Team of Dogs in the Desert by Jean Leon Gerome (1866): they are all Orientals
I have spoken about Lord Cromer’s views on the religion and manners of the Copts in a previous article. In this article, I will focus on his views on the character of the Copts. On the character of the Copts, Cromer starts well. He observes that “All generalisations about the attributes of a nation or of a class are apt to be imperfect, and must necessarily do injustice to exceptional individuals. The Copts have somewhat specially suffered from hasty generalisation.”[1]
For such hasty generalisation, Cromer uses Edward William Lane’s views on the Copts on one side of the spectrum and those of Sir John Bowring’s on the other side. In previous articles I have spoken about the views of both Lane[2] and Bowring[3] on the Copts, and I would advise the reader to review them. On Lane, Cromer says:
Until of recent years, when by reason of the British occupation a flood of light has been thrown on everything connected with Egypt, most Englishmen who paid any attention to the national characteristics of the “Modern Egyptians” took their ideas from the classic work, which has immortalised the name of Lane. Now Lane was a strong Mohammedan sympathiser. He knew but little about the Copts. All the information he supplies about them appears to have been based on the testimony of one “respectable Copt” whose acquaintance he happened to make,[4] and who certainly gave a most unfavourable account of his co-religionists. Lane says:
“One of the most remarkable traits in the character of the Copts is their bigotry. They bear a bitter hatred to all other Christians, even exceeding that with which the Moslems regard the unbelievers in El -Islam. . . . They are, generally speaking, of a sullen temper, extremely avaricious, and abominable dissemblers; cringing or domineering according to circumstances. The respectable Copt, to whom I have already acknowledged myself chiefly indebted for the notions which I have obtained respecting the customs of his nation, gives me a most unfavourable account of their character. He avows them to be generally ignorant, deceitful, faithless, and abandoned to the pursuit of worldly gain, and to indulgence in sensual pleasures.”[5]
So, what does Cromer think of what Lane had to say?
This judgment appears to err greatly on the side of severity. Even if it be admitted that the unpleasing qualities, which Lane indicates, are sometimes to be found amongst the Copts, it is to be observed that the Copts have no monopoly of those qualities. Bigotry, ignorance, dissimulation, deceit, faithlessness, the pursuit of worldly gain, and indulgence in sensual pleasures, may, to a certain extent, be Egyptian, but it can scarcely be held that they are especially Coptic attributes. They are to be found in an equal degree amongst Egyptian Moslems.[6]
Rather than defend the Copts, or say a good word about them in the face of the unfair criticism by the anti-Copt Lane, Cromer’s only defence of the Copts in the face of Lane’s accusation of them of the “unpleasing qualities” of “bigotry, ignorance, dissimulation, deceit, faithlessness, the pursuit of worldly gain, and indulgence in sensual pleasures”, an accusation which he implicitly agrees with, is that these unpleasant qualities are “not a monopoly by the Copts” – the Muslims of Egypt share the Copts in them.
And, what about Bowring’s views on the Copts?
Sir John Bowring, who next to Lane is probably the best of the less recent authorities on Egyptian national characteristics, passes a more kindly judgment on the Copts. Although, he says, the Turks have always considered the Copts as “the pariahs of the Egyptian people, yet they are an amiable, pacific, and intelligent race, whose worst vices have grown out of their seeking shelter from wrong and robbery.”[7]
Cromer thinks that Lane has been unfair on the Copts, not in the sense that he misrepresented their character and described them with what is not in them, but only because Lane brushed the whole nation, without exception, with the same paint, and because he ascribed these vices to the Copts alone, sparing the Muslims of Egypt. On the other hand, Bowring has been too kind on the Copts:
Lane appears to me to be prejudiced in this matter. His statement is, to say the least, much too highly coloured as regards the present race of Egyptians, whether Moslems or Copts. Bowring, on the other hand, hardly states the whole case.[8]
And here Cromer throws his Victorian hat in the ring. To him, neither Lane nor Bowring have adequately described the Coptic character, or rather, the vices of Coptic character, which he takes for granted. There is no real attempt to correct Lane’s view on the Copts which he took from a Coptic convert to Islam, or to spend some time in describing some of their virtues. It is only in a footnote, after his assault on the Coptic character, that Cromer observes: “It is, however, to be remembered, looking to the past history of the Copts, that they deserve great credit for the steadfastness with which they have adhered to their faith in the face of persecution.”[9] And that is it. There seem to be nothing much that is good in the Copts, their character, and their moral and intellectual qualities. Cromer, in fact, saw all in Egypt, Copts and Muslims, as mere Orientals, inferior and uncivilised, and possessive of the same character attributes.
Lest his English readers might think that the Copts, owing to their Christian faith, possess similar qualities that the English possess, Cromer hastens to exert himself to refute that. His own experience, he says, leads him to three devastating conclusions on the Copts on their moral and intellectual qualities:
First, that, owing to circumstances unconnected with the difference of religion, the Egyptian Copt has developed certain moral attributes which also belong to the Egyptian Moslem;
Secondly, that, owing to circumstances which are accidentally connected with, but which are not the consequences of his religion, the Copt has developed certain intellectual qualities, in which, mainly from want of exercise, the Egyptian Moslem seems to be deficient;
Thirdly, that for all purposes of broad generalisation, the only difference between the Copt and the Moslem is that the former is an Egyptian who worships in a Christian church, whilst the latter is an Egyptian who worships in a Mohammedan mosque.[10]
That is it in a nutshell, in Cromer’s view: the Copts are as bad or as good as the Muslims in Egypt; and the only difference is that the former worship in churches and the latter in mosques. Cromer’s main interest is to draw a gulf between the Copts and the English, between the Coptic Orthodox Church and religion and the Anglican Church and religion, emphasising that the latter on both occasions are superior. Coptic Christianity is incapable in helping the Copts to attain any moral or intellectual superiority above the Muslims, unlike Western Christianity:
The question now under discussion is one of great interest, for it involves nothing less than this — has the Christian religion, taken by itself and apart from all other influences, been able in the course of centuries to develop moral qualities in the Coptic community superior to those generally attributable to the non-Christian community by which the Copts have been surrounded? I am reluctantly constrained to answer this question in the negative. It is, so far as I am aware, impossible to indicate any moral quality in respect to which the Copt, with his 1500 years of Christianity behind him, is notably superior to the Moslem.[11]
Here, Cromer cites two examples by which he judges Coptic morality:
First, on women, Cromer says, “The moral code by which the relations between man and man are regulated is, in the case of the Copt, no more elevated than in the case of the Moslem. In spite of his religion and his monogamous habits, the Copt has developed no high ideal of womanhood.”[12]
Second, on drinking alcohol, Cromer says: “More than this, in respect to one important point the Moslem occupies a more elevated moral position than the Copt. The former, when untainted by European association, is distinguished for his sobriety — a moral quality which is noticeable to a less extent amongst the Copts.”[13] Here, Cromer quotes in a footnote Bowring’s: “Intoxication is a frequent vice amongst the Copts.”[14]
One cannot but observe Cromer’s unfairness and hypocrisy on both of these examples. The “intoxication of the Copts”, as I have shown before,[15] is an exaggeration, and in the way that Cromer has put it, a generalisation – a matter which he criticised earlier. Further, one can point to the huge problem of public drunkenness in Victorian Britain, even with its Anglican religion. On the “high ideal of womanhood”, Cromer, personally, cannot claim the high ground. Undoubtedly, women in Coptic society in that period occupied a lower status compared to their counterparts in Britain at that time, but the reason for that is not because Coptic Christianity allocates them an inferior status. The Copts, under unimaginable degree of oppression, had to assimilate to Arab culture, borrowing several customs, in order to get by and to draw no attention to themselves, thereby drawing, inviting insults and attacks against their womenfolk. Even with this, the Copts seem to have assimilated only outwardly: in the treatment of their female family members at home, in considering them as equal to men in value, in their adherence to monogamy, in their dedication to their families, partners and children, in their low divorce rate, they were driven by the dictates of their religion. But let us see how Cromer saw the role of women: Beth Baron, in her Egypt as a Woman, observes that Cromer worked specifically to limit employment opportunities for women;[16] and Leila Ahmed, in her Women and Gender in Islam, tells us that Cromer opposed the training of Egyptian women to be doctors, telling Egyptians that, in the West, men were more trustworthy than women in the medical profession.[17] Cromer’s hypocrisy is perhaps better demonstrated by looking into his role in opposing the emancipation of women in Britain and getting the right to vote. In 1909, Cromer founded the Men’s League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage; and he remained its president until 1912. This organisation was enlarged in 1910 to become the National League for Opposing Women’s Suffrage. Largely through his efforts, and those of his organisation, women’s right to vote in public elections was not achieved until 1918 when the Representation of the People Act 1918 was introduced, and even then only partially: the Act enfranchised women who were above 30 years old only if they qualify in certain ways (being registered property occupiers [or married to a registered property occupier], of land of premises with a rateable value greater than £5 or dwelling-house and not subject to any legal incapacity, or being graduates voting in a university constituency). All this when all men over 21 (even men who had turned 19 during service in connection with WWI) could vote in the consistency where they were resident, and without need for any further qualifications. British women aged 21 and above were not able to vote, equal to men, until 1928.
Cromer seems to be contradictory when he talks about the cause of what he calls “the defects of the Coptic character”: “It is, of course, true that the defects of Coptic character,” he says, “are not attributable to their religion. It is also true that the Copt has been exposed to the influence of a somewhat debased form of Christianity.”[18] The contradiction, of course, can be solved if one understands by “their religion” Christianity like Cromer’s, which the Copts carry its label only without it being effective in their lives: the actual Coptic religion is a “somewhat debased form of Christianity.” Cromer is again at pain of extricating Christianity, his version of Christianity, as a cause for the vices of the Copts, all while he blames Coptic Orthodoxy for them:
[T]o those who believe in the moralising and civilising influence of the Christian religion, it is disappointing to find that, in differentiating the Egyptian Copt from his compatriots who are Moslems, it is not possible to indicate any one special virtue, and to say that, in spite of every adventitious disadvantage, the Christian religion has fostered and developed that virtue, and has thus given a certain moral superiority to the Christian over the Moslem. Such, however, appears to be the case. I fear it must be admitted that so far the Copt has stood before the world as a Christian who, by reason of adverse circumstances, has been unable to profit to any great extent by his Christianity.[19]
Here, Cromer, sort of redeems himself to some extent: the reason that the Copts have not benefited from Christianity is the adverse circumstances to which they were exposed. The influence of their “debased form of Christianity”, Cromer adds, “has been exerted under specially unfavourable conditions.”[20] Further, “the defects in the Coptic character” are, “more often than not, ‘the vices of servitude’.”[21] These vices of servitude develop, as he says in the case of the Syrians of Egypt, as a result of having been “obliged to bend before Moslem oppression or European intellectual superiority; and the process of adapting [one] to Moslem caprice, or of imitating European procedures and habits of thought.”[22] These circumstances, he says, are “not calculated to develop the manly qualities.”[23]
The term “the vices of servitude” in relation to the Copts was first used by Stanley Lane-Poole, a nephew of Edward William Poole, in his Cairo, Sketches of its History, Monuments, and Social Life (1898).[24] He describes these vices of the Copts; calls them “defects of a subject race”[25] but emphasises that the Coptic race or form of religion is not more responsible for them, “than the liver of an Anglo-Indian is to be ascribed to his English race.”[26] Lane-Poole describes the vices of the Copts and shows an understanding to how they developed, but he takes care not to blame their vices on their race or form of religion. More importantly, he shows sympathy and hope in the Copts’ ability to repair their character: “The time is coming when the Copt may have a chance of rehabilitating the character he has been losing for so many centuries.”[27] None of this sympathy and hope is detectable in Cromer’s writings about the Copts.
The Copts have always been praised for their practical skills in arithmetic and accountancy, a matter which they inherited from their ancestors in ancient Egypt. As Bowring has observed, “The Copts are the surveyors, the scribes, the arithmeticians, the measurers, the clerks, in a word, the learned men of the land. They are to the counting-house and the pen what the fellah is to the field and the plough.”[28] But that does not please Cromer, and here again, he assails with cruelty their mental qualities as he had done their moral qualities: “[I]t cannot be said that, in any of the higher branches of intellectual life, the Copts have shown any superiority over the Moslems. But, under the stress of circumstances, they have developed certain mediocre aptitudes. As compared with the unbending Moslem, they have shown a greater degree of flexibility in adapting themselves to a few of the elementary requirements of civilisation. They have seized on those crumbs from the Moslem table which the Moslem was too proud, too careless, or too unintelligent to appropriate to himself.”[29]
Cromer, who had never promoted education in Egypt beyond primary level,[30] however, recognises the usefulness of the Copts and the dependency of Egypt’s governments, even that of the British, on their skills and knowledge:
They [the Copts] made themselves useful, indeed almost indispensable to their oppressors, and the aptitudes which they thus acquired during the period of oppression, ought to have stood them in good stead when the floodtide of European civilisation set in. For the European will recognise that the Copt possesses in some degree that accurate habit of thought which is wanting in the Moslem, and which is the god at whose altar the logical European is an unceasing devotee. He will accord a lukewarm welcome to the Copt, not on account of his religion, but because the Copt can add and subtract, because he knows his multiplication table, because he can measure the length and breadth of a plot of ground without making any gross error in the measurement, and because, although his system of accounts is archaic, at the same time it is better to be in possession of a bad system of accounts than, like the Egyptian Moslem, to have scarcely any system at all.[31]
The gist of Cromer’s view on the Copts is that they are Oriental just like any other Oriental – inferior, whether Copt or Muslim, to the Westerners. The Copt ought to be kept at distance – used but not regarded as equal. The Copt could only be given a lukewarm welcome to benefit from his knowledge and skills in arithmetic and accounting in the administration of the state. The Coptic religion is a debased form of Christianity that is unable to confer any high moral qualities on the Copts. They are full of moral vices that mar their character – these vices are product of their servitude to the Muslims. Cromer pays no real attention to Coptic virtues and exclusively dwells on their vices, which he says put them no higher than the level of the Muslims of Egypt.
No sane Copt will deny the evils that have come upon our character as a consequence of our submission to Islamic tyranny and oppression. This, we recognise, write about and fight against. We are not interested in being superior to Muslims or comparing ourselves with them: what we are interested here is to point to Cromer’s imperialist and supremacist views that led him to launch a cruel assault on the Coptic religion, character, moral and intellectual quality. In this, he showed not only unfairness and hypocrisy but, more importantly, a remarkable lack of understanding and sympathy.
The English were, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, undoubtedly more advanced than the Copts in many aspects of culture and in civilisation – in fact they have been more advanced since England appeared in the map of the world as a power to be recognised with; but that is due to the particular economic and socio-political circumstances of each. The histories of the English and the Copts are different: the English must thank Providence that they have not come under oppression like the Copts have come for the last fourteen centuries or so.
One cannot but come to the conclusion that Cromer, despite all his administrative merits in governing Egypt after the British Occupation in 1882, which we recognise, was just like Edward William Lane: an anti-Copt – a man without much understanding of our history and suffering or sympathy for the Copts.
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[1] Cromer, The Earl of., Modern Egypt, Volume 2 (New York: Macmillan, 1908), p. 204.
[2] Dioscorus Boles, Edward William Lane and his responsibility for demonising the Copts and misguiding the British about the Copts مسئولية ادوارد ويليام لين التاريخية عن تشويه سمعة الأقباط (April 15, 2011).
[3] Dioscorus Boles, Sir John Bowring on the Copts (May 24, 2019).
[4] That “respectable Copt” was actually a renegade who converted to Islam.
[5] Edward William Lane: An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, written in Egypt during the years 1833, -34, and -35 (London, Charles Knight & Co., 1936), Volume II, p. 334-5..
[6] Modern Egypt, Volume 2, p. 205.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid, p. 206, n.1.
[10] Ibid, pp. 205-6.
[11] Ibid, p. 206.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid, n. 2.
[15] Dioscorus Boles, Sir John Bowring on the Copts (May 24, 2019).
[16] Beth Baron, Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics (University of California Press, 2005), p. 28.
[17] Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 153.
[18] Modern Egypt, pp. 206-7.
[19] Ibid, p. 207.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid, p. 218. It must be observed that Cromer has higher regard for the Syrians compared to the Copts.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Stanley Lane-Poole, Cairo, Sketches of its History, Monuments, and Social Life (1898), p. 208.
[25] Ibid, p. 207.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Modern Egypt, p. 208.
[28] John Bowring, Report on Egypt and Candia, addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Viscount Palmerston (London, 1840), p. 8.
[29] Modern Egypt, p. 207.
[30] See, for instance: Yossi Maman and Janan Faraj Falah, “Education Ltd.”—The Influence of British Earl of Cromer on the Education System in Egypt (1883-1907), Advances in Historical Studies, 2018, 7, 79-96.
[31] Modern Egypt, p. 208.