Dinshaway Incident

The Denshawai Incident is the name given to a dispute which occurred in 1906 between British military officers and locals in Denshawai, Egypt. It is considered by some historians, such as Peter Mansfield who wrote The British in Egypt (1971), to mark a turning point in the British presence in that country. Though the incident itself was fairly small in terms of the number of casualties and injuries, the British officers' response to the incident, and its grave consequences, were what led to its lasting impact. The incident was commemorated by the establishment of the Denshway Museum.

There were many tensions that led up to the Denshawai Incident. The Egyptian people had a growing sense of nationalism long before the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. The occupation was touched off by the mutiny of Ahmed Orabi.This mutiny was started by the idea of revolution and liberation of the Egyptian people from their Turkish overlords; it led to the Anglo-Egyptian War. The British occupation brought commerce and related development to Egypt. The Egyptian government was taken over and directed by Lord Cromer. He was in charge of economic reforms and worked to eliminate the debt caused by the khedival regime. The success of these reforms was mainly enjoyed by the upper and middle classes. Their refusal to introduce British-style political reforms led to the passing of restrictive laws leaving the poor even poorer.

Since the khedival regime, the upper classes benefited from the British occupation and its abundant success. The middle class was left to resist the British occupation. They attacked the British for not dealing with the khedival governmental corruption. Positions in the Egyptian government were filled by the British officers. Newspaper writers claimed that, if not for British racism, those positions could have been easily filled by capable, educated Egyptians.

On 13 June 1906, a group of British officers upset the residents of Dinshaway by hunting pigeons for sport. Since the pigeons that the officers were shooting were raised by the villagers and served as a local source of livelihood, the villagers sought to protect their property and attacked the soldiers. A scuffle broke out, and an officer’s gun was fired, he claimed unintentionally, wounding a female villager who was the wife of a Muslim prayer leader. This provoked further outrage from the villagers, who attacked the British officers. One of the officers managed to escape from the scene and fled back on foot towards the British camp in the intense noontime heat. He later collapsed outside the camp and died, probably of heatstroke. A villager who came upon him there tried to assist him but, when other soldiers from the camp discovered the villager alongside the body of the dead officer, they assumed or claimed that he had killed the soldier, and so they killed the villager.

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