Egypt’s in-between legal status exempts it from Anderson’s standard colonized-nation trajectory

Evidence

But differing somewhat from writers of other cultures included in Anderson’s brilliant presentation of the birth of literature among colonized peoples of the nineteenth century, Egyptian writers existed in a greater colonialist limbo: not yet independent from the Ottoman Empire, but not quite colonized by Great Britain. Furthermore, Anderson posits that this adoption of print media was an expression of cultural revolution and anti-imperialism among the colonized. In Egypt, however, the artists and writers who were helping to fashion this imagined community were themselves parading Egyptian society along a very traditional stage. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 352

Categorization

• DEFINE: Characterizes Egypt’s distinctive ‘greater colonialist limbo’ — neither Ottoman-subject nor British-colonized — as a definitional category.
• XREF: Directly engages Anderson’s Imagined Communities; the reader’s own comparative work could build on this qualification.