Much of Kamil's writings anticipated later Third World nationalism as he gave extensive coverage in Al-Liwa to independence movements in India (modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) and the Netherlands East Indies (modern Indonesia), suggesting that independence activists in both places shared a common predicament with people like himself, as all were members of an oppressed "East" dominated by the West.[17] In 1900, Kamil who had hoped that France might intervene in the Boer War on behalf of the Transvaal and Orange Free State wrote: "What a lesson for us who counted on Europe!"[18] After the Entente Cordial of 1904 and the Russian-Japanese war of 1904-05, Kamil became ardent Japanophile, praising the Japanese as an "Eastern" people who had modernized and as a role model for Egypt.[18] Under the terms of the Entene Cordial of April 1904, France recognized Egypt as being in the British sphere of influence in exchange for which Britain recognized Morocco in the French sphere of influence. Kamil gave the Russo-Japanese War extensive coverage in Al-Liwa' and praised the Japanese for having modernized without losing their Japanese identity.[19] Viewing the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II as a reformer, at the same time, Kamil constantly covered reforming efforts in the Ottoman Empire and expressed the hope that Abdul Hamid would be a great reformer like the Meiji Emperor of Japan.[19] Much of Kamil's writings in Al-Liwa urged Abdul Hamid to be more like the Meiji Emperor in giving the Ottoman empire "vigor" in embracing modernizing reforms.[19] On 28 March 1904, Kamil wrote to a French friend, Juliette Adam that he was writing a book on Japan "so as to explain to the people how to rise, and to encourage them by the current striving of the Japanese".[3] In June 1904, Kamil wrote to Adam that he had finished his book on Japan, saying: "I have just finished the first volume of my book on Japan. The chief reason which has pushed me to do it is to profit by the current of great sympathy that my compatriots have for the Japanese to tell them that those people are so strong only because they are patriotic.