History, Government, and Economics and their influence on Global and Local Issues - Research Paper Example

Discussion For decades, Arabs was in control of Arabs and Turks, who made it a part of their Ottoman Empire. It was in 1805 when Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian solider took control of Egypt and declared himself as the “Sultan” and “Wali” of the country. Most authors agree that Pasha’s period mark the beginning of modern Egypt (Thompson, 2009). Despite the fact that Pasha was not a liberal or modernist but many of his reforms had great impact on the formation of the current culture of Egypt (Moscovitch, 2007).

Pasha nationalized all the land in Egypt thus allowing the government to own all agriculture and crops produced in the country. He focused greatly on the industrial, primarily for building weapons for the army. Pasha sent promising students to Europe for higher studies and brought back those students to take key positions in educational institutions, hospitals, and bureaucracy (Goldschmidt, 2004; Vatikiotis, 1991). However, after the completion of Suez Canal, the British and French started taking a lot of interest in the domestic matters of the Egypt and eventually went to take over the country in 1882.

This control remained until the year 1922 when Egypt became an independent country. During the British occupation, trade developed in the country and Immigrants from Southern Europe and Northern Africa flew into the country, which increased the total number of immigrants in the country to 1.5 million in the 1930s (Moscovitch, 2007). The independence was actually the result of 1”919 Egyptian Revolution, which was led by Saad Zaghlul, and other members of Wafd Party” (Moscovitch, 2007). Saad Zaghlul eventually went on to become the first prime minister of the country in the year 1924, one year after the formulation of Egyptian constitution (Vatikiotis, 1991).

The British did retain the control of certain matters related to foreign policy of Egypt, wars and partial control of Sudan as well. This remains one of the reasons why even today, anti British feelings are observable in the hearts and minds of the masses of Egypt. During the First World War, British promised that they would take the entire burden over their shoulders, thousands of Egyptian shoulders lost their lives. Even in Second World War, British used Egypt as a base for Allied forces. “Anti-British feelings continued to grow and provided one of the reasons for the Egyptian Revolution of 1952” (Pateman & El-Hamamsy, 2003).

The revolution was aimed at removing King Fahad 1 and making Egypt a republic. Corruption, lavish lifestyles of the rulers, monarchy, and inflation, ignorance of the rulers towards the domestic matters of country and pro British policies were among the other reasons (Moscovitch, 2007; Thompson, 2009). General Naguib took control of the country but Nasser who became the President of the country in 1956 later put him on a house arrest. Naseer Died in 1970 and Anwar Sadat took control after him.

Both these leaders, despite being autocrats, remained extremely popular amongst the Egyptian and other Arab people. Sadat launched a war against Israel. Although it ended in a draw but Sadat considered this as his win (Goldschmidt, 2004). Important here to note is that the period of Nasser gave the Arab world what is known as pan-Arab ideology or Nasserism which still influences many Egyptians political and economic circles. The ideology asks for the complete or partial rejection of American and European systems and increased economic, political, and social support for members