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Introduction: The “Forty Thieves” at the Semiramis Hotel On March 12, 1921, a convoy of official vehicles arrived at the Semiramis Hotel on the banks of the Nile in Cairo. Emerging from the cars was a gathering of British officials that arguably represented the greatest concentration of imperial expertise ever assembled in one location. At the center of the group was Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Secretary of State for the Colonies. Flanking him were figures who had already passed into the realm of legend: T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), Gertrude Bell (the “Uncrowned Queen of Iraq”), Sir Percy Cox…
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Introduction: The Arab World Meets Bandung In April 1955, as the leaders of twenty-nine newly independent states gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, one figure stood out among the delegates from the Arab world — Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt’s thirty-seven-year-old prime minister. Barely three years after seizing power in Cairo, Nasser was already emerging as the defining voice of Arab nationalism. The Bandung Conference gave him a platform to link the Arab struggle against imperialism with the broader Afro-Asian movement. The Bandung Conference, hosted by Indonesia’s President Sukarno, was the first large-scale gathering of postcolonial leaders from Asia and Africa. Its aim…