Publications

“Egypt [1.0]” (2024)

1914–1918 Online: International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
This entry surveys Egypt’s experience during World War I, highlighting the country’s role as a strategic base for British military operations and the socio-political consequences of imperial control. It examines how Egypt’s declaration as a British protectorate in 1914 intensified economic extraction and conscription, triggering widespread civilian hardship. Wartime requisitioning, labor mobilization, and food shortages strained both urban and rural populations, culminating in protests and strikes that set the stage for the 1919 Revolution. The entry also addresses the under-acknowledged toll of famine and disease—including the 1918 influenza pandemic—and considers how the war reshaped Egyptian nationalism and imperial governance. By integrating military, economic, and social dimensions, the article positions Egypt as central to understanding the war’s effects beyond the European front.

Keywords: Egypt, World War I, British Empire, Protectorate, Anglo-Egyptian administration, British Occupation of Egypt 1882-1923, Labor conscription, Requisitioning, 1919 Egyptian Revolution, Spanish Influenza pandemic (1918-1920), Nationalism, Colonial rule

Egypt 1.0. 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War, ed. by Ute Daniel, Peter Gatrell, Oliver Janz, Heather Jones, Jennifer Keene, Alan Kramer, and Bill Nasson, issued by Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin 2024-10-15. DOI: 10.15463/ie1418.11633

“Trial by Virus: Colonial Medicine and the 1883 Cholera in Egypt” (2023)

Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History.
This article examines the 1883 cholera epidemic in Egypt as a pivotal moment in the evolution of colonial medicine under British occupation. Following the British invasion of Egypt in 1882, the Anglo-Egyptian administration responded to the cholera outbreak by implementing new public health policies that reflected emerging imperial ideologies about hygiene, discipline, and modernity. Drawing on consular correspondence, Arabic and European newspapers, and medical reports, the article demonstrates how this outbreak catalyzed the replacement of an existing Egyptian-led health infrastructure with one dominated by British authorities. It argues that the epidemic became a proving ground for legitimizing British control by casting Egyptians as unfit to manage their own health systems, thus marking a key transition in the imposition of colonial rule through medical governance.

Keywords: Colonial medicine, Cholera epidemic, Modern Egypt, Public health, British Empire, History of Egypt, Anglo-Egyptian administration, Sanitation policy, Medical authority, Epidemic control, History of medicine, British Occupation of Egypt 1882-1923.

Rose, Christopher S. “Trial by Virus: Colonial Medicine and the 1883 Cholera in Egypt.” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 24, no. 1 (March 2023). https://doi.org/10.1353/cch.2023.0005.
(link for readers without Project MUSE access).

“The History of Public Health in the Middle East: The Medical-Environmental Turn” (2021)

(Arabic translation: تاريخ الصحة العامة في الشرق الأوسط الحديث: التحول البيئي-الطبي)

History Compass.
This article surveys the emerging field of public health history in the modern Middle East, focusing on the intersection of medicine, environment, and society. It traces how early scholarship emphasized elite and institutional actors—particularly in 19th-century Egypt—and often framed medical modernization as a top-down, Eurocentric process. More recent work, however, marks an “environmental–medical turn” that uses crises such as epidemics, droughts, and famines as entry points into the lives of marginalized groups, including rural peasants and the urban poor. By highlighting how environmental and medical events shaped—and were shaped by—colonial governance, state-building, and resistance, this approach connects Middle Eastern history to global debates in environmental and medical humanities. The article calls for further integration of the Middle East into transnational histories of medicine and argues that the environmental–medical turn opens new archival and analytical pathways for understanding illiterate and subaltern populations.

Keywords: Public health, Middle East history, Environmental history, Medical humanities, Epidemics, Colonial medicine, Peasant history, Crisis historiography, Egypt and Southwest Asia, Social history of medicine

Rose, Christopher S. “The History of Public Health in the Modern Middle East: The Environmental–Medical Turn.” History Compass 19, no. 5 (April 27, 2021): 14. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12659.

“Food, Hunger, and Rebellion: Egypt in the First World War and its Aftermath.” (2021)

The Provisions of War: Expanding Boundaries in Food and Warfare, 1840-1990.
This chapter examines the entanglements of war, food policy, and popular protest in Egypt during and after the First World War. It argues that British wartime requisitioning, export controls, and forced cultivation policies—aimed at supporting imperial priorities—produced widespread hunger and hardship among Egypt’s rural poor. These conditions, in turn, fueled popular grievances that culminated in the 1919 Revolution. Using Egyptian, British, and international archival sources, the chapter demonstrates how food scarcity and nutritional deprivation served as both a consequence of global war and a catalyst for anti-colonial mobilization. By foregrounding the experiences of ordinary Egyptians, it challenges Eurocentric narratives of wartime provisioning and situates Egypt within a broader conversation about the politics of food, empire, and rebellion.

Keywords: World War I, Egypt, Food policy, Hunger, Requisitioning, Colonial economy, Peasant resistance, 1919 Revolution, British Empire, Anti-colonialism

Rose, Christopher S. “Food, Hunger, and Rebellion: Egypt in World War I and Its Aftermath.” In The Provisions of War: Expanding Boundaries in Food and Warfare, 1840-1990, edited by Justin Nordstrom, 161–76. Food and Foodways. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1p2grb2.14.

“Implications of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic (1918-1920) for the History of Early 20th Century Egypt.” (2021)

(Arabic translation: تداعيات جائحة الإنفلونزا الإسبانية (1918–1920) على تاريخ مصر في أوائل القرن العشرين)

Journal of World History.
This article reexamines the devastating impact of the 1918–1920 Spanish influenza pandemic on Egypt, arguing that it must be integrated into our understanding of World War I’s social and political consequences in the region. Drawing on Egyptian and British sources, it documents how wartime provisioning policies left Egypt’s rural population malnourished and vulnerable just as the influenza struck, killing at least 138,000 people—more than 1% of the population—in just ten weeks. The Anglo-Egyptian administration’s prioritization of military over civilian health, combined with the failure of food distribution systems, compounded the crisis. The article shows how this public health disaster, largely ignored by historians, contributed to widespread discontent and may have intensified support for the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. It concludes by calling for greater recognition of the Egyptian civilian experience during World War I and the pandemic as a key moment in the history of colonial neglect and anti-colonial mobilization.

Keywords: Spanish influenza pandemic (1918-1920), Egypt, World War I, Pandemic history, Colonial medicine, Public health, 1919 Egyptian Revolution, Wartime provisioning, British Empire, Social history of medicine, Anglo-Egyptian administration, Medical authority, Epidemic control, History of medicine, British Occupation of Egypt (1882-1923).

Rose, Christopher S. “Implications of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic (1918-1920) for the History of Early 20th Century Egypt.” Journal of World History 32, no. 4 (2021): 655–84. https://doi.org/10.1353/jwh.2021.0044.