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Author Anderson, Kyle J., author.

Title The Egyptian labor corps : race, space, and place in the First World War / Kyle J. Anderson
Published Austin : University of Texas Press, 2021

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Description 1 online resource
Contents A broken promise -- The new corvée -- From home to the front -- "If this is the Holy Land, what must Hell be like?" -- Race and space in ELC camps -- Listening in on the ELC -- The men of the ELC take action -- "I will not accept slavery!" -- The ELC and the 1919 revolution
Summary During World War I, the British Empire enlisted half a million young men, predominantly from the countryside of Egypt, in the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC) and put them to work handling military logistics in Europe and the Middle East. British authorities reneged on their promise not to draw Egyptians into the war, and, as Kyle Anderson shows, the ELC was seen by many in Egypt as a form of slavery. The Egyptian Labor Corps tells the forgotten story of these young men, culminating in the essential part they came to play in the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. Combining sources from archives in four countries, Anderson explores Britain's role in Egypt during this period and how the ELC came to be, as well as the experiences and hardships these men endured. As he examines the ways they coped--through music, theater, drugs, religion, strikes, and mutiny--he illustrates how Egyptian nationalists, seeing their countrymen in a state akin to slavery, began to grasp that they had been racialized as "people of color." Documenting the history of the ELC and its work during the First World War, The Egyptian Labor Corps also provides a fascinating reinterpretation of the 1919 revolution through the lens of critical race theory
Notes Vendor-supplied metadata
Subject Great Britain. Army. Labour Corps -- Minorities -- History
Great Britain. Army. Labour Corps -- Minorities -- Social conditions -- History
SUBJECT Great Britain. Army. Labour Corps fast
Subject World War, 1914-1918 -- Conscript labor -- Social aspects -- Egypt
Egyptians -- Race identity -- History
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Palestine.
World War, 1914-1918 -- Campaigns -- Egypt -- Sinai
HISTORY / General.
Armed Forces -- Minorities
Military campaigns
Egypt
Egypt -- Sinai
Middle East -- Palestine
Genre/Form Electronic books
History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9781477324554
1477324550