Preserving home: resistance to cholera sanitation procedures in Egypt

Abstract

Less than a year after the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, cholera struck in late June 1883. The country experienced three subsequent epidemics in 1895–6, 1902 and 1947. Over the course of these four epidemics, the British colonial government and its agencies closed access to water resources, forcibly entered homes and removed sick people from their families, ostensibly to prevent the spread of the disease. Concerns for the public’s health served as a convenient pretext to practice emergency sanitary measures which were cheaper than comprehensive reform and reinforced the British colonial view of Egyptians as inferior to European colonisers. Public health measures also supported subsidiary goals to control water, control bodies and police the private spaces of the home. The British characterisation of Egyptian water practice and home sanitation as unclean, even dirty, underpinned these methods, even though proper sanitation had always been an important part of Egyptian and Ottoman culture. In response, people resisted the home invasions and forced family separations. People lied, eluded, spread rumours, persuaded others to lie, fled their homes and concealed family members. Evidence includes government reports, Egyptian daily newspapers, photographs, plans and memoirs. Although these are documents produced by government officials and members of Egypt’s elite, they include evidence of substantial public resistance to cholera policing. They can be read against the grain to reveal the power of this resistance.