant ships. The Egyptian police arrested him in Alexandria on January 13th, 1907, along with two other migrants, Volodya Plotnik and Pika Buntman, at the request of the Russian consulate.

According to the official account, the consulate had suspected that the three were plotting to blow up a Russian commercial vessel. The Egyptian police was therefore alerted and kept the three migrants under close surveillance, until they discovered that they had purchased certain metals and chemicals normally used by explosives manufacturers. It was also alleged that the captain of a Russian liner received a letter from Botsoev, asking him to hand over 5,000 roubles, to be paid into the funds of the Russian Revolutionary Society of Alexandria, failing which, he would be killed and his ship destroyed.[14]

However, an examination of dispatches from the Russian legation to St. Petersburg reveals that the case had been fabricated by the consular authorities to justify the extradition. The correspondence shows that the head of the public security department in Alexandria had proposed to plant a certain David Markovitch among the militant émigrés.[15] Markovitch subsequently organised and took part in several meetings with Botsoev’s group, and then held a meeting in his flat at which he insisted on the idea of an attack on a Russian ship docking in the port of Alexandria. Following this meeting, the Russian consul, Alexander Nikolayevich d’Abaza, wrote to Ambassador Smirnov that, although Markovitch had not yet succeeded in building a case against Botsoev, he should continue to work towards this end as an agent provocateur. D’Abaza also noted in his letter that the idea of the bomb was not seriously considered by the group.[16] The fabrication of the plot is confirmed by the meticulous account of the events in one of the publications of Sajous, Molco & Cie; a publishing house close to the Italian anarchists in Alexandria. The pamphlet—titled L’arrestation des trois russes en Égypte—argued that the sabotage plan had been initiated by an agent provocateur, as a means to carry out a disguised political extradition.

The arrest of the three syndicalists created an uproar in Alexandria. Raoul Canivet, a journalist who was active in the anarchists-initiated Free Popular University, called upon Alexandrians, on the pages of La Réforme, “to defend the three migrants and to save them from the clutch of the notorious tsarist authorities.”[17] Canivet’s appeal found a strong echo among Alexandria’s large European population, which began several days of demonstrations. The stock exchange became a centre of public meetings, where crowds gathered and listened to fiery speeches in different languages, all on one topic: freedom, humanism and solidarity for the defence of the oppressed, followed by applauses, and cries of Down with the Tsar and Down with Tyranny. One speaker is reported to have called upon the crowd to strike throughout Alexandria, and to refrain from eating or drinking until the extradition of the prisoners is reversed. Bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers, doctors, engineers and journalists gave speeches and formed delegations to communicate their demand to the authorities. The “Committee for the Defence of Emigrant Prisoners” was formed, and a delegation met with the governor of Alexandria and handed him a petition “calling upon the Anglo-Egyptian government to free the three Russian migrants, to save them from an inexorable destiny”.[18] In Cairo too, meetings at the Hôtel Continental, at the Théâtre des Nouveautés and the stock exchange led to the formation of a delegation that met with the Russian ambassador, and produced a legal brief and a petition.

The streets also saw mass mobilisations by workers, artisans and clerks, and these were the real impetus for the movement. The press reported that a crowd of more than 4,000 people protested on the Quai de la Douane, in front of a Russian liner, shouting Vive la liberté. Then, a large group forced their way onto the ship to search for the detainees and free them. They were joined by many others, including “the Italian workers” according to al-Ahram, and when a water pump was brought in to disperse them, some demonstrators cut the hoses, and attacked its driver.[19] They also stormed the Customs House and clashed with the police cavalry, before they marched through the city shouting for freedom and humanity until the evening.

The following day, more than 5,000 demonstrators paraded again through the streets of Alexandria to the governorate building. Le Phare d’Alexandrie described the spectacle as “tumultuous” and “picturesque”.[20] The crowd then headed to the Russian consulate, while shouting for freedom and justice and Down with tyranny, and tried to storm it in search of the prisoners, but the staff had locked themselves in. The demonstrators threw at the consulate rotten eggs, onions, mud and stones while others knocked down the crest of the Tsar’s empire and smashed it. There were repeated clashes with the police, and the security forces were tripled and equipped with bayonets. Al-Liwaa described a scene of violence that lasted into the evening.[21] Other sources report that the demonstrators tried to break into the Hadra prison to free the three prisoners.

In Cairo too, a large crowd marched from the stock exchange toward the Russian embassy, singing the Marseillaise, the Internationale and the Inno dei lavoratori (the anthem of the Italian Workers’ Party) and shouting Justice, Freedom and Down with absolute power! The fire brigade and police cavalry intervened to disperse the crowd. It was reported that an officer who threatened to use his weapon was beaten by the demonstrators, who also tore the firemen’s hoses and seized the pumps, forcing the police to retreat.[22] The demonstrators then went to the Opera Square, where the cavalry arrived in large numbers and dispersed them. One leaflet in Italian, which was translated into Arabic and published in al-Ahram, called on Alexandrians to defend freedom and humanity, and to be ready to use force against the force of the state, concluding with “Long live the Russian people, down with the murderous tsar.”[23]

Revolutionary solidarity against imperial despotism and local communalism

All in all, the events in Alexandria and Cairo may have mobilised 10,000 people in the space of three days. A remarkable figure, given the internationalist motive and the colonial context. Even more significant was the ethnic and social diversity of the demonstrators; al-Moayyad described the protestors as “Italian anarchists, angry Armenians, incited Greeks, Ottoman Europeans and Jews […] and demonstrators of every race and colour.”[24] Al-Liwaa mentions the presence of “Russians, foreigners of all races, and some Egyptians,”[25] while ambassador Smirnov named “the Jews, the Freemasons and the Italian anarchists” as responsible for the events.[26] The demonstrators also spanned different political groups and trade organisations. The press mentions “the print workers”, “the anarchists”, the “Sezione Socialiste”, and “Russian emigrants” among other. The speakers and leaders of delegations included Italian, Austrian, French and Russian nationals, and spoke to the crowds in various languages. The 81 signatories on the petition in the booklet published by Sajous, Molco et Cieinclude members of the business elite like R. Adès, alongside names of anarchist artisans and workers like Enrico Pea, C. Sajous, small business owners known to be anarchist militants like J. Rosenthal and Carlo Molco, and Marxist intellectuals like Otto Bauer. They include Italian, Greek, German-Austrian names and one Arabic name.

Furthermore, the press’ identification of three among 13 local subjects[27], arrested and judged by a national court for their role in the events, provide a very small glimpse into the composition of the street movement: an Armenian, Herkin Alexian Tristian, 24 year-old tailor; and two Ottoman Greek subjects: Dimitri Astarati, a 19 year old shoe-maker, and Manoli Germani, a bartender. They were accused of “contempt towards his excellency the tsar of Russia, and insult to the Russian imperial coat of arms”, as well as “assaulting a police officer on duty”.[28]  The Gazette also reported the arrest of a British subject with similar accusations; William Patrick Foley, a clerk aged 27.[29] The street protesters therefore included unionised and non-unionised workers, artisans and clerks, and a wide range of ethnic and national backgrounds.

The local conservative press dismissed the protestors as moved by sentimentalism; as “the thousand and one manifestants of Alexandria and Cairo [who] do not represent any serious opinion in Egypt, and [who] do not even represent their own,” and the pro-British Egyptian Gazette[30] described the prisoners as “terrorists” and “individuals belonging to the lower orders.”[31] The press appealed to communalist and nationalist identification to denounce the movement. It was claimed that the protesters were the same Europeans who were attached to the advantages conferred to them by the capitulations. Al-Ahram and al-Moayyad thanked God that “there was not one Tarboush or one Muslim Egyptian in the demonstrations,” and the French-language Le Phare d’Alexandrie, owned by a Greek, also alleged that the riff-raff included no Greeks, and that to the contrary, it was a poor Greek man who defended the sacred coat of arms of the Orthodox Christian tsar from humiliation, risking his life in the process. Likewise, the Egyptian Gazette published an “Appeal to Jews”, in which it quoted a Jewish notable calling on “his brethren” to give up demonstrations, arguing that “inasmuch as we are all subjects of alien Powers, we have no right to be exacting, which we would have if we had a Government of our own,” and warning that such demonstrations by Jews in Egypt could “lead to the death of thousands of innocent Jews in Russia.”[32]

Nevertheless, some press pieces reveal that the movement left an important impression on the locals, even on those who witnessed it as spectators. Some Arabic-language papers expressed admiration for the motives of human solidarity and the defence of freedom that triggered the demonstrations. The anti-colonial newspaper, the organ of the Nationalist (Watani) Party, al-Liwaa, was the most sympathetic; its coverage cast doubt on the allegations of the authorities. It repeatedly identified the prisoners as “revolutionaries demanding a constitution and freedom in Russia,” and “working to save their country from humiliation and slavery.”[33] Most significantly, al-Liwaa’s editor lambasted al-Moayyad:

In truth, free patriotic Egyptians must mourn the fact that there were no Muslims present in these demonstrations […] Al-Moayyad should have encouraged Egyptian Muslims to take part in these demonstrations […] they would have learned to protest. A feeling of patriotism and humanism would have developed in them, and they would have rejected the injustice done to every Egyptian […] Egypt is one of the most miserable nations, and thus its people should be devoted to the love of freedom […] they should march side by side with other nations in the struggle against tyranny.[34]

Lineart showing the Mediterreanean sea and mountains.
Illustration by Golrokh Nafisi. Published with permission of the artist.

Colonial(ist) policing of universalist ideas and solidarities

The slogans used in the protests reveal the extent to which the movement’s ideology was internationalist and anti-authoritarian in nature, and the extent to which it drew on the values of the anarchist movement that had been active in Egypt for decades. This is important in addressing what Ilham Khuri-Maqdisi called the “vexed question of the impact” of radical movements in the East of the Mediterranean.[35] This event shows that the anarchists had succeeded in generating a radical political culture in the city, even if short-lived, which was undoubtedly largely due to colonial policing and repression; colonial governance was keen on fighting internationalism in favour of communalism.

The British administration used Egypt’s colonial status to justify the exception to international laws and norms. Lord Cromer, The British agent in Egypt, argued that Egypt was obliged to surrender Russian nationals to the Russian empire under the capitulation treaties. The movement against the deportations, on the other hand, insisted that the Ottoman empire and the Egyptian state had a choice, and no treaty obliged them to contradict human principles and international norms. Petitions and legal memoranda cited examples in which the Porte refused to hand in European political refugees, namely in 1849, when the Austrian and Russian empires demanded the extradition of Compte Andrassy and 5,000 Austrian and Russian subjects who had taken refuge in the Ottoman Empire, but the Porte “honoured itself with its refusal to hand them over”.[36] They cited the example of Morocco, when it refused in 1826 and 1828 to extradite Spanish refugees.

But their pleas and legal argumentations fell on deaf ears. On January 26th, the three prisoners were secretly transferred to Port Said in a highly guarded train, from where they were hastily deported to Odessa—since the demonstrators were still guarding the port of Alexandria and the Hadra prison to prevent their extradition. Following the deportation, each consulate went after its subjects who had a role in the demonstrations to punish them, and to consequently deter Europeans from engaging in such mobilizations, starting with the journalist Raoul Canivet for having publicised the extradition and called for solidarity. The French consular court held an investigation and threatened him with deportation, and the Austrian consulate did the same with Alfred Campos who headed the delegation of the protesters. A group of local journalists and newspaper editors convened to defend Canivet, and formed a Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Journalists in Egypt. A Cairo newspaper remarked: “how has it come about that the French consular authorities at Alexandria are engaged in prosecuting one of their own subjects who has only used the liberty which the law of the land recognises belongs to each citizen?”[37]

Five years later, colonial exceptionalism was taken further at the extradition of three other trade unionists from Russia, including Michail Adamovitch who headed the Committee of the Black Sea Sailors Union Abroad, which had just moved from Constantinople to Alexandria. He was the editor of its organ, Moriac (the sailor), which started to be printed in the Cairo district of Helwan. This time the Russian legation did not go through the troubles of fabricating a criminal case, and the British administration readily cooperated in the new extradition. The British had grown concerned by the influence of anarchists, trade unionists and socialists on the native population. Egyptian workers had staged their first strikes at the Tramway Company just a few years earlier, and al-Liwaa then called upon them to overcome ethnic divisions: “Unite and strengthen yourselves and increase your numbers through combination and through unity with the European workers, your comrades.”[38] For more than a decade, the anarcho-syndicalist movement had endeavoured towards inclusive labour action and the organization of “mixed unions” bringing together Egyptians and Europeans.[39] The Cairo police chief told Smirnov in January 1913 that he was “astonished at the power and speed with which anarchist teachings were spreading in Egypt.”[40]

Against criticisms of the 1913 extraditions in the metropole, the British Foreign Secretary, Edward Grey, argued in Parliament, that the existing treaty concerning the non-return of political prisoners could not be applied under the system of capitulations.[41] And Cromer confirmed: “A country which is not really British territory, but which is occupied by British troops, and in which British influence is predominant, offers no safe haven for a political refugee.”[42] These arguments were a clear example of the colonial rule of difference, since they advocated an exception to the international principles of the right of asylum for political refugees, which were in force in the British metropole. Cromer himself was aware of this contradiction between British asylum policy in the metropole and in the colonies. In a letter to Grey on the day of the 1907 extradition, he confided that “it is well, at the present time, that Parliament is not sitting, or we should probably have had to answer questions about the surrender of political refugees.”[43]

Illustration of a protest in support of Palestine.
Illustration by Golrokh Nafisi. Published with permission of the artist.

These extraditions were to set the stage for the deportation of a large number of European syndicalists and socialists after the first world war, using the capitulations or martial law, with Britain’s exacerbated fears over the so-called spread of Bolshevism in Egypt following the Russian revolution of 1917 and the Egyptian revolution of 1919. The deportation of foreigners and what the British called “local subjects of foreign extraction” became a routine colonial practice to police leftist ideas in Egypt, and later became a post-colonial state practice, to police dissent and to enact state sovereignty against real and imagined foreign threats.[44]

The story of the events of 1907, and their repression, is that of the quest and fight for universalism and equality against the colonialist racist logic. Today, we can see colonial exceptionalism much more blatantly with the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The colonised is a site of exception to international law, norms, rights and basic principles of justice, and no amount of legal argumentation, documentation of crimes against humanity, or peaceful mobilisation has shaken the colonial mentality of exception; that human rights and the most basic principles of justice do not apply to Palestinians.

Rather than a nativist quest, decolonising as a praxis is resisting the colonial order by upholding human solidarity and universal values of equality and justice, against today’s empires and their client ethno-states; this is the struggle we have recently witnessed among students on US and European campuses, and among anti-Zionist Jewish groups mobilising for justice for the Palestinian people, and proclaiming: “None of us are free, until all of us are free”.


Notes

[1] For an analysis of the central role of syndicalism in the 1905 Revolution, see Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Indiana University Press, 1993).

[2] The influence of anarchist ideas movement on Black Sea workers is examined by Victor Savchenko, “Anarchists and the Workers Movement of the First Quarter of the 20th Century in Ukraine: The Problem,” Danubius, XXXIV-Supliment, (2016): 61–68; and Oleksiy Borisovich Chliakhov, “Anarxisty` ta moryaky` torgovel`nogo flotu Azovo-Chornomors`kogo basejnu na pochatku XX st.” [Anarchists and sailors of the Commercial Fleet of the Azob-Black Sea Basin in the Early 20th Century], Grani 20, no. 7,147 (2017): 5–14.

[3] Anatoly Dubovik, “Russian Anarchists in the Labour Movement in the Early 20th Century,” Proceedings of the symposium: “The Labour Movement and the Left against Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism: past, present, and future prospects,” Moscow, 3–4 November 2011, trans. Archibald.

[4] See Michael Reimer, Colonial Bridgehead: Government and Society in Alexandria, 1807–1882 (Routledge, 1977).

[5] Will Hanley, Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans, and Egyptians in Alexandria (Columbia University Press, 2017), p. 17.

[6] See Anthony Gorman, “’Diverse in race, religion and nationality … but united in aspirations of civil progress’: Anarchism in Egypt before the First World War,” in Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Post-Colonial World, 1870–1940: The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social Revolution, ed. S. Hirsch, & L. van der Walt (Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).

[7] Costantino Paonessa, “L’Associazione internazionale per i soccorsi d’urgenza durante l’epidemia di colera in Egitto del 1902”, in Volontariato anarchico e socialista ai tempi del colera: antologia, Pisa/Sesto San Giovanni, ed. Mauro Parri (BFS/Pantarei, 2022).

[8] Anthony Gorman, “Anarchists in Education: The Free Popular Education in Egypt (1901),” Middle Eastern Studies 41, no.3 (2005): 303-320.

[9] On the history of the anarchist movement in Egypt, see  the work of Anthony Gorman, Costantino Paonessa, Laura Galian, as well as Ilham Khuri-Makdisi.

[10] L’Unione. July 13, 1913, cited in Gorman, “‘Diverse in race,…”, p. 20.

[11] Idem, p. 13.

[12] Arkhiv vneshnei politiki Rossii [Foreign Policy Archive of the Russian Empire] (AVPR), f. 151, op. 482, d.859, p. 4.

[13] Matvey Yulyevich Frenkel, “Russian Revolutionaries in Egypt in 1906–1907,” Africa in Soviet Studies (Nauka, 1987), p. 134.

[14] The Egyptian Gazette, January 22, 1907, p.3.

[15] AVPR,  f. 149, op. 502b, d. 92, pp. 57–80.

[16] AVPR, f. 149, op. 502b, d. 92 pp. 86, 88.

[17] La Réforme, January 18, 1907.

[18] Le Phare d’Alexandrie, January 21, 1907.

[19] Al-Ahram, January 21, 1907.

[20] Le Phare d’Alexandrie, January 21, 1907.

[21]  Al-Liwaa, January 21, 1907.

[22] The Egyptian Gazette, January 23, 1907.

[23] Al-Ahram, January 21, 1907.

[24]  Al-Moayyad, le Caire, January 21, 1907.

[25]  Al-Liwaa, le Caire, January 23, 1907.

[26] AVPR, f. 470, d.3, p. 44–47, cited in Gennady Vasilievitch Goryatchkin, Russkaya Alexandriya. Sudby jemigracii v Egipte [Russian Alexandria: The Fate of the Emigrants in Egypt] (Russkiy put’, 2010). p. 65.

[27] Local subjects were those who did not possess European subject or protégé status.

[28] Al-Ahram, February 6, 1907.

[29] The Egyptian Gazette, February 6, 1907.

[30] The Egyptian Gazette, January 30, 1907.

[31] The Egyptian Gazette, January 22 and 29, 1907.

[32] The Egyptian Gazette, January 25, 1907.

[33] Al Liwaa, January 20 and January 23, 1907, respectively.

[34] Al-Liwaa, February 12, 1907.

[35] Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860–1914 (California University Press, 2013), p.126–129.

[36] L’arrestation des trois russes en Égypte (Imprimerie Nouvelle Sajous, Molco & Cie, 1907), p. 12.

[37] Cited in The Egyptian Gazette, February 9, 1907, p. 3.

[38] Cited in Joel Beinin and Zachary Lockman, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954, American University in Cairo Press, 1998, p. 71 (quoting al-Liwaa, August 5, 1911).

[39] See Anthony Gorman, “Foreign Workers in Egypt 1882–1914: Subaltern or labour elite?”, in Stephanie Cronin (ed.), Subaltern and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa, Routledge, 2012.

[40] Cited in Viacheslav Azarov, “Anarkhisty torgovogo flota” [Anarchistes marins de la flotte commerciale], Taymer, October 23, 2014.

[41] Hansard HC Deb., “Egyptian Government (Arrest of foreign subjects)”, volume 53: debate of June 12, 1913, column 1929–34.

[42] Evelyn Baring Cromer, Political and Literary Essays, 1908–1913 (MacMillan and Co., Limited, 1913), p. 157.

[43] The British National Archive, FO 800/46. Letter from Cromer to Edward Grey. p. 243.

[44] See Rim Naguib, “The Ideological Deportation of Foreginers and ‘Local Subjects of Foreign Extraction’ in Interwar Egypt, The Arab Studies Journal, 28(2), 2020, pp. 6–43.


About the Author

Rim Naguib is a EUME fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien, with a scholarship from the Gerda Henkel Foundation. She received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016) and her MA from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence (2006). Her research interests address three related fields: the colonial practice of ideological-ethnic deportation of internationalist foreigners and ‘local subjects of foreign extraction’ in the policing of communism in interwar Egypt; the post-colonial securitisation of Egyptian nationality legislation and practice and of the management of foreigners’ residence; and the political and cultural history of Egyptian patriarchal nationalism. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Undesirable Subjects: Deportation in Colonial and Post-colonial Egypt 1914–1971. She is also writing and illustrating a graphic biography of Joseph Rosenthal (1872–1965).


Other Recent Articles in the TRAFO Series A Decolonial Mediterranean

Clara-Auguste Süß and Manuel Borutta, (De)colonizing the French Mediterranean: Connections and Power Relations, 02.10.2025.

Hanan Natour, Precolonial Memory, Postcolonial Critique: Ibn Khaldun in Tunisian Arabic Fiction of the 21st Century, 11.09.2025.

Annamaria Bianco, Displaced from the Future: Crossing the Sea Back to Syria in Nesrine Khoury’s Speculative Novel Wadi Qandil, 19.08.2025.


Citation: Rim Naguib, Solidarity against Empire in a Colonial Port City, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 23.10.2025, https://trafo.hypotheses.org/61956


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (October 23, 2025). Solidarity against Empire in a Colonial Port City. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved November 11, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/150vz


Forum Transregionale Studien

The Berlin-based Forum Transregionale Studien promotes the internationalization of research in the humanities and social sciences. It provides scope for collaboration among researchers with different regional and disciplinary perspectives and appoints researchers from all over the world as Fellows. More...

You may also like...

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.