The Denshaway incident (June 1906)

08The Denshaway incident (June 1906)

• At the village of Denshaway English officers went out on a pigeon-shooting party. A peasant warned them not to fire lest the threshing floor of wheat catch fire, for it was harvest time, but the officers disregarded him and insisted on shooting.
• The shots missed the pigeons and killed a woman; the villagers rose and chased the officers, and one of them died of a sunstroke.
• The British administration avenged itself most harshly: 52 defendants were sent to trial and seven more tried in absence. The sham trial ended with four hanged, twelve sentenced to hard labour for varying terms and five flogged.
• Mustafa Kamil exploited the incident to denounce the occupation in Egypt and in Europe.
• The British government realised its administration's position in Egypt had become difficult, and so recalled Cromer (April 1907) to calm the situation — but this only strengthened the national movement.
• Mustafa Kamil saw the need to organise efforts, so he created the Club of the Higher Schools (Nadi Madaris al-Uli) and the National Party (Hizb al-Watan) in December 1907, and issued English and French editions of Al-Liwa for the European reader.