The British occupation and the roots of Egypt’s 1919 Revolution: The impact of the British occupation of Egypt in 1881 not only sowed the seeds of the country’s 1919 revolution, but set in motion a pattern of inequality and wealth concentration that continued long after the British had been driven out, Sherine Abdel-Razek writes for Ahram Online. The article tells a familiar story of an exploitative colonial power controlling and profiting from the country’s natural resources with an iron fist: crippling taxes on Egypt’s textile industry, inflationary monetary policies and enforced dependency on cotton exports.

“The ugliest of treacheries”: This state of affairs was allowed to continue after the First World War after US President Woodrow Wilson backtracked on his pledge to recognize the sovereignty of colonized peoples, Erez Manela recounts in an essay for the New York Times. After the British arrested Saad Zaghloul — setting off a wave of demonstrations later to be called the 1919 Revolution — Egyptians called on Wilson to follow through on his rhetoric and help the country assert its right to self-determination. Their pleas fell on deaf ears: Wilson decided to recognize British control of the country, a move that leading Egyptian intellectual Mohammed Hussein Heikal described as “the ugliest of treacheries” and “the most profound repudiation of principles.”