Britain's Role in Egypt ••• 261King Faruq
F
aruq (1920-1965) was modern Egypt's second and last king. He was born
in Cairo, the only son of Egypt's first king, Fuad. He received his education
in Cairo and later at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in England.
This was cut short, however, when in 1936 he was recalled to Egypt upon his
father's death. He was formally crowned king the following year, when he was
only seventeen.
Faruq has acquired a very bad reputation. Though at first he was looked
upon as a promising ruler, devoutly Muslim and dedicated to his people, he
soon became distracted by petty palace intrigues and moral indiscretions. The
British high commissioner in Egypt in 1937 seemingly predicted Faruq's fu¬
ture when he described him as an "untruthful, capricious, irresponsible, and
vain" young man of "superficial intelligence and charm of manner." Is this,
however, really the whole story?
When Faruq assumed the throne, he had an understandable ambition to be¬
come an effective and respected ruler of Egypt. He also envisaged reforms that
would have benefited the average Egyptian. But these plans soon foundered
upon the resistance of an entrenched establishment made up of politicians (the
king frequently quarreled with the Wafd, Egypt's largest party), bureaucrats,
and large landowners. Also, Faruq could never accept the fact that the British
high commissioner, not he, held ultimate power in Egypt.
Faruq defied the British whenever he could, often in petty ways. When
Britain dragged Egypt into World War II and the country became a staging
area for Allied operations, most of the Egyptian people, including the king,
opposed the presence of a power they regarded as an unwanted occupier.
Thus, when High Commissioner Sir Miles Lampson ordered Faruq to intern,
for the duration of the war, his Italian servants, the king replied, "I'll get rid
of my Italians when you get rid of yours." He was referring to Lampson's Ital¬
ian wife.
King Faruq could have made his life much easier, and his reign perhaps
longer, if he had gone along with the powers that confronted him. He chose
instead to act as an independent leader, advocating for the creation of the
Arab League and later backing the Arabs in the contest for Palestine. Ulti¬
mately, Faruq realized that he could not win the struggle against the British or
the competition with Egyptian politicians, which eventually led him into a life
of cynicism and self-indulgence—a decline that began in 1942. In 1952 he was
finally overthrown by Egyptian military officers. He ended up in European ex¬
ile, dying in a Rome nightclub when he was only forty-five.