SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Between 1952 and 1970, Gamal Abdel Nasser and Egypt's Free Officers Movement established the paradigmatic pan-Arabist revolution from above. Yet it has become something of a cliché to maintain that the Free Officers had no blueprint of action before seizing power and that they later instrumentalised pan-Arabism in their foreign policy, thinly veiling their actual commitments to Egyptian nationalism and imperialism. By contrast, this contribution underlines the impact of the British colonial context on the Free Officers' political formation and their early identification with pan-Arabism in turn. Drawing on pamphlets, speeches, media output and memoirs, it shows that the Free Officers developed a distinctive form of anticolonial nationalism that emphasised social justice and invoked overlapping Egyptian and Arab identities. Their aspirations for liberation thus entailed a connected foreign policy and nation building programme in which pan-Arabism was a prime – and early – component.