Final Statement

---In case anyone is interested in what my MRP is finally going to be about. The thesis statement below was officially approved earlier this month:

Published just three years after the British invasion and occupation of Egypt, Karl Baedeker’s 1885 guidebook, Egypt: Handbook for Travellers, is a text that reinforces colonial ideology and legitimates its practice. This guidebook was produced for British travellers; owing to Baedeker’s prominence and popularity, Egypt was sold across England and was even purchased and read by those not planning to travel. As Mary Louise Pratt discusses in Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, travel books, including guidebooks, are significant ideological tools of colonialism. Following Michael Foucault’s definition of discourse and the work by Edward Said and David Spurr on, specifically, colonial discourse, I explore the language and images used in Baedeker’s text that reflect the colonial ideology of the late 1800s.

However, Baedeker’s text also suggests apprehension by the British, as they question their authority and ability to rule the new colony. The British anxiety shows through the text’s promotion of colonial ideology in Egypt in the same manner as described by Ali Behdad in Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution. The text shows a disruption in the dominate colonial discourse with a questioning of this very ideology. The anxiety that surrounds this questioning stems from the psychological effects of colonization as explained by Albert Memmi in The Colonizer and the Colonized. Despite the examples of subtly hinted at foreboding found in Egypt, the overarching message in the text promotes colonialism and celebrates the recent British accusation of the nation, which remained under British rule until 1922.