Egypt: an economic geography The people of Egypt · 13
existed side by side in Egypt, so that at the beginning of the twentieth century
there were in Cairo, for example, the British Victoria College, the American
College and the French École de Notre Dame. Native types of schools that
had formerly played a role were completely marginalized and ultimately be-
came almost extinct. Foreign Christian missionaries played an active role in
the alienation of the Egyptians from their own culture, particularly by help-
ing to replace an ancient form of Christianity, which had survived centuries
of persecution, with a Christianity of a European type. Since converting a
Muslim is a crime punishable by death in Islamic countries, the missionaries’
work was concentrated exclusively on the Egyptian Copts. Despite British
rule over Egypt the whole of the cultural sector was dominated by French
influence, to the extent that the programmes offered by theatres, cinemas and
radio stations were often direct takeovers of their French equivalents.