Egyptian modernists reframed British rule as backward by reversing the barbarity accusation.

Evidence

In one essay, titled “Al-farq bayna al-tamaddun al-sharqï wa al-Ürübï” (The Difference between Eastern and European Civilization), al-Nadïm presents a dialogue between two men, one Egyptian and one British.After the Egyptian asks the Englishman what Great Britain wants with Egypt, the latter answers, “To abolish your barbarity” (khaläsak min al-tawahhash). The Egyptian denies that in an old trading nation like Egypt there remains any barbarity.He then turns to a practice that he considers barbaric, which he noticed while on a trip to London—the integration of men and women working in close quarters in a factory. When the Englishman responds by saying that only poor people would be in that situation, and would never notice the offense, the Egyptian counters by saying that the Egyptian poor would never allow such intermingling to take place. “Leave us to civilize ourselves according to our own customs,” he says to the Englishmen. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on anti-colonial modernism across Africa (James, Mudimbe), and reverses British civilizing-mission rhetoric — relevant to the reader’s Egypt vs Sudan coloniality comparison.
• SEED: Possible essay angle: how colonized intellectuals rhetorically ‘provincialized’ the colonizer by locating barbarity in industrial Europe rather than in the colonized East.