News, Leaks, and Propaganda in Modern Egypt | Chloe Bordewich

E543 | In times of conflict, state governments can be especially sensitive about protecting secrets. When new technologies are involved, like the telegraph, confusion over how exactly it functions and whether it is secure invite new debates over the nature of knowledge and what the public has the right to know. In this episode, Chloe Bordewich discusses her research about news, leaks, and propaganda in modern Egypt. By highlighting a particular court case around the turn of the 20th century involving leaks of sensitive military information and telegraph operators, Bordewich shows how Egypt was at the center of a global story involving the Egyptian public's right to knowledge, new technologies, and the pressures of colonialism. Chloe Bordewich is a postdoctoral fellow in public history at Boston University. Her research focuses on empire, technology, and the control of information in 19th- and 20th-century Egypt. Maryam Patton is a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies program. She is interested in early modern cultural exchanges, and her dissertation studies cultures of time and temporal consciousness in the Eastern Mediterranean during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. CREDITS Episode No. 543 Release Date: 6 May 2023 Recording Location: Cambridge, MA Sound production by Maryam Patton Music: Aḥmad al-Ajamī - Tawshīḥ yā ghazālā Bibliography and images courtesy of Chloe Bordewich available at https://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2023/04/bordewich.html