In-Between Categories: Documenting Greek Children’s Legal Belonging in the Suez Canal Region
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24847/v11i22024.403Keywords:
Greeks, Suez Canal, citizenship, stateless, laborAbstract
This paper looks at the complex manner in which children were documented in Ottoman Egypt and their access to citizenship later in postcolonial Egypt. It discusses the making of social and political categories, like citizenship and statelessness, and how Greeks moved through those categories. This paper also analyzes how these categories were imposed, first by the Ottoman Empire and then by the Egyptian nation-state. The end of the Ottoman Empire in 1922, and the declaration of the Egyptian Republic in 1953, the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Arab-Israeli Wars in 1967 and 1973, and the new labor laws of the 1950s and 1960s, among other events, impacted Greeks and others who lived in Egypt at that time. The impact among Greeks in Suez Canal cities was particularly evident in the community’s cohesion, as most evacuated the cities in 1967 with almost everyone else following in 1973. These economic and political factors, and the social processes the community underwent, defined Greek children’s relation with the Egyptian postcolonial state.
References
Apodēmoi Ellēnes. Athens: Ethnikon Kentron Koinōnikōn Ereunōn, 1972.
Bonin, Hubert. History of the Suez Canal Company, 1858–2008: Between Controversy and Utility. Geneva: Droz, 2010. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743823000302.
Carminati, Lucia. “An Unhappy Happy Port: Fin-de-siècle Port Said and Its Connections and Disconnections of Water and Iron.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 54 (2022): 731–39. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743823000302.
Carminati, Lucia. Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said, 1859–1906. Oakland: University of California Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520385511.
Carminati, Lucia. “Suez: A Hollow Canal in Need of Peopling: Currents and Stoppages in the Historiography, 1859–1956,” History Compass 19, no. 5 (2021): 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12650.
Curli, Barbara. “Dames Employées at the Suez Canal Company: The ‘Egyptianization’ of the Female Office Workers, 1941–56.” International Journal Middle East Studies 46 (2014): 553–76. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743814000592.
Dalachanis, Angelos. The Greek Exodus from Egypt: Diaspora Politics and Emigration: 1937–1962. New York: Berghahn Books, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvw04k2f.
Dalachanis, Angelos. “Transnational Labour in Conflict: The Italian and Greek Personnel of the Suez Canal Company and the Second World War.” In Italy and the Suez Canal, from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Cold War, edited by Barbara Curli, 313–28. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88255-6_19.
Daratzikis, Konstantinos. O Ellēnismos Diōrygos tou Suez kai Kairou kata toys polemous 1967 kai 1973. Athens: University of Crete, 1994.
Diana, Chiara. “Children’s Citizenship: Revolution and the Seeds of an Alternative Future in Egypt.” In Wired Citizenship: Youth Learning and Activism in the Middle East, edited by Linda Herrera. New York: Routledge, 2014.
Driessen, Henk. “Mediterranean Port Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered.” History and Anthropology 16, no. 1 (2005): 129–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/0275720042000316669.
Esser, Florian. “Neither ‘Thick’ or ‘Thin’: Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood Relationally.” In Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New Perspectives in Childhood Studies, edited by Esser, Meike S. Baader, Tanja Betz, and Beatrice Hungerland. New York: Routledge, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315722245.
Fahmy, Ziad. “Jurisdictional Borderlands: Extraterritoriality and ‘Legal Chameleons’ in Precolonial Alexandria, 1840–1870.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 2 (2013): 305–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417513000042.
Gratien, Chris and Emily K. Pope-Obeda. “The Second Exchange: Ottoman Greeks and the American Deportation State during the 1930s.” Journal of Migration History 6 (2020): 104–28. https://doi.org/10.1163/23519924-00601007.
Gorman, Anthony. “Egypt’s Forgotten Communists: The Postwar Greek Left.” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 20, no. 1 (2002): 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1353/mgs.2002.0006.
Gorman, Anthony. “Foreign Workers in Egypt, 1882–1914: Subaltern or Labour Elite?” In Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Stephanie Cronin. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Hanley, Will. “Cosmopolitan Cursing in Late Nineteenth Century Alexandria.” In Cosmopolitanisms in Muslim Contexts: Perspectives from the Past, edited by Derryl N. MacLean and Sikeena Karmali Ahmed, 92–104. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748644575-007.
Hanley, Will. “Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies.” History Compass 6, no. 5 (2008): 1346–67. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2008.00545.x.
Hanley, Will. Identifying with Nationality: Europeans, Ottomans and Egyptians in Alexandria. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.7312/hanl17762.
Huber, Valeska. Channeling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, 1869–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139344159.
Huber, Valeska. “Connecting Colonial Seas: The ‘International Colonization’ of Port Said and the Suez Canal during and after the First World War.” European Review of History: Revue Européene D’histoire 19, no. 1 (2012): 141–61. https://doi.org/10.1080/13507486.2012.643612.
Huber, Valeska. “Multiple Mobilities, Multiple Sovereignties, Multiple Speeds: Exploring Maritime Connections in the Age of Empire.” International Journal Middle East Studies 48 (2016): 763–66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743816000908.
Ikram, Khalid. The Political Economy of Reforms in Egypt: Issues and Policymaking since 1952. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv2ks7195.
Maksudyan, Nazan. “Children and Politics in Turkey: Role-Playing, Unchilding, Victimization.” In Childhood in Turkey: Educational, Sociological, and Psychological Perspectives, edited by Hilal H. Şen and Helaine Selin, 107–21. Cham: Springer, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08208-5_8.
Maksudyan, Nazan. Orphans and Destitute Children in the Late Ottoman Empire. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2014.
Marglin, Jessica M. “Extraterritoriality and Legal Belonging in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean.” Law and History Review 39, no. 4 (2021): 679–706. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0738248021000390.
McGuire, Valerie. “From Ottoman to Mediterranean Empire: Italian Colonial Rule in the Dodecanese Islands and the Second Treaty of Lausanne.” In War and Collapse: World War I and the Ottoman State, edited by M. Hakan Yavuz and Feroz Ahmad. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016.
Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022.
Mobarak, Salma. “L’imaginaire cinématographique de Port-Saïd.” Sociétés & Représentations 48, no. 2 (2019): 95–108. https://doi.org/10.3917/sr.048.0095.
Morrison, Heidi. Childhood and Colonial Modernity in Egypt. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137432780.
Mossallam, Alia. “ ‘We Are the Ones Who Made This Dam “High”!’ A Builders’ History of the Aswan High Dam.” Water History 6 (2014): 297–314. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12685-014-0114-6.
Mylona, Eftychia. “Greeks in Egypt: Negotiating Presence, Identity and Belonging after the 1960s.” In Cultural Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean: Asia Minor, Cyprus and Egypt, edited by Stelios Irakleous, Michalis Michael, and Athanasios Koutoupas. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022.
Mylona, Eftychia. “Maintaining Philanthropy: The Greek Alexandrian Institutions after the Exodus of the Early 1960s.” In “Diasporas, Charity, and the Construction of Belonging: A Connected History of Practices of ‘Goodwill’ in Egypt during the Imperial Age (19th–20th centuries),” edited by Angelos Dalachanis and Annalaura Turiano. Special issue, Diasporas, no. 42 (2023). https://doi.org/10.4000/diasporas.13918.
Mylona, Eftychia. “ ‘Our Greek Dignity and Our Educational Autonomy’: Arabic Language Teaching in Greek Schools, 1950s to 1970s.” In Colonial Vocabularies: Teaching and Learning Arabic in Europe (1870–1970), edited by Sarah Irving, Karène Sanchez, Lucia Admiraal, and Rachel Mairs. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming.
Naguib, Saphinaz-Amal. “Legal Pluralism in the Mediterranean: The Case of the Mixed Courts of Egypt: 1875–1949.” In The Intangible Heritage of the Mediterranean: Transmission, Adaptation and Innovation, 169–80. Oslo: Department of Culture Studies, University of Oslo, 2002.
Ntalachanis, Angelos. “Les archives grecques de Suez: un fonds inédit.” Annales Islamologiques 45 (2011): 307–20.
Ntalachanis, Angelos. “The Emigration of Greeks from Egypt during the Early Post-War Years.” Journal of the Hellenic Diaspora, 35, no. 2 (2009): 35–44.
Parolin, Gianluca P. Citizenship in the Arab World: Kin, Religion and Nation-State. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789089640451.
Piquet, Caroline. Histoire du Canal de Suez. Paris: Perrin, 2009.
Piquet, Caroline. “Le canal de Suez face aux évolutions de la marine marchande: un siècle et demi de défis techniques.” Artefact 10 (2019): 175–91. https://doi.org/10.4000/artefact.4151.
Salem, Sara. “Haunted Histories: Nasserism and The Promises of the Past.” Middle East Critique 28, no. 3 (2019): 261–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2019.1633057.
Shakur, Mohamed Abdel, Sohair Mehanna, and Nicholas S. Hopkins. “War and Forced Migration in Egypt: The Experience of Evacuation from the Suez Canal Cities (1967–1976). Arab Studies Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2005): 21–39.
Tang, Kevin A. “A Venice of the Desert: The Successes and Failures of the Suez Canal in Revitalising Mediterranean Trade.” In Italy and the Suez Canal, from the Mid-Nineteenth Century to the Cold War, edited by Barbara Curli, 93–110. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Thompson, Paul. The Voice of the Past: Oral History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192893178.001.0001.
Viscomi, Joseph. “Mediterranean Futures: Historical Time and the Departure of Italians from Egypt, 1919–1937.” Journal of Modern History 91, no. 6 (2019): 341–79. https://doi.org/10.1086/703189.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Eftychia Mylona (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
The content of this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.