Egypt and the Struggle for Power in Sudan From World War II to Nasserism

For decades, the doctrine of the 'Unity of the Nile Valley' united Egyptians of a variety of political and nationalist backgrounds. Many Egyptians regarded Sudan as an integral part of their homeland, and therefore battled to rid the entire Nile Valley of British imperialism and unite its inhabitants under the Egyptian crown. Here, Rami Ginat provides a vital and important revised account of the history of Egypt's colonialist struggle and their efforts to prove categorically that the Nile Valley constituted a single territorial unit. These were clustered around several dominant theoretical layers: history, geography, economy, culture and ethnography. This book, for both Middle Eastern and African historians, uses a mixture of Arabic and English sources to critically examine the central stages in the historical development of Egypt's doctrine, concentrating on the defining decade (1943?1953) that first witnessed both the pinnacle of the doctrine's struggle and the subsequent shattering of a consensual nationalist dream.

Introduction; Part I. The Theoretical Foundations of Egypt's Claims for the Unity of the Nile Valley: 1. Egyptian perceptions of the Sudan: historical narratives; 2. The unity of the Nile Valley: geographical, economic and ethnographical perspectives; Part II. The Struggle for the Sudan: Politics, Diplomacy and Public Discourse: 3. The Sudan question: the Egyptian transition from wartime lethargy to postwar overtures and deeds; 4. Between two modes of imperialism: education, nationalism and the struggle for power in the Sudan; 5. The aftermath of the security council hype: whither the unity of the Nile Valley?; 6. Social movements and the Sudan question: a case study in the divergence of national liberation movements; Conclusion.

Rami Ginat is a Professor of Middle Eastern politics and heading the Department of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He is a leading scholar in Egyptian history and Cold War studies in the Middle East, and has published many books and articles in these fields, including A History of Egyptian Communism (2011). His work pays careful attention to the mutual feedback between politics and ideas.