The British and Foreign Bible Society in Port Said and the Suez Canal

Abstract

‘All things are for sale in Port Said’, said Madame. Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed (1890) At the beginning of the twentieth century, Port Said was four days from Marseilles … four days to meet up with this Tower of Babel where Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Maltese, Cypriots, Levantines, Syrians, and Tripolitanians mixed and where they took ocean liners by storm… Valérie Nicolas, Directrice de l'Alliance Française de Port-Saïd, in Marie-Laure Crosnier-Leconte et al., Port-Saïd: Architectures XIXe-XXe siècles (2006) In 1912, the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS), a Protestant voluntary society, decided to open a depot for the global distribution of its Bibles in the Egyptian city of Port Said. Located at the northern terminus of the Suez Canal, Port Said was a fuelling centre for steamships and welcomed travellers sailing between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and between Europe and Asia. The concentration of resources in Port Said made practical sense for the BFBS, whose leaders favoured a business model of efficiency and mass marketing while proclaiming a mission to share the Bible with the world. Yet, Port Said also had a romantic appeal for the BFBS, whose leaders repeatedly emphasised the city's proximity to historic lands of the Bible. This article surveys the activities of the BFBS in Port Said from the late nineteenth century until the outbreak of the Suez Crisis in 1956 and shows how this work impinged upon several different kinds of history, notably the history of books (including reading, publishing, and translation); of travel during an ‘Age of the Sea’; and of Christian missions and evangelical thought. Connecting British imperial and modern Middle Eastern history, the article also ties the BFBS at Port Said to larger events occurring in Egypt and the region upon Israel's debut in 1948.