Alexandria may have been founded in the 19th century, but until Mehmet Ali took over Egypt in the 19th century the city had been declining in concert with Egypt’s foreign trade and its total population. It’s only in that century that the city began to grow again and to attract large numbers of migrants from around the Mediterranean, including Jews, Greeks, and Italians (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Egyptians). Classical and modern Alexandria are essentially discontinuous.

Razib:

That’s fair, but the specificities of Egyptian illiberalism and disinterest in pluralism can be extended to any number of societies where social pluralism has been discredited by its prior association with imperial rule. The example of Burma comes to mind: the capital of Rangoon once was decidedly multicultural, with an Indian plurality or outright majority, but because Indian immigration and immigrants were associated with foreign rule, once Burma became independent said population disappeared. Moving to Europe, the recovery of the idea of a multicultural central Europe in the 1980s took generations to come back after the collapse of Hapsburg rule and the formation of the new nation-states. Etc.

H:

I agree , but I’d note that the Saudi provinces you identify were Ottoman provinces, not European protectorates.

re: “north africa,” i really meant maghreb. i think would exclude libya.

To me, Egypt is the only Mediterranean African country that falls outside the Maghreb, and it looks like Wikipedia agrees. Perhaps Cyrenaica would qualify as being less Maghrebi than Tripolitania, having never been under Carthaginian rule, though it is home to some Berber tribes (pretty much all Arabized).

Nonetheless, I take your clarification.

Egypt wasn’t always this conservative – Sadat and Mubarak had a quid pro quo with the Islamists: don’t challenge our positions as the executives and you can have a free rein across society. It’s been a far more effective strategy for the Islamists than Iran’s revolution. .

re: “north africa,” i really meant maghreb. i think would exclude libya.

i believe there was such a restriction of franchise in hong kong after transfer of power to china.

Your point on the danger of democratic shock therapy is well taken. And the issue is probably unsolvable. Educated opinion is so adamantly opposed to anything short of universal suffrage that it would be all but impossible to set up limited self government.

Can you imagine the outcry from the West if Egypt were to impose property and/or education requirements for the franchise? Would probably be much stronger than Western opposition to despots.

The old dream of becoming “westernized” doesn’t hold much weight in the Islamic world anymore, it’s true.

But there are certain factors that are forcing liberal aspects, for example, women in Egypt are very strong about wanting to have access to education, and then the range of jobs that education can open up to women. This doesn’t mean that they don’t want to be Islamic women, but that they want to be educated Islamic women. I think this will necessarily force some liberalization. To vote, to hold careers on par with the men changes society in undeniable ways.

Another is the youth. They, too are (from what I gather) proud to be Muslims, but they also value things like an uncensored internet, all their instant messaging devices, and consumer goods that are on par with what the west considers the norm, and again higher education and a wide range of possible careers. All of which tend to force at least some degree of liberalization.

Human nature being what it is, I don’t think they are going to get rid of corruption in the government. But they should be able to enjoy at least a generation (and more, if they handle the transition to self-governance well) of corruption having far less of a choke-hold on all aspects of politics and economics the way it has for decades.

I’m curious whether you think that is true or whether you think as these groups get in power you’ll see more of a move to undermine legitimate democracy – much like you see in places like Russia. My guess from this post is that you think it a lost cause. Yet part of me wonders since even in Russia there really is a strong liberalization even if the government has certain totalitarian moves.

Argh! The graph looks intriguing but it is a nearly worthless waste of space without labeling the axes. What is it measuring? It seems that the y axis is percent that agrees with the statements. I have no idea what the x axis is.

I agree that it’s not well set-up, but after pondering over it for a bit, I realized that the x-axis was the percentage who agreed that adulterers should be stoned, with the y-axis being the other two: Amputate hands of robbers & Death penalty for apostates from Islam. The latter of those two (Death penalty) is represented by the points labeled with blue text, a visual cue that would have worked better if it were done in the legend, especially since the color of the points themselves is not easy to discern at this low resolution.

Everyone makes the mistake of thinking other people think like they do. A classic example from the other side is how many people on the right seem to think left-wing people demonize the wealthy because they are jealous, and want to be wealthy themselves. Although I can only know my own internal state, and maybe other left-leaning people harbor said secret jealousy, I’m fairly certain this isn’t what’s going on at all. Instead, the way the left feels toward the rich, by and large, is identical to the way the right feels about people on welfare — righteous indignation at those undeserving of their easy lot in society.

As to your post, Razib, your paragraph on the organic emergence of liberal democracy actually reminded me of something I’ve often wondered. Is the development of a left-right political spectrum all but required in order to have a functional liberal democracy? To the best of my knowledge, only Ireland has stopped from developing a left-right system. Everywhere else where parties form around other axes (ethnic groups, personalities, etc), the result is illiberal at best, and a slide into authoritarianism again at worst.

A while ago, I read a book about the city of Alexandria. The city boomed hugely over the 19th century, attracting migrants from across the Mediterranean–Greeks, Jews, Italians, western Europeans, and more–in addition to Egyptian migrants. This cosmopolitan culture ended up disappearing after Nasser’s nationalist revolution led to nationalizations of foreign-owned property and a turning away from the cosmopolitan Mediterranean world towards state-directed and state-owned models of political economy embedded in explicitly Arab contexts. The “native” Egyptians didn’t seem to feel any particular connection with non-Egyptian Alexandrians, who lived their lives in parallel to the remainder of the city’s population and tended to interact with these people mainly in instrumental fashion (on the job market, say). Egyptians didn’t see these foreigners as Egyptians, and so …

A counterfactual scenario, to be discussed: if Egypt hadn’t become a British protectorate but had instead managed to retain its independence, pluralism would have had a stronger history in Egypt.

For 150 years sailors from all over the world, from practically every language, religion, and ethnicity have been sailing through the Suez.

My general assumption is that trade tends to liberalize people. As does contact with foreigners and foreign ways. So the town is more liberal than the country, and the city more than the town, and the big city more than the small city. In a given country, I’d tend to assume a port city would be more liberal than an inland city of the same size.

Why, despite being so heavily urbanized and having one of the primary lanes of maritime trade, is Egypt so backwards?

The “liberals/progressives/neo-socialists” thought that because many Islamist/nationalists are college educated and talked about social justice meant they were on the same page. Nothing could be farther from the truth.