Thomas Cook travelers arriving at London’s Gatwick Airport last Sept. 23rd were dismayed to discover this announcement over the firm’s empty check-in desks: Thomas Cook has ceased trading and all flights are cancelled.  For several decades around the turn of the 20th century, British colonialism and Thomas Cook & Son’s travel agency enjoyed imperial high noon together on the Nile, and Cook’s Nile flotilla was an indispensable anchor of the company’s world-wide business.  This lecture explores the colonial heyday of Cook’s venture in Egypt, the lure of the antiquities that made it possible, and the collaboration and resistance which such tourism encountered from Egyptians.

Donald M. Reid is the author of Whose Pharaohs? Archaeology, Museums, and Egyptian National Identity from Napoleon to World War I and Contesting Antiquity in Egypt: Archaeologies, Museums and the Struggle for Identities from World War I to Nasser.   He is professor emeritus of History, Georgia State University, and affiliate professor at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Literature, University of Washington.