THE REINVENTION OF THE KHEDIVATE
The Khedive’s open encouragement of popular demonstrations in his favour by ostentatious attendance at prayers in the Mosque and performances in the Opera House has had the effect of greatly increasing the excitement among the natives. . . . The anti-English demonstration planned for the occasion of the Khedive’s visit to the Opera House was frustrated only by the rigorous measures of the authorities and the strong police force present.1
Thus did the New York Times describe the popularity of the young khedive, Abbas Hilmi II (r. 1892–1914) in 1893. How could this Ottoman governor become so popular when a general revolt had occurred against Tevfik, his father, only eleven years before? And how could he use both the mosque and the opera for attracting attention?
The British intervention and the Ottoman declaration that the ʿUrābīsts were rebels against the caliph removed the immediate threat to the khedivial regime, yet re-establishing the authority of that regime was another matter. This required an elaborate politics of memory since the khedivate now hinged upon the interpretation of the revolution, Ottoman approval, and actual British support.
The final three chapters of this book explore how the culture of patriotism functioned to re-establish, in fact, reinvent the khedivial regime in the postrevolutionary period. I restrict the period of study to the 1880s and early 1890s, with occasional excursions to the 1900s. Abbas Hilmi II in 1893 was seen as the delegate of the province at the empire and not as a delegate of the empire to the province. How did this happen?
1 New York Times, 23 January 1893, 5.