An Inevitable Revolution

In this video Q&A, Eve Troutt Powell provides a historian's perspective on the Egyptian uprising.

Priya Ratneshwar

Egypt's mass protests and the resulting overthrow of Hosni Mubarak's thirty-year presidency took much of the world by surprise. But Associate Professor of History Eve Troutt Powell believes that although Tunisia's recent revolution roused Egyptians, their own uprising was inevitable, fueled by decades of grievances against Mubarak's autocratic regime, including economic stagnation and human rights abuses.

A cultural historian who specializes in the modern Middle East, Troutt Powell first went to Egypt in 1983 on an internship with the American University in Cairo. She has spent half her life traveling back and forth to the country, and is the author of A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain and the Mastery of the Sudan. She is now working on a book about the memory of slavery in the Nile valley.

As the most populous country in the Arab world prepares for its new future, Frontiers sat down with Troutt Powell to discuss its past. In this video Q&A, she talks about the forces of history behind the revolution, its key players and its transformative impact around the world.