In colonial-era Egypt, a new social category of "modern men" emerged, the efendiyya. Working as bureaucrats, teachers, journalists, free professionals, and public intellectuals, the efendiyya represented the new middle class elite. They were the experts who drafted and carried out the state's modernisation policies, and the makers as well as majority consumers of modern forms of politics and national culture. As simultaneously "authentic" and "modern," they assumed a key political role in the anti-colonial movement and in the building of a modern state both before and after...

In colonial-era Egypt, a new social category of "modern men" emerged, the efendiyya, who represented the new middle class elite. This volume explores how they assumed a key political role in the anti-colonial movement and in the building of a modern state both before and after the revolution of 1952.