AHC: European majority in Egypt

[Cuāuhtemōc]

Egypt had significant Italian and Greek communities living in Egypt until most of them left when Nasser took power in the 1950s. With a POD sometime around the nineteenth century, what would it take for Egypt to be a European-majority country and how would its history change?

 

[Seleucus]

.......

You're not getting a European majority in Egypt (or anywhere in Africa) with a 19th century PoD, barring genocide, mass murder, and the like.


If you really want a chance at European-majority Egypt, a surviving Ptolemaic Egypt (with regular imports of Hellenes and Celts) might succeed. But you'd have to have a really really early PoD for that.


For reference, the population of Egypt in 1940 was ~17 million, of which 100,000 were Greek, and ~50,000 were Italian. Even if you increased their population by 100 times, there *still* wouldn't be a European majority in Egypt!

Also, what is it with all these ridiculous "European/white majority in African countries" threads? South Africa, Zimbabwe, and now Egypt?

 

[Reagent]

.......

You're not getting a European majority in Egypt (or anywhere in Africa) with a 19th century PoD, barring genocide, mass murder, and the like.


If you really want a chance at European-majority Egypt, a surviving Ptolemaic Egypt (with regular imports of Hellenes and Celts) might succeed. But you'd have to have a really really early PoD for that.


For reference, the population of Egypt in 1940 was ~17 million, of which 100,000 were Greek, and ~50,000 were Italian. Even if you increased their population by 100 times, there *still* wouldn't be a European majority in Egypt!

Also, what is it with all these ridiculous "European/white majority in African countries" threads? South Africa, Zimbabwe, and now Egypt?

I agree with everything except for this.

 

[Seleucus]

I agree with everything except for this.

Fair enough. Translate that into 'Anywhere in Africa with a decent population density' or 'Most of the places people usually think of in Africa.'

After all, when people talk about getting a European majority in African nations, it's usually places like French Algeria, or Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, or South Africa, or etc. that's completely impossible. If you tried hard enough, you could probably get a European majority in lightly populated areas like Italian Libya or Namibia though.

 

[Deleted member 67076]

What you need is some good ol' genocide. Its quick, efficient and always gets results. That and massive amounts of race mixing.

Now I don't know if the OP agrees with the one drop rule, but I'll throw it in there anyway.

On a serious note, yeah, this probably ain't gonna happen. You need a POD way, way, way, way before the 1900s.

 

[Namayan]

Egypt had significant Italian and Greek communities living in Egypt until most of them left when Nasser took power in the 1950s. With a POD sometime around the nineteenth century, what would it take for Egypt to be a European-majority country and how would its history change?

ASB.

It was once the richest nation, richest province in the Roman Empire. Killing its local populace ain't practical. Even if you have a successful crusade, you still got the Coptics to deal with.

By 19th century, Napoleon could not even genocide the locals. Nor the ottomans nor the British would even massacre the locals. It's just not practical even if you are a racist/white supremacist. If a racist/supremist is smart enough to beat the ottomans or the British, it is much easier to get their support than kill them all.

Genocide happens when the locals are minorities nor can pose a military, economic, political threat. Egyptian locals were never minorities in their country. Expulsion of locals happened in North America, Australia which is a younger culture, less than organized than Egypt.

The Greeks will never expel nor genocide Egyptians due to their respect towards them much like the Romans had for the Greeks.

 

[HunterX]

A hard fought Mongol conquest might be a good way to decimate the local population. If the Mongols take punitive actions after a fiercely resisted conquest, you could get devastated cities and a disruption of food production that would cause even more death.

Of course that doesn't help in bringing in Europeans, and it's well before the 19th century.

 

[SunDeep]

Move the goalposts- have an ATL where the Arabian peninsula is deemed to be part of Europe geographically, with the Nile deemed to be the boundary which divides Europe and Africa, in the same way that the Bosphorus is deemed to be the boundary between Europe and Asia IOTL. Perhaps by having a more enduring Ottoman Empire, the peoples under their dominion, such as the Egyptian Arabs, could gain acknowledgment as a fringe group of Europeans in the same manner as the Armenians.

 

[Pischinovski]

If you just want Egypt to get a indo-europeak speaking majority, than I think that would be difficult but doable:

Have the Eastern Roman Empire stay in good shape. I think it is important that they begin to think of Egyptian/Coptic as an inferior language. We could go the Christian way here and say that just Hebrew and Greek are real good languages because the bible is written in these languages (you can easily combine this with some political reason as well). That will ofcourse lead to conflicts between the patriarcs of Constantinople and Alexandria.
The emperor is ofcourse pro-Constantinople. After some time of religous and political conflict in Egypt, the old elites are gone and replaced by Greek beurocrats. More schools are established in Egyptian cities, the language of education and church is greek, the empire adopts a more China-like system with knowledge of Greek language and culture beeing the only way to succeed in Egypt or any other province of the empire.
Now we are already deep into the middle ages. The cities of lower Egypt should already be majority Greek speaking but surely with a large Coptic minority. The peasants would still speak Coptic but the language of commerce would be Greek.
Our problem is now that most people are still Coptic speaking peasants and not Greekified townfolk. And what do we against peasants? Invaders!
The Arabs/Turks/Mongols or any other invader should be specialized on fieldbattles. They should not have much experience with siege warfare. I thinkbthat is possible as long as Egypt is their first goal. Arabs would be my best guess for this job. They get united by Al-Jengis ben Khan in the 12th century and have luck in Palestine but have no idwa to deal with Egypt's fortified cities. Instead they just burn down everything in the country side. The Coptic peasants would suffer whereas the Greek speaking city people have good luck.
The Arabs get defeated by a Greko-Roman army from Anatolia before they can destroy the cities of Egypt but the peasants will have suffered. That means that Egypt needs settlers and they could come from Greek speaking areas on the Balkan and Anatolia.
Later we could get a greek speaking poet of Egypt who becomes some kind of national poet like Dante or Shakespeare. The Egyptian common Greek would be a languahe of culture and literature and its position in the Egyptian society would be solified and by the beginning of the industrial era Egypt would have a slight Greek majority which would increase with urbanisation. I could see Greek beeing the mothertongue of 3/4 og the population by the year 2000 and that without fascism or ethnic cleansing.

 

[St. Just]

No majority, but you could have a French Egypt and have pied-noirs in Egypt. Also Greeks could flee trouble in Anatolia/Cyprus/Greece proper for Egypt...

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

Fair enough. Translate that into 'Anywhere in Africa with a decent population density' or 'Most of the places people usually think of in Africa.'

After all, when people talk about getting a European majority in African nations, it's usually places like French Algeria, or Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, or South Africa, or etc. that's completely impossible. If you tried hard enough, you could probably get a European majority in lightly populated areas like Italian Libya or Namibia though.

I think it's also possible if they had followed through on any of the proposals to put a Jewish homeland in Africa.