Neutralism Made Positive: Egyptian Anti-colonialism on the Road to Bandung

Many assessments of the trajectory of positive neutralism in Egypt have presented it as a foreign policy implemented in response to the Cold War context, and ineffective in the shadow of superpower rivalries. This contribution contends instead that positive neutralism developed out of the pursuit of a particular combination of foreign policy and nation building in Egypt, by elites whose political formation was dominated by an anti-colonial rather than Cold War consciousness. This is demonstrated through the analysis of three foreign policy episodes and parallel nation building programmes unfolding between 1952 and 1955. Together they illustrate the origins of positive neutralism in the positions taken by Gamal Abdel Nasser and the Free Officers on the British presence in Egypt, on regional alliances and the Baghdad Pact, and on development and pan-Arabism in nation building, all before Egypt's participation in the 1955 Bandung Conference after which the policy of positive neutralism was formally adopted. The use of Egyptian documents throughout foregrounds Egyptian agency and motivations in drawing up policy, and enables an evaluation of the contributions of positive neutralism identified in Egypt at the time.