In standard narratives of ‘national liberation’ by people within empire, under occupation or simply cultural domination, heightened cultural production is mostly interpreted as an early stage of national awareness, culminating in political independence struggles. Already Friedrich Nietzsche criticized the absurdity of reducing intellectuals such as J.W. Goethe to a herald of German nation-state-building, and many more such examples could be added. Adam Mestyan has now presented a detailed case-study of Egypt, where the phase of heightened cultural production was particularly complicated: while Egypt remained de jure from 1801 to 1914 an Ottoman province, Istanbul exercised little direct control, but depended on the provincial administration, headed by its governor general (vali), later to become the hereditary office of viceroy (khedive). As of 1882, the British occupation added a third layer of hegemony.

Mestyan's main argument is that patriotism (wataniyya in Arabic) in Egypt was not a nativist movement from the start. Instead, it drew its legitimacy from the Ottoman state. The sphere the author mostly analyses to prove his point is not included in the title, but visible on the book cover: the theatre and mainly opera. Ottoman patriotism was according to Mestyan mainly engineered by reformist administrators at the Porte, focusing on the homeland, the military and the persona of the sultan as key signifiers. Egypt started to buy into the new formula as of 1841, following its governor Muhammad Ali's foiled insurrection against the sultan. The Egyptian elites likewise supported ideological re-Ottomanization, which found its expression in panegyrics. These songs and poems of the 1860s attempted but in the end failed to frame in Arabness the Turcophone khedive family legitimized by the sultan. Khedive Ismail instead ordered the construction of al-Azbakiyya, a new public garden in downtown Cairo, as a symbol of Egyptian progress, surrounded by several places of spectacle and foremost, the opera, opened in 1869. Mestyan sees in the opera the articulation of an ‘internal Europe’, which the elites cultivated (a term borrowed from On Barak's Ph.D. thesis).Footnote ¹ The culmination of these cultural politics was the opera Aida, commissioned by the khedive from Giuseppe Verdi, which staged Egypt as a sovereign empire. This endeavour failed to include local Arab elites, as for ‘elite Ottomans…patriotism was an aesthetic principle of dynastic sovereignty within the international order…and not an expression of local solidarity’ (p. 119).

Arab intellectuals bridged that gap by either writing original plays, such as Harun al-Rashid, or translating others into Arabic. While Arab-language troupes were grudgingly accepted onto the khedivial stages, they received neither the ample subsidies nor the ruler's appreciation to the degree of the troupes from overseas. The phalanx between the khedive and Egyptian civil elites was temporarily ruptured around the time of the Urabi military revolt (1882, and allegorically even earlier on stage), when some circles drew on Ottomanism for an alternative legitimacy against the governors of Egypt. However, following the defeat of the revolt, the elites soon once again rallied around the khedive and saw in him the legitimate representative of the Istanbul court, in defiance of British occupation. The presence of Evelyn Baring (Lord Cromer, and British consul-general), Henry Wolff (British high commissioner), Gazi Ahmed Muhtar Pasha (Ottoman high commissioner), and Khedive Abbas Hilmi II in the opera house now stood for rival claims to hegemony. Eventually, though, imagining Egypt without the governor dynasty and without the Ottomans, but as a heroic fatherland, became possible, as becomes apparent when studying the evolution of Mustafa Kamil's dramas.

Arab Patriotism manages the difficult task of providing insight into a political culture that for lack of a very outspoken free press can only be brought to light indirectly by a close and well-informed reading of historic dramas, theatre reviews and eulogies. Adherents of archival hard evidence might occasionally disagree with Mestyan's readings of the one or other document, claiming that he reads too much into some allegories or dedications. However, this is a necessary risk when trying to make such texts speak to us of a particular culture of the past. What is somewhat regrettable is that this very punctuated thesis and stringent demonstration allows little space for understanding nineteenth-century Egyptian theatre and culture outside of the constraints of their political messages. Occasionally, the book digresses to allow for glimpses into singers’ or impresarios’ lifeworlds, the regulation, censorship and policing of private theatres, and other interesting aspects, but on the whole stays true to its main narrative. For those interested in nineteenth-century eastern Mediterranean drama, it is therefore highly advisable to read in addition Mestyan's Ph.D. thesis, which also covers, besides Cairo, Istanbul.Footnote ² Mestyan's work as a whole and Arab Patriotism in particular are highly unique and important contributions to the political as well as the cultural history of Egypt, Cairo, Alexandria and the eastern Mediterranean.