The year 1922 brought about the country’s nominal independence. For the
first time in history Egyptians could determine their own fate. In fact it was
the people’s rising of 1919 and not Nasser’s revolution of 1952 which marked
the historical turning point, bringing about the beginning of self-determination
for Egyptians. Significantly enough the symbol of that rising was a crescent
and a cross, which stood for the incorporated union of the Egyptian people,
of Muslims and Christians. Under the constitutional monarchy a politically
mature system started to flourish, the better of which Egypt has not seen
to this day. But since Great Britain’s legal privileges over Egypt remained
largely untouched, some historians consider the termination of the British
protectorate as a farce. It has to be admitted that the constitution introduced
by King Fouad and the parliamentary government system based on it did not
guarantee true democracy, but it cannot be denied that a hitherto unknown
process of democratization began at that time for the good of the Egyptian
people, while the presence of British troops by the Suez Canal was of lesser
relevance for their immediate interests. For the fellaheen, i.e. for the bulk of the
population, after 3,000 years of foreign domination, an era of peace, security
and sovereignty of the law had begun, even though the feudal structures were
still unbroken. It is the merit of Nasser’s socialism to have opened the way for
feudalism to be overcome in the countryside and capitalism in the towns. But
the price paid was the loss of the hard-won democracy and the introduction
of a party dictatorship supported by the military. The state-directed economic
system proved to be a failure in Egypt, as it did elsewhere, and the wars with
Yemen and Israel eroded Egypt’s meagre resources.