The Levantine British: Defying Imperial Race Categories in Colonial Alexandria

Abstract

This treatment of the Levantine British, based on family diaries and consular reports, asks why a British colonial, Michael Barker, exiled from Egypt in 1956, continued to identify with the Alexandria locality. His last wish was to be buried in Alexandria. While the conventional image of the British colony is one shaped by ‘Orientalist’ descriptions of the ‘foreign’ as external to ‘Britishness’, the evidence suggests an enduring identification of members of the colony with the Levantine community of Alexandria. In conventional imperial discourses of the colonial era the ‘Levantine’ had negative connotations; it was a signifier of a loss of British identity and immersion into a culturally different, foreign category. Yet, the memoirs of Michael Barker, as well as consular reports on colonial institutions and the application of the Ottoman Capitulations, indicate that the boundaries of the colony were porous. Official policies insisted on a culturally distinct British identity; however, there are documented instances where the definition of ‘Britishness’ was widened to include the ‘Levantine’. The Levantine identification of Michael Barker had political ramifications, apparent in his family's decision to remain in Egypt when others emigrated out, to continue to invest in the Egyptian economy when others divested, to enable the emigration of Levantine British to British territories after Egyptian independence, and to cling to the remnants of symbols of belonging to Alexandria, the very last of which was the family tomb. That act memorialized colonial lives that stood in marked contrast to the ascendant narratives of nation and empire.