“We Don’t Share the Same Language with the Orientals Yet”

Abstract

Abstract Between the 19th and 20th centuries, Egyptian cities such as Alexandria and Cairo hosted many rebels, anarchists, socialists and activists who promoted civil and social rights through their ‘radical’ ideas and struggles. The role played by the foreign press in spreading such ideas was fundamental for the wider political mobilization in Egypt during the colonial period. In this paper, the links between colonialism, labour and migration will be investigated through the analysis of the Italian anarchist press, a useful source for research that aims to shed light on the multifaceted composition of the same Italian ‘subaltern’ society in Egypt, its radical social groups and their somehow contradictory ideas – colonialist and even racist – about Arab peoples. Yet, the development of such complex historical social formations, dominated by colonial capitalist settings, like in Egypt, tends to intersect with forms of racialization, class and national oppression that can be expressed on several levels.