Cotton and the Egyptian economy, 1820-1914: a study in trade and development 9780198216438

Citation preview

t. eS _ a “ % _ if a : . st,73¥ «- ..‘ ” “0.Sry . cm oy oop

a #, ‘s we rt eal Fa,

a .. « oT,* ”Ree sah, ..ety 2 Te ae a. “ : "ye we ey :Pa.“..:*:. ..:4% >: 5%, ney ene * : er. eeteiSpee 4 eea yo St

an ’AF ° 4,aauae . . ‘>.an - ey ™.

*#

*

e wey : a eo

. as . + *&™:ry : * . : .. .. . ®

my 5; a rniatre, aeeo

®

COTTON AND THE

EGYPTIAN ECONOMY 1820-1914

COTTON AND THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY 1820-1914.

ROWEN

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1969

, Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. 1 GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON CAPE TOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA

_ BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA

t-| | 5 KUALA LUMPUR SINGAPORE HONG KONG TOKYO

~~ fe, a.

fom | a eo © OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1969

& pe wo r Bao

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD BY VIVIAN RIDLER PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

an. ,. bdn Lat 1 4

: : : on at oy ae } * eer a . q wt iPy i©va ‘seeensant Ber2 ei gia j sy ; é Cee

\

PREFACE URING the last three decades of the nineteenth century :

1D thedominant production of long-staple became the In) feature of Egyptiancotton economic activity. those years it was the major source of income for almost every proprietor in the Delta. It was the spur to a large programme

of Government public works. It stood at the centre ofanim- |< portant sector of the economy devoted entirely to financing its

srowth, ginning it, and selling it on the European market.

Later, in the period just before the First World War, its —

predominance was further reinforced by the extension of its cultivation to Upper Egypt and a rapid advance in the value,

of the harvest, which meant that by 1909-14 it provided _

93 per cent of Egypt’s export earnings. _ This work is an attempt to examine the process by which cotton gained such a pre-eminent position, and to assess the effect of the concentration of effort and resources which it required on the growth of the rest of the economy. In so doing it is hoped to make some contribution to the literature on export-

oriented economies and on the role of foreign trade in economic development. Apart from the general fact that discussion of these topics is always assisted by reference to the

experience of individual countries, a history of Egyptian production of long-staple cotton from 1820 to 1914. also provides

two points of particular interest. In the first place Egypt is one of the few developing countries in Asia or Africa for which

there is considerable evidence about economic conditions throughout the nineteenth century. This allows a number of present-day problems connected with the subject of trade and development to be seen in longer perspective. Secondly, unlike the export sectors which usually provide the bulk of examples for studies of this kind—the oil industry, rubber plantations, or mines—the cultivation of cotton is an activity which is very much more closely linked with the ordinary life of the country concerned. It did not take place, as the production of these other commodities tended to do, solely in a foreign-dominated

viii Preface enclave isolated culturally, and often geographically, from the rest of the economy. The history of cotton-cultivation and of the development of the economy in nineteenth-century Egypt has already been the subject of two important works, A. E. Crouchley’s The Economic Development of Modern Egypt (London, 1938) and Charles

Issawi’s article ‘Egypt since 1800: a Study of Lop-Sided Development’ in the Journal of Modern History (vol. xxi, no. 1)

for March 1961. Each makes an indispensable contribution. There is also F. Charles-Roux’s La Production du coton en Egypte

(Paris, 1908) which, even after sixty years, remains a valuable source of information. Nevertheless, it seemed that there was

room for a fresh approach. As yet no writer has sought to follow a description of the growth of the Egyptian economy during the nineteenth century with a detailed analysis of the way in which that growth was shaped by the increasing cultivation of cotton. Again, with the notable exception of Issawi’s article, little effort has been made to assess the relevance of orthodox economic theory concerning export-oriented economies to Egypt’s own particular experience. This present work is an attempt to break new ground in both directions. That this attempt could be made at all owes much to many people and institutions. Foremost among these are the Warden and Fellows of St. Antony’s College, Oxford, under whose aegis the doctoral thesis of which this is an amended version was written; and especially Mr. Albert Hourani, to whom I must ever remain indebted for his unfailing generosity and kindness and good counsel. I have also been sustained at all

times by the advice and encouragement of Miss Elizabeth

Monroe and Professor Charles Issawi. Others to whom I owe a particular debt of gratitude are Father H. H. Ayrout, S.J., Dr. F. Shehab, Dr. A. A. al-Hitta, Miss Nancy Carver, Mr. R. B. Carver, Mr. T. A. F. Dixon, Miss Afaf Loutfi El Sayed, Dr. D. Hopwood, Mrs. Nadia Farag, and particularly Ursula Owen; also the Secretaries of the Manchester, Oldham, and

Bolton Chambers of Commerce and of the British Cotton Growing Association and the members of the Board of the Astor Foundation, who made it possible for me to spend an invaluable year in the United States. Miss Enid Moberly Bell was kind enough to allow me to use her father’s papers now

Preface ix deposited with The Times. In this context I should also thank the former Editor of The Times, Sir William Haley, and the Librarian of The Times, Mr. W. R. A. Easthope. Finally, the book has gained immeasurably from the use I have been able to make of the papers of Mustafa Manzalawi, which were so

kindly put at my disposal by his grandson, Dr. Mahmoud

Manzaloui of Alexandria. Transcripts of Crown-copyright records in the Public Record Office appear by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office. Earlier versions of some short sections in Chapters LX, X,

and XI first appeared in articles of mine printed in Middle Eastern Studies and St. Antony's Papers, No. 17, aS well as in two

papers I presented to conferences at the School of Oriental and African Studies in September 1966 and July 1967.

E. R. J. O. Oxford August 1967

CONTENTS

List of Figures X111

List of ‘Tables XV

List of Abbreviations X1X A Note on Transliteration and Sources xxl

Introduction XX111

PARTI

181g 3 1837 28

COTTON AND THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY

1805-1879

I. Muhammad ‘Ali and the Egyptian Economy, 1805-

i1, The Introduction of Long-staple Cotton, 1820—

111. The Return to a Free Market in Agricultural

Produce, 1838-1860 58

1v. [he Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 89 v. The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant Posi-

tion in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 122

1820-1879 160

vi. Cotton Exports and Egyptian Foreign ‘Trade, PART II

COTTON AND THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY

| 1880-1914

vit. [The Production and Export of Cotton 183 vii. Development in the Cotton Sector of the Economy = 212

xii Contents

culture 236

1x. The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914—Agrix. The Growth of the Economy, 1880—1914—Industry,

Services, and Commerce 276

Thought 326 Conclusion 352

x1. The Growth of the Economy in Contemporary

Appendix 1. The Method of Valuing Egyptian

Imports and Exports, 1873-1911 376

1820-1879 378

Appendix 2. Note on Alternative Statistical Sources,

Coins 381

Appendix 3. Egyptian Weights, Measures, and

IQII—IQI2 386

Appendix 4. List of Alexandria Cotton Exporters,

Glossary 387 Bibliography 390

Index 403

LIST OF FIGURES

each month, 1855-6 164

I. Liverpool prices of American and Egyptian cotton at the end of

II. Fluctuations in the average income obtained from a feddan of

cotton in Egypt, 1895-1912 233

III. Income obtained from a feddan of wheat, beans, barley, and

cotton on the State Domains, 1880-1913 235

IV. Egyptian foreign trade, 1880-1913 305

LIST OF TABLES 1. Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1821-37 34

2. Government Cotton Profits, 1834-40 41

1821-38 43

3. Profits from Agricultural Monopolies, 1834-5 and 1836 42 4. Estimates of Egyptian Government Revenue and Expenditure,

5. Volume, Value and Price of Cotton Exports, 1838—59 73

Alexandria, 1840-59 . 80

6. Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Wheat Exports from

7. Volume and Value of Egyptian Cotton Exports from Alexandria

and of British Imports of Egyptian Cotton, 1860-6 go 8. Cotton Prices at Alexandria and Liverpool, 1861-6 gI g. Export of Egyptian Cotton Seed from Alexandria, 1861-6 94 10. Value of Steam-Engines and Other Machinery Exported from

England to Egypt, 1860—6 100

11. Imports and Exports of Cereals at Alexandria, 1861-6 103

District, 1862-3 105

12. Cost of Cultivating One Feddan of Cotton in the Mansura

13. Quantities and Declared Value of the Principal Articles of British and Irish Produce Exported from the United Kingdom

to Egypt, 1861, 1864, and 1865 108

14. Production and Export of Egyptian Cotton, 1866-7 to 1879-80 = 123 15. Exports of Egyptian Cotton and Cotton Seed by Value and as a

Percentage of Total Exports, 1874-9 124.

73 and 1879 126

War 127

16. Price and Value of Major Egyptian Agricultural Exports, 1866— 17. Exports of Egyptian Cereals Before and After the American Civil

18. Estimates of the Area Devoted to Cotton and of the Average

Yield of Cotton per Feddan, 1866-74 130

19. Estimates of Expenditure on Public Works by the Egyptian

Government during Isma‘il’s reign 141! 821643 b

xvi List of Tables 20. Estimates of the Area of ‘Ushuriya and Kharajitya Land, 1863-80 148

(Annual Averages) 161

21. Volume and Direction of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1822—79

22. Liverpool Price of Egyptian and American Cotton, 1820—79 163 23. Value of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1835-79 (Annual Averages) 166

(Annual Averages) 167

24. Volume, Value, and Price of Cotton-Seed Exports, 1861-79

1830-60 170

25. Egyptian Foreign Trade, 1841-79 (Annual Averages) 168 26. Major Egyptian Exports from Alexandria in Various Years,

27. Exports of Cereals and Sugar, 1861-79 (Annual Averages) 171

28. Major Egyptian Imports at Alexandria in Various Years, 1830-60 172

29. Major Egyptian Imports, 1863-79 (Annual Averages) 173 30. Egyptian Trade with Great Britain, 1827~52 (Annual Averages) 174

g1. Anglo-Egyptian Trade in 1848 176 32. Anglo-Egyptian Trade, 1854—79 (Annual Averages) 177

Averages) 178

33. Price of Major Egyptian Imports and Exports, 1854—79 (Annual

34. Estimates of the Area under Cotton, 1882-3 to 1893-4 184

35. Area under Cotton, 1894-5 to 1912-13 186 36. Average Annual Yield of Egyptian Cotton, 1880-1913 IQ!

Crops, 1880-1913 197

37. Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Cotton and Cotton-Seed

38. Export of Egyptian Cotton and Cotton Seed by Weight and Value

1880-1913 (Annual Averages) 198 39. Proportion of Cotton Exports (by Weight) to Various Countries, 1890-1913 (Annual Averages) 199

IQI2-13 203

40. Price of Egyptian and American Cotton at Liverpool, 1880 to

41A. Distribution of Profits from the 1912-13 Cotton Crop 229

41B. Share of Total Income from Cotton, 1912-13 229 42. Average Gross Income per Feddan from Cotton and Cotton Seed,

1880-1913 (Annual Averages) 231

Last of Tables xvii 43. Population and Cultivated Land, 1882-1917 237 44. Area Devoted to Each Major Egyptian Crop, 1886-7 and 1894-5

to 1912-13 (Annual Averages) 24,7 45. Average Yield of Wheat, Beans and Barley on the State Domains, 1880-1913 (Annual Averages) 250 46. Comparison Between Figures from the State Domains and Official

Sources for the Average Yields of Various Egyptian Cereal

Crops, 1908-9 to 1914 251 47. Estimate of the Egyptian Production of Wheat, Beans, and Barley, 1886—7 and 1895-9 to 1910-13 (Annual Averages) 251

Averages) 256

48. Comparison of Egyptian Yields of Cotton, Wheat, and Barley with Those of Other Countries, 1885-9 and 1909-13 (Annual

and 1913 261

49. Estimated Gross Value of Egyptian Crops for the Years 1908-9

Averages) , 262

50. Estimated Value of Egypt’s Production of Wheat, Beans, Barley, and Cotton at Export Prices, 1886—7 and 1895-1913 (Annual

51. Export Price of Major Egyptian Crops 263 52. Gross Income per Feddan from Wheat, Beans, and Barley on the

State Domains, 1880~—1913 (Annual Averages) 264

53. Paid-up Capital and Debentures of Companies Operating in Egypt Showing Amount held Abroad and Amount held in

Egypt, 1883-1914 278 Companies, 1907. 288

54. Estimated Distribution of Holdings of Paid-up Capital in Egyptian

in 1906 and 1907-8 292

55. Egyptian Land Companies and Their Holdings of Rural Property

56. Egyptian Foreign Trade, 1880-1913 (Annual Averages) 306

Averages) 307 Averages) 308

57. Balance of ‘Trade and Movements of Capital, 1884-1914 (Annual

58. Egyptian Trade in Cereals and Flour, 1880-1913 (Annual

1913 313

(Annual Averages) 311

59. Price of Various Egyptian Imports and Exports, 1880-1913

60. Government Revenue and Expenditure in Selected Years, 1881—

+

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS A.A. Austrian Archives (copies in Abdin Palace, Cairo) A.E.M. Anglo-Egyptian Mail A.E.P.I. Archives européennes, Période Ismail (Abdin Palace, Cairo)

AS. Annuaire statistique B.C.G.A. British Cotton Growing Association BLE. Bulletin de 0 Institut d’ Egypte B.S.E.A, Bulletin de la Soctété egyptienne d’ Agriculture B.SEK.G. Bulletin de la Société khédiviale de Géographie

C.C., F.O. Cromer Correspondence (Public Records Office, London)

CLS. F. Cairo Scientific Fournal

C.S.R. Cotton Supply Reporter EAC. L’Eeypte contemporaine EVT.F. Egyptian Trade Journal Executive Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Documents Representatives, Washington (US)

F.O. Foreign Office Records (Public Records Office) Int. Fed. International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations

FKAS. Journal of the Khedivial Agricultural Society and School of Agriculture

K.P. Kitchener Papers (Public Records Office) M.B.P. Moberly Bell Papers (Times Publishing Co.)

P.P. House of Commons, Sessional Papers PRO Public Records Office (London) Rapporis France, Ministére du Commerce et de l’Industrie, Rapports commerciaux commerciaux des agents diplomatiques et consulaires de France

R.D.M., Revue des Deux Mondes Recueil Belgium, Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Consular Reports consulaire

U.S. Egypt United States, Department of State, Dispatches from United States’ Consuls and Consuls-General in Egypt

.

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION AND SOURCES T’o avoid unnecessary confusion, Arabic words and Egyptian proper

names which are well known in their Europeanized form (fellah, fellaheen, cantar, firman, feddan, etc.) have been left in this form. Otherwise I have used a modification of the system of transliteration to be found in C. Brockelmann’s Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur, supplementary vol. i (Leiden, 1937). No diacritical marks have been used with the exception of the ‘. I have taken the Arabic spelling of Egyptian towns and villages from A. Boinet’s Dictionnaire géographique de l’ Egypte (Cairo, 1899).

The only important problem posed by giving references to the sources I have used concerns official government publications, whether Egyptian or European. A list of all reports and also of books published under government auspices will be found in the bibliography under ‘Government Publications’. The first reference to any such work will give the name of the government and, in some cases, the department which was responsible for its publication. Thereafter, any subsequent reference will mention only the title and,

sometimes, the author; but, in addition, the name of the country concerned will be given in parentheses at the end—e.g. Vincent, ‘Memorandum Respecting the Cotton Statistics of Egypt’ (GB). In this way the work in question can easily be identified by reference to the Bibliography. This procedure has not been followed, however,

with the annual commercial reports of the American, Belgian, British, and French Consuls and Consuls-General, nor with the political reports of the British Agents and Consuls-General on the state of Egypt after 1882.

&

INTRODUCTION URING the nineteenth century Egypt underwent a con-

iD tinuous process of economic growth. After several hundreds of years of stagnation or even decline its

population advanced from something like 3,250,000 in 1798 to

9,700,000 in 1897 and 11,300,000 in 1907. During the same period the total value of its trade with Europe rose from well below £E2,000,000 to over £E50,000,000. Meanwhile, under the impact of a series of rulers who devoted much of their attention to the development of the country’s resources, and

also of Egypt’s rapid incorporation within the European economic system, the cultivated area was extended, new crops introduced, and agricultural output increased. In 1856 Cairo and Alexandria were connected by the first railway to be built

-in either Africa or the Near East; sixty years later Egypt possessed over 4,300 kilometres of line, a higher ratio of length of track to inhabited area than any other country in the world.! Thousands of miles of telegraph wires were erected; Alexandria

was built up into one of the Mediterranean’s major ports; educational missions were sent to England and France so that young Egyptians might be enabled to learn modern technical skills. As a result of these efforts, Egypt’s position as a developing country came to be recognized by the European investing public who, in two periods of intense activity, 1862 to 1875 and 1897 to 1907, placed more than £100,000,000 in government loans and in Egyptian private companies. At the centre of this whole process stood the cultivation of

long-staple cotton. From its introduction as a cash crop in 1820 onwards its influence over Egyptian economic development was profound. Its impact can be seen most easily in the agricultural sector where, during the course of the century, it was mainly responsible for the transformation of the system of 1 Issawi, C., ‘Asymmetrical Development and Transport in Egypt’, Table IV (unpublished paper presented to the Conference on the Beginnings of Moderniza-

tion in the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century, held at the University of Chicago, Oct. 1966). This figure includes light agricultural railways, as well as the broad-gauge state system.

XXiV Introduction agriculture practised throughout Lower Egypt. But its effect was also felt throughout every other part of the economy. From

the early 1860s onwards it provided never less than 70 per cent of the country’s export earnings; it allowed a continuous growth in government revenues by means of the larger and larger amounts of money collected from the land tax and the duties on foreign trade; its presence in Egypt attracted an increasing number of European merchants and bankers, many of whom used the profits they were able to make from cotton to start a whole variety of other business enterprises. Again, in

the last decade of the nineteenth century, it was a sudden advance in cotton receipts which doubled or trebled the value of rural land and so ensured that the investment boom then just getting under way would be based very largely on the creation and expansion of companies concerned with the purchase and sale, the development, and the mortgage of agricultural property. In sum, it would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that the economic history of Egypt during the nineteenth century was almost wholly shaped by cotton. What follows is an attempt to examine this process in detail.

Of necessity, such an examination becomes a three-stage proceeding. In the first place there is an account of the history of cotton cultivation itself: its introduction in the early 1820s, its extension throughout Lower Egypt, and the creation of the facilities by which it could be financed, ginned, and exported. Secondly, reference is made to the major developments in the economy outside the cotton sector. Finally, an attempt is made to relate the two, to indicate the influence of the one on the other.

The shape this examination will take has been largely dictated by the available statistics. Not until the 1880s did the Egyptian Government, or rather its foreign advisers, begin to produce satisfactory figures for such important matters as the

size of the cotton harvest, foreign trade, or the area of land devoted to each of the major Egyptian crops. The statistics which exist for the previous period inspire little confidence and

will not bear the weight of any detailed scrutiny. For this reason, in Part I (1805-79), the introduction of long-staple cotton and the events which followed are dealt with chronologically rather than analytically, an attempt being made at

Introduction XXV each stage to carry forward the story not only of cotton itself but also of the major economic developments which occurred during the same years. Thus, after a brief description of the state of the economy before 1820 (Chapter I), Chapter II is concerned not only with the methods by which Muhammad ‘Ali sought to exploit the chance discovery of the new type of cotton, but also with the role this cotton played in his schemes to develop the resources of the country as a whole. In the same way, Chapters III, IV, and V, as well as describing the three

periods of rapid expansion in cotton production, 1850-2, 1860-5, and 1870-5, concentrate considerable attention on the other major themes of the forty years after 1837, the return to a free market in agricultural produce following the breakdown of Muhammad ‘Ali’s monopoly system, and the ever-increasing

foreign intervention in Egyptian economic activity. This section ends with a chapter on Egyptian trade in the period 1820-79, a topic which can be more easily dealt with in one place. Figures are used to illustrate the discussion wherever possible—but always with caution. In almost every case they

have had to be selected from a number of contradictory sources. Some of the reasons which guided particular choices, as well as a list of alternative series, can be found in Appendix 2.

In Part II (1880-1914), on the other hand, the greater variety and reliability of the available statistics allow a more

rigorous approach. Chapter VII is devoted exclusively to cotton-production itself—how much was grown, where it was grown, how it was cultivated—and Chapter VIII to certain related movements in the cotton sector of the economy. Next, in Chapters IX and X, several aspects of the general growth of the economy are discussed, first in agriculture, then in industry, services, and commerce. It should be stressed, however, that

this division into the familiar primary, and secondary and tertiary sectors, though useful for the purpose of exposition, tends to distort the true nature of the productive process in Egypt if pressed too far. As P. K. O’Brien has pointed out, services in an economy dominated by farming tended to be roughly commensurate with services to the people who received

the bulk of their incomes from the land, while such industry as existed consisted almost exclusively of the processing of

xxvi Introduction agricultural produce.! Part II concludes with an examination of the view of a number of contemporary writers on the proper

development of the Egyptian economy. This will have the additional purpose of allowing a discussion of the economic thinking of the leading British officials like Lord Cromer, an important subject which will have to be ignored very largely in earlier chapters.

No direct reference will be made in either section to the

two general groups of theories concerning nineteenth-century trade and development: the one which sees trade as having been the engine of growth, the other which seeks to isolate those factors, whether economic or social, which inhibited progress towards a self-sustained process of development. Nevertheless,

consideration of their possible application to Egyptian experience has served, to some extent, as a guide to the choice of subjects to be discussed. In particular, throughout the whole

period an effort has been made to answer such preliminary questions as, who actually grew long-staple cotton? How was agricultural practice modified by its introduction? What profits

were made from it and by whom? How did activities in the cotton sector impinge on the rest of the economy? And so on.

In this way it is hoped that sufficient evidence has been amassed to support the detailed discussion of the principal features of Egypt’s nineteenth-century development, and of the relevance to it of existing economic theories, which forms the Conclusion to this work. 1 ‘The Long-Term Growth of Agricultural Production in Egypt, 1821-1962’, p. 1. (To be published in Holt, P. (ed.), Polztical and Social Change in Modern Egypt.)

| PART I COTTON AND THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY 1805-1879

,

MUHAMMAD ‘ALI AND THE | EGYPTIAN ECONOMY 1805-1819 I, THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY IN 1805

T the time of Muhammad ‘Ali’s seizure of power in Cairo

in 1805, Egypt was a country of perhaps three and a quarter million inhabitants, living in approximately 2,300 towns and villages.! The vast majority of the people were fellaheen (peasants), working on the land, but there was also a

sizeable urban population, including some 250,000 living in Cairo and nearly 150,000 in the other main centres.2 The

cultivated area, as estimated by members of the French Expedition, was over 3,200,000 feddans, just under two-thirds of which lay in the Delta, and the remainder along the Nile ¥ Population: During the French Expedition the size of the Egyptian population was calculated at just under 2,500,000. De Chabrol gives two figures—2,442,200 and 2,467,000, ‘Essai sur les moeurs des habitants modernes de |’Egypte’, in Description de ’ Egypte, 2nd edn., vol. xviii, pt. 1 (Paris, 1824), p. 8. However, the traditionally accepted figures for the Egyptian population at the beginning of the nineteenth century have been challenged by G. Baer, on the grounds that, if true, they imply an impossibly high rate of increase during the remainder of the century. He suggests that this rate was unlikely to have been more than 1 per cent at most. On this basis he argues that the population must have been in the region of 4,230,000 in 1821, instead of the accepted figure of 2,500,000 to 3,000,000: ‘Urbanization in

Egypt, 1820-1907’ (unpublished paper presented to the Conference on the Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century Chicago University, 1966), pp. 2-4. On the same basis, the population in 1798 would have been 3,365,000. Unfortunately there is no way of checking the validity of these assumptions. However, I have assumed that Baer’s reasoning is more nearly correct than the calculations of the French Expedition. Towns: Volney, C. F., Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, vol. i (Paris, 1787), p. 215. (Volney’s work is translated into English as Travels in Egypt and Syria, 2 vols. (London, 1787).

2 According to F. Mengin the population of Cairo at the time of the French Expedition was 263,000 and that of the other main towns 147,750: Histotre de Egypte sous le gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly, vol. ii (Paris, 1823), p. 616.

4 Muhammad ‘Ali and the between Cairo and Aswan. There was also about 750,000 feddans of cultivable land not actually in use.!__/ The basic unit in the rural economy was the village, which in Egyptian terms generally meant one large village surrounded by a number of smaller subsidiaries. Prior to 1798 the great proportion of villages were under the control of multazims (taxfarmers) who were responsible for the collection of taxes and for ensuring that the land remained cultivated, in return for which they were able to keep the difference between any money they could levy and that demanded of them by the Treasury. In addition, in most villages, a portion of the land (known as ard al-wasiya), averaging about a tenth, was set aside as seigneurial land and farmed out or cultivated by the multazim himself, generally with the aid of a corvée of peasant labour. The rest of the land was worked by the fellaheen. They did not own their fields, which remained legally the property of the Sultan, but they enjoyed the right to the use of their produce, and by the end of the eighteenth century in Lower and Middle Egypt had also gained, by custom, freedom to leave it to their descendants or to alienate it for a period of time to another cultivator. In Upper Egypt, on the other hand, the fellaheen did not work fixed patches of land, because variations in the cultivable area due to differences in the height of the flood made it difficult to establish boundaries. Peasants were at liberty to grow what crop they chose without interference. They were not, however,

allowed to leave their village, and were, at least in theory, brought back by the local authorities if they did. Apart from the cultivators with land there were also, in each village, a number of landless fellaheen, who were employed as day-labourers by

those who could afford their services. Others became such

labourers in years when their land was not watered by the flood.? 1 Jacotin, ‘Tableau de la superficie de l’Egypte’, in Description de Egypte, 2nd

edn., vol. xviii, pt. 2, pp. 105-6. The French surveyed Egypt using a feddan measuring 5°929 sq. metres. Later, in the cadastres of 1813-23, a smaller feddan was used, measuring only 4,416-177 sq. metres. If the French figure for cultivated and cultivable land is adjusted to correspond with this second feddan it becomes 4,038,177 and 940,171 feddans respectively. Rivlin, H. A. B., The Agricultural Policy of Muhammad Ali in Egypt (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), pp. 265-6 n., 267. In 1861 the size of the feddan was further reduced to 4,200-833 sq. metres (1°038 acres). For sources and further information about Egyptian weights and measures, see Appendix 3.

2 Statements in this and the succeeding paragraphs in this section are based

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 5 Taxes were apportioned and collected by the sarraf (moneychanger) appointed by the multazim from the corps of Coptic scribes. These consisted mainly of the land-tax, of which about

a third went to the government and the remainder to the multazim himself as fa‘tz (profit) and the barrani, a regular addition to his purse. In addition, the villagers had to pay any extra exaction the sarraf might make, either on his own behalf or

on that of his master. The two most common methods of augmenting the money due were to ask for a sum in excess of that written in the tax registers, or to underestimate the amount of land which remained unflooded by the Nile and which was thus, legally, exempt from tax. There is some doubt about the way in which land taxes were collected in Lower Egypt. According to Huseyn Efendi, the Treasury scribe, whose Description of Ottoman Egypt was submitted to the French during their occupation, these

were collected in coin.! On the other hand Shaw, in his earliest work, maintains that they were paid to the multazim in both cash and kind.? Unfortunately he gives no source for this important

assertion. As for Upper Egypt, there the greater part of the

taxes was taken in grain.3 In both areas the taxes were divided among the villages very largely on the basis of the Ottoman cadastral register, completed in 1608. Apart from the land portioned out into tax farms, just under

a fifth of the total cultivated area consisted of agricultural wagfs, the revenues from which were devoted to pious or charitable purposes, or in some places to individual families.4 Such land consisted of the great public foundations established

by the Mamluk or Ottoman Sultans, or those founded by private persons. In both cases the fields in question were either let out to fellaheen or farmed, by nazirs (supervisors) who kept much of the profit for themselves. largely on the following sources: Gibb, H. A. R., and Bowen, H., Islamic Society and the West, vol. i, pt. 1 (London, 1950), chs. 5 and 6; Girard, M. P. S., ‘Mémoire sur l’agriculture, l'industrie, et le commerce de l’Egypte’, in Description de I’ Egypte,

and edn., vol. xvii (Paris, 1824), pp. 1-436, and Shaw, S. J., The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt (Princeton, 1962), ch. 1.

1 Huseyn Efendi’s report is translated in Shaw, S. J., Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). See p. 48 for the assertion that land taxes were collected from the peasants in coin.

2 Financial and Administrative Organization, p. 74. 3 Ibid., p. 78. + Baer, G., A History of Land-Ownership on Modern Egypt, r800-1950 (London,

1962), p. 4. , ii

6 Muhammad ‘Ali and the The most important member of each village community was the shaykh al-balad, inevitably a member of one of the richer fellah families. It was he who policed the fellaheen, supervised

the collection of taxes, and acted as magistrate and arbiter. Although obliged to assist the multazim and his agents in a number of ways, he could not be removed so long as he was able to ensure that taxes were paid and the land remained in cultivation. He received no salary, but enjoyed certain pecuniary rights, such as the exemption from tax of a portion of his holdings. In addition he was often able to take advantage of his authority to increase his wealth. Socially and administratively each village was a self-contained unit. There was little or no alienation of land to outsiders; its relations with the Government were limited almost exclusively to the payment of taxes; ‘apart from occasional interferences by the multazim or some other military officer it was, in practice, all but self-governing’.! Economically, however, it was another story. The village was linked to the country’s monetary economy in a number of ways, the most important being the markets held

regularly in the chief towns of each district. Isna, which Girard described as being the main commercial centre in Middle Egypt, had a weekly market to which the cultivators came to sell their surplus wheat and other cereals, their pigeons

and their vegetables, their wool and their animals, and to purchase in return both locally manufactured goods such as cotton cloth and large pottery vessels and iron, copper, soap, and rice imported from Cairo.2 Other important provincial

markets were held at Qus, Madinat (al-Fayyum), Minuf, Samannud, Mansura, and Tanta, where the three great

annual fairs attracted merchants and their customers from all over the Delta. Another link with the money economy was through the close association of town and village in the process of textile manufacture. In Upper Egypt, for example, the town weavers used to put out the raw Syrian cotton they had brought to the women in the surrounding villages for spinning. Finally, there was the tax system, which, by obliging almost all the multazims in the Delta and many of the fellaheen to pay in cash,

stimulated the growth and sale of marketable crops. 1 Gibb and Bowen, i, pt. 1, 263. _ 2 Girard, pp. 261-2.

Egyptian Economy, 1605-1819 7 Contact with the money economy generated a number of important habits. In the first place it encouraged the use of cash as a medium of exchange for a vast number of everyday transactions throughout rural Egypt. This is well illustrated by the fact that Girard was able to assign a money price to such diverse things as the purchase of tools and implements, the cost of clothes, the daily food requirements of animals employed in

irrigation and transport, and the cost of agricultural labour. The occasional instances in which services were performed for payment in kind were specifically mentioned.! The general use

of cash had the effect of greatly increasing the power of anyone | with access to ready money, and in many villages the multazim’s

control over the fellaheen was augmented by the fact that he was the only person to whom they could turn for loans to meet sudden expenses. His close association with the economic life of

the village was not, of course, necessarily to the disadvantage of its inhabitants; almost any method of raising money was better than that a fellah should not be able to plant and harvest

his crops. Again, such an identification, by increasing his desire that the village should prosper, sometimes led him to save it from exorbitant tax demands from the Government by paying the taxes himself in the first instance, and collecting them later from the peasants when they could be afforded. Secondly, contact with the money economy stimulated the practice of raising crops like flax, cotton, sugar, indigo, and henna for sale, or even export, rather than for local consumption. It also provided a spur to the village manufacture of such items as butter, cheese, and cotton cloth, which could be easily disposed of in the markets.

The type of crop grown in Egypt before 1805 depended largely on the system of irrigation, although other factors, to be

discussed later, were also important. Most of the land was devoted either to so-called ‘winter’ crops—wheat, beans, barley, flax, clover, fenugreek, safflower, lentils, chick-peas, lupins, tobacco, and opium—which were grown during the winter months, or to Nilz crops, such as dhura (maize or Indian

corn), sown in July and August when a rising river made irrigation easier. But about an eighth of the cultivated area of 1 See for example his estimates of the cost of producing various crops: Girard, pp. 158-81.

8 Muhammad ‘Ali and the Lower Egypt, and a smaller proportion of Upper Egypt, was used for ‘summer’ crops—sugar, rice, short-staple cotton, henna, sesame, and ground-nuts.! Such crops could be grown only near the river or one of the few canals deep enough to hold

water throughout the summer, as they required constant irrigation. The winter system involved a series of basins made by long

dykes at right angles to the Nile, which were allowed to fill with water as the river reached its height in September and

October. After the water had deposited its sediment and thoroughly penetrated the dry earth it was drained off into nearby lakes or canals, or back into the Nile, now flowing at a lower level. Then, in the case of those crops known as al-bayadt, seed was thrown on the mud after little or no preparation and harvested three or four months later; other winter crops called shitwi required more attention and additional watering during growth. Shitwi crops might also be sown on land not reached by the flood. Often a Nil: crop could be grown if planted rapidly, before the main one, while the Nile was still rising, and sometimes another was possible in the spring, if the soil remained

sufficiently moist, or if cultivators were able to seal up the winter canals and retain some of their water. Summer crops required a different method. As they were generally not harvested until after the Nile had started to rise, they were grown on slightly higher ground and had to be protected by embankments from the flood waters, which, if admitted, would have ruined the standing plants. And they needed an artificial system of watering to keep them irrigated through

: the summer months, when the Nile was often ten to twelve feet below the level of the ground on either side. This usually consisted of a network of small canals fed by water-wheels turned by oxen (known as saqgiyas), or buckets on the arm of a long pole

which could be swung down into the river and then up to the canal mouths (shadufs). Both appliances were expensive in manpower, and, in the case of sagiyas, animal-power. A saqzya, for example, required the full-time employment of a team of oxen

and two drivers if it was to be kept moving night and day to 1 J. Mazuel gives the area with summer irrigation during the French Expedition as 250,000 feddans: L’Cuvre géographique de Linant de Bellefonds (Cairo, 1937), p. 131. Unfortunately he does not make it clear what sort of feddan he is using.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 9 water a crop like indigo, and they had to remain constantly at work from the planting of the seed in spring to July or August when, with care, the final stages of growth could be watered by flow irrigation from the rising river.

In the Delta the main winter crops were wheat, barley, beans, and birsim (clover), grown in a biennial rotation—wheat

and barley one year, beans and clover the next. All four were sown in autumn after the flood, artificially watered several times during the winter, and then harvested in March or April. Barley and clover were used as animal fodder, while a mixture of wheat and barley flour formed the staple diet of the human population. Flax was also grown in winter. Summer crops included sesame, cotton, maize, and rice.

An annual cotton was grown around Damanhur on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, and in the Samannud and Mansura districts on the Damietta branch. It was sown in April after the land had been given a heavy watering. ‘Three more waterings followed, two by sagiya and one by flow-irrigation once the river had started to rise. Harvesting began in September, the

whole plant being uprooted and allowed to dry in the sun before the seeds were removed from the bolls by women and children. Yields near Samannud amounted to one and a half to two cantars per feddan.! Finally, the cotton was ginned on primitive machines (known as dulabs) consisting of two wooden

rollers through which the seed was forced to remove the lint. The main winter crops in Upper Egypt were wheat, maize,

barley, lentils, beans, flax, and safhower. From the scanty information provided by Girard wheat probably occupied a third of the cultivated area at this time. Together with barley it was used largely for the payment of taxes in kind. Maize provided the main part of the peasants’ diet in the areas where it was found. Summer crops, which were grown over a much

smaller proportion of the cultivated area than in the Delta, included indigo, sesame, sugar, and cotton. Cotton was mainly confined to the Sa‘zd, where, unlike that in Lower Egypt, it was ‘ a perennial, the tree being left in the ground for anything up to 1 At the time of the French Expedition the weight of the cantar varied from district to district. For what it is worth Shaw gives a figure of 120 lb. for 1798: Financial and Administrative Organization, p. 273 n. By the early 1820s it weighed approximately 122} Ib. It was reduced to 99 Ib. in Jan. 1836: Gliddon, G. R., A Memoir on the Cotton of Egypt (London, 1841), pp. 11, 54. |

10 Muhammad ‘Ali and the eight or ten years. Yields varied from 300 ratls per feddan when there was sufficient water, to 100 to 150 ratls in bad years.! The

quality, though better than that of the Delta variety, was not high, and spinners and weavers requiring a finer yarn imported cotton from Syria or India. Calculations made by Girard show the profit which could be obtained from the principal summer, winter, and Nil crops.? They indicate that those which gave the greatest absolute return, notably sugar, indigo, and rice, were also the ones which required the largest annual expenditure, and it can be assumed that they could be grown only by well-to-do cultivators with capital of their own, or those with some means of access to the money necessary to pay the high working expenses. Such crops also required a sizeable initial outlay for the animals

and machines necessary to provide summer water. Fixed and working capital came from a number of sources: indigo was grown by associations of fellaheen who pooled their resources,

| while rice and possibly other crops were financed by merchants in the neighbouring towns. It was also sometimes possible to rent land from some wealthy man who would undertake to advance what was necessary to put it into cultivation. Nevertheless, for the ordinary fellah equipped with only the most simple tools, and often subject to extortionate taxation, there was little chance of accumulating sufficient surplus of his own or of persuading someone to lend him the money to enable him to produce the more lucrative crops. It would be wrong to suppose, however, that only lack of capital stood in the way of a more widespread growth of the high-value crops. In the first place, as already described, summer cultivation was confined to areas where there was ready access

to summer water; that is, along the Nile or one of the six or so Delta canals dug deep enough to allow them to take off water from the river when it was at its lowest.3 Elsewhere the introduction of summer cultivation was dependent on an extension

of the area supplied with summer water, which only the Government had the resources to undertake. Again, most 1 The weight of the ratl also varied considerably at this period. Figures given by Girard (p. 51) would suggest that in some cases it was equivalent to Kg. 0°4545 (or 1-002 Ib.). 2 Girard, pp. 185-7. 3 Thédénat-Duvent, P. P., L’ Egypte sous Méhémed-Ali (Paris, 1822), p. 208.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 II Summer crops required considerably more care and attention than the majority of winter and Niii ones. Maize, for example, could be grown without any preliminary ploughing and with only a very occasional hoeing during growth. Indigo, on the other hand, needed particular skill in its irrigation, for it was

easily spoiled by too much or too little water. Finally, the political conditions of the late eighteenth century must have militated against the investment of capital in agriculture. There were frequent bedouin incursions, trade routes became less safe, and extraordinary levies increased in size and fre-

quency. The villages in the Delta visited by Reynier were described as fortresses in which the fellaheen were ever ready to

beat off an attack.! In the meantime the irrigation system fell further and further into disrepair, as the Government failed in its duty to maintain the major canals, while, at a local level, there were frequent fights between rival bodies of peasants for control of the water supply.? In such conditions it seems unlikely that the villagers would have been willing to do more than

ensure that they grew enough food for their immediate needs and to fulfil their tax obligations. Choice of new crops was also limited by the conservatism of the fellaheen, although this factor should not be emphasized too strongly. Whereas it would seem correct to characterize the agriculture of the period as traditional, if by that is meant that year after year the majority of cultivators continued to cultivate the same land, use the same techniques of production, and bring the same skills to bear,3 there is enough evidence to show that some Egyptian cultivators at least were responsive to the prospects of larger profits. Not only were cash crops grown widely, if not extensively, throughout the country, but there 1s Girard’s specific statement that the area placed under flax in the Delta depended on whether its export was possible or not, and thus on the ruling price.* There is also the example of the 1 Reynier, J. L. T., State of Egypt after the Battle of Heliopolis, trans. (London, 1802), p. 66. 2 Tallien, L., ‘Mémoire sur l’administration de l’Egypte a l’époque de l’arrivée des Francais’, in Mémoires sur l Egypte publiés pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte,

vol. iii (Paris, An. X), p. 209. 3 For this definition of traditional agriculture see Schultz, T. W., Transforming Traditional Agriculture (New Haven, 1964), pp. 29-33.

* Girard, pp. 145-6.

12 Muhammad ‘Al: and the cultivators around Cairo, who grew vegetables for the city markets. And further proof is provided, as will be suggested later, by the relative ease with which Muhammad ‘Ali was able

to introduce the cultivation of long-staple cotton in the early 1820s, once the fellaheen had learned its financial advantage. In the two examples of land use in the Delta given by Girard, of each 100 feddans, 25 were planted with summer as well as winter crops.! There is, however, no way of telling whether this

sort of ratio applied throughout the area. In Upper Egypt, on the other hand, he seems definitely to imply that there was

generally only one major crop a year, supplemented on occasions by maize. Implements used in agriculture consisted of simple tools like

the plough made out of two crossed pieces of wood and the ‘norag’ (nawraj), a bullock-drawn chair used for threshing. Both were cheaply made from local materials, and were easy to repair.

They were also adequate to produce large crops from the rich Nile soil. The land did not need to be worked to any depth. Its fertility was restored by the annual fallow period as well as, in the case of fields used for summer crops, by an application of a type of fertilizer called sabakh, consisting of ashes and manure.

Yields compared favourably with those in other countries. According to a member of the French Expedition the gross revenue from a feddan of land in Buhaira, one of the less fertile provinces, was superior to that of the best land in the

Haute Garonne.? The towns of Egypt were both commercial and industrial centres, drawing in the surplus agricultural produce from their surrounding villages, consuming some of it, and sending the remainder along the Nile to Cairo in exchange for goods which could not be obtained in the area. Industry consisted generally in working up local raw materials for use in the district, but

in a few of the bigger towns like Cairo and al-Mahalla-alKubra it was organized on a larger scale for export. The leading industry almost everywhere was the manufacture of textiles made of cotton, flax, silk, or wool. al-Mahalla-alKubra, for example, had over 2,000 textile workers before the 1 Girard, pp. 146—7. 2 Rigault, G., Le Général Abdallah Menou et la derniere phase de UVexpédition d’ Egypte,

1799-1801 (Paris, 1911), p. 168.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 13 coming of the French, Bani Suaif 600, and Qina 250. In the case of cotton, local supplies were used in the first instance, supplemented when necessary by imports from Syria. Silk too was imported from Syria to be made up and then re-exported, but the flax and wool were almost entirely of Egyptian origin. Other products of Egyptian industry included oil (from the seeds of lettuce and flax), loaf sugar and molasses, alcohol, bricks, pottery, vases, keys, small boats, and simple tools of wood and metal. In addition the French established a number of military factories, mainly in Cairo, to produce such things as powder, hats and pieces of woollen cloth, leather goods, and

arms. They had also paid some attention to the important question of motive power in a country without fast-running rivers or coal or large supplies of wood, and had constructed several windmills.?

Administratively the old social forms remained; masters, journeymen, and apprentices being grouped into craft organiza-

tions or guilds under the shaykh or headman, with rigid rules about who might open a factory, what products might be made, and at what price they could be sold. Government interference ° | was usually minimal, except in the case of a number of mono- {|

polies which had begun to be introduced in late Mamluk | | times. The quality of the articles produced was low; and the ©

effects of European competition—especially from textile fabrics —were already beginning to be seriously felt.

Cairo was by far the largest and most important town in the country, and it occupied a central role in the economy, receiving merchandise from all over the country and paying for it in goods produced either locally or abroad, or in money. Regular markets were held in the town, but Cairo merchants also took their wares out into the countryside, bringing cotton and linen goods from Europe or India to the Tanta fair, for example, or taking Syrian cotton to the textile factories in Upper Egypt. In addition they were active in buying manufactured materials, such as the cloth made in the villages of Minufiya. The town’s

importance was increased by the fact that it contained the residences of most of Egypt’s rich men, and was thus an im-

portant market for luxury goods. Trade to and from Cairo t Fahmy, M., La Révolution de V’industrie en Egypte et ses conséquences sociales au 19°

siécle, 1800-1850 (Leiden, 1954), P. 4.

14 Muhammad ‘Ali and the passed mainly along the Nile, for not only did it provide the most economical form of transport, but also it was much safer than the land routes, which were often at the mercy of desert Arabs and robbers. However, in the unsettled conditions of the late eighteenth century, river traffic had itself become increasingly the prey of pirates and rival groups of Mamluks and

‘Turks.

' Trade with Europe was almost completely at a standstill

- in 1805, but a few years earlier there had been considerable commerce with France, Tuscany, and Venice in particular. Native products such as safHower, salammoniac, natron, senna,

hides, and some linen and cotton goods, and the re-export of products from neighbouring countries, had been exchanged for manufactures such as heavy fabrics of velvet and linen, paper and glassware, tobacco, arms, and raw materials which Egypt lacked, especially lead, iron, and tin. According to the French writer, J. Julliany, trade with Marseilles in the years 1783 to 1792 averaged just over 6,500,000 francs a year.!

In the late eighteenth century the barriers to the orderly practice of this trade had been considerable, particularly the disabilities suffered by the Christian merchants, who were almost entirely responsible for the commercial intercourse with Europe. In the 1780s Volney described the French residents of Cairo as: shut up in a confined space, living among themselves with scarcely any external communications; they even dreaded it and went out as little as possible, to avoid the insults of the common people, who hated the very name of Franks, and the insolence of the Mamluks who forced them to dismount from their asses in the middle of the streets.”

Commerce had suffered further from uncertain communications. And during most of the period the constant depreciation of the currency had made business transactions more difficult, while the administration of the customs service had become increasingly oppressive. Duties and charges rose, and the European residents found themselves stripped of both profit and capital. As a result, in 1754 the Levant Company decided to abolish its Cairo consulate ‘by reason of the uncertainty of «Essai sur le commerce de Marseille, 2nd edn., vol. ii (Paris, 1842), p. 351. 2 Travels, 1. 230.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 15 success and the certainty of a great and growing annual charge attending to it’.' Merchants of other nationalities, however, managed to remain, though in greatly reduced numbers. Some

of the remainder were replaced by their former Levantine protégés;2 and trade continued, helped by the fact that it consisted largely of luxury goods imported for members of the

richer classes and military materials such as arms and iron, necessary for the mercenary armies which began to be recruited at this time. Inter-regional trade suffered from similar handicaps. It consisted maanly of the import of raw materials from Syria, Arabia, and the Sudan in exchange either for Egyptian finished goods or for an increasing number of articles of European and Indian origin, such as silks, muslins, glassware,

and guns. In addition Egypt exported such agricultural products as rice, wheat, lentils, beans, and sugar. According to Girard 40,000—50,000 ardabbs of wheat were usually sent to the Holy Cities each year and 30,000 ardabbs of rice to Syria.3

Government revenue in the years before the French Expedition averaged just over 4 million francs a year, of which over two-thirds came from the taxes on land.* A sum of this size was insufficient to allow the Mamluk leaders to accumulate enough military power to mount new large-scale military expeditions and they were driven to look for means to augment it. ‘Ali Bey __ (1758-73), who was the first Mamluk to recruit mercenarieson a large scale, began by seizing his opponents’ land and levying \

extraordinary taxes on the villages and on the merchants and other groups in the towns. One of his successors, Murad Bey | (1779-98), tried less short-term methods. He monopolized the customs and then began, forcibly, to purchase a large part of = / ! Quoted in Feddan R., ‘Notes on the British Consulate in Egypt in the XVIIth ~ and XVIIIth centuries, 1580-1775’, B..E. xxvii (Session 1944-5), 16. 2 Hourani, A. H., A Vision of History (Beirut, 1961), p. 66. 3 Girard, pp. 226, 312. An ardabb was a unit of capacity. It varied a little from crop to crop and also from district to district. During the French Expedition an ardabb of wheat in Cairo was said to be equivalent to 184 litres (Girard, p. 31) or roughly five bushels. As for rice, according to Girard (p. 312) an ardabb of Damietta (from where most of the crop was exported) was 2:77 times larger than that of

see potave (Comte), ‘Mémoire sur les finances de l’Egypte’, in Description de l Feypte, 2nd edn., vol. xii (Paris, 1822), p. 196. This was the sum which was sent to the Imperial Treasury; the Mamluk leaders themselves obtained a very much larger amount as their share of the land-tax, which they were able to put to their Own USE.

16 Muhammad ‘Ali and the the wheat crop and to sell it for cash at a greatly increased price.

But the real key to a much larger revenue was a reform of the system of land-tax collection, which provided the Government with only 20 per cent of the total actually raised, and which left a large quantity of wagf and other land unburdened. This point was clearly seen after 1798 by the French administrators faced with the necessity of finding 1 million francs a month to support their military forces. In a series of moves they took almost all the ilttzzams (tax farms) into government ownership, — instituted new methods of collecting taxes using a combination of Copts and French officials, and, finally, were just planning to amalgamate all the different taxes which bore on the land into one when military defeat put an end to their projects.! Similar schemes were attempted by the first Ottoman Governor after

his restoration to power, but once again he did not have sufficient time to implement them fully. The financial difficulties of this period were augmented by

the fact that the years 1798 to 1805 were a time of almost continuous fighting. ‘The French and their successors, cut off from even the usual sources of revenue, were driven to the same expedients as the later Mamluk rulers—levies on merchants, forced loans from the richer members of the Cairo communities, and increased exactions from the villages which they were able to control. Business life came almost to a standstill. Trade was severely hampered, while in the villages the departure of most of the Mamluk multazims often deprived the peasants of a powerful protector and someone to whom they could turn for money in the last resort. There was widespread confusion and plunder, access to markets was interrupted, canals deliberately dammed up, cattle killed or stolen, and crops destroyed. Figures are scarce and unreliable, but perhaps two can be used to give some sort of idea of the extent to which the rural economy suffered at this time. One is the French Consul’s estimate in 1808 that in the previous eight years over a third of the agricultural land had gone out of cultivation.? And the second, al-Jabarti’s statement that a list of deserted 1 Shaw, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, pp. 142-3; Rigault, pp. 254-6. 2 Drovetti, 8 Apr. 1808: Driault, E., Mohamed Aly et Napoléon, 1807-1814 (Cairo, 1925), pp. IO—-II.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 17 villages, drawn up for Muhammad ‘Ali in the same year, included 160 names, or just over 7 per cent of the total.’ That the ruin was not more widespread must be attributed to the fact that Egyptian villages were almost completely self-sufficient in food and simple manufactured goods; and that their inhabitants were heirs to a long tradition of mitigating the effects of oppression from outside. 2. MUHAMMAD ‘ALI’S ECONOMIC POLICY, 1805-1819

Such was the position in 1805, and for a number of years Muhammad ‘Ali could only make it worse as his pressing need for money to pay his soldiers and to vie with the Mamluks in gaining the support of Istanbul forced him to seize any oppor-

tunity to raise cash. Like his predecessors he made repeated levies on the merchants and others in the towns, expropriated cattle and crops and boats, and on one occasion in 1806—7 even

surprised a caravan coming from Upper Egypt, selling the merchandise, camels, and women and children he found on it in the markets of Cairo. Meanwhile, his opponents were active in Lower Egypt and the Fayyum, blocking canals, destroying crops, and interrupting trade. It was not until the death of the | Mamluk leader, Alfi Bey, and the defeat of the British ex-— peditionary force in 1807 that he finally became master of the. whole Delta area, and was able for the first time to take stock | of his resources and to plan a more rational method of meet- / ing his current obligations. This involved, above all else, the‘ discovery of additional sources of revenue. Traditional methods of taxation were simply not large enough to support an army of even Muhammad ‘Ali’s 10,000 men, and continual levies, by further destroying the country’s economy, would have led only to sharply diminishing returns and the ever-present threat of a revolt.2

Muhammad ‘Ali sought several ways out of this dilemma. 1 Abd-el-Rahman El-Djabarti (al-Jabarti), Merveilles biographiques et historiques ou chroniques du Abd-el-Rahman El-Djabarti, trans. Chefik Mansour Bey et al., vol. viii (Cairo, 1895), p. 177.

2 Statements in this and succeeding paragraphs are based largely on the following sources: El-Djabarti, viii, ix (Cairo, 1896); Driault’s Mohamed Aly et Napoléon; the same author’s La Formation de Vempire de Mohamed Aly de l Arabie au Soudan, 1814-1823 (Cairo, 1927); and Rivlin.

821648 C

18 Muhammad ‘Ali and the In the first place, he tried by ad-hoc methods to increase the amounts he received from the land tax. An obvious target was the large sums of money which remained in the hands of the various agents of collection. Thus, in 1806 and 1807 he took some of the money previously retained by the multazims, and in 1808, after an unsatisfactory Nile flood, he replaced several of the less powerful of them with members of his own family and entourage, relying on these to forward the revenue he needed. Then, in 1810, he made determined efforts to eradicate corruption from the financial administration itself, and to end the monopoly over apportioning and collecting taxes exercised by a small group of semi-independent Coptic officials whose knowledge of the intricacies of the system and general secretiveness allowed them great opportunities for personal enrichment.

Another target was the lands on which, previously, little or no

tax had been paid; after 1807 he made repeated efforts to collect money from the shaykhs’ land, and in 1809 he began to impose levies on wagf and ard al-wasiya land as well.

But under the ever-present stimulus of the need for more money these moves became only the preliminaries to a design to oust the remaining multazims and to restore direct government control over all the land of Egypt. The final defeat of the Upper

Egyptian Mamluks allowed Muhammad ‘Ali to confiscate all the zltizams there, and in 1814 he seized those in Lower Egypt as well. After cadastral survey the cultivated land was then divided into several categories according to quality, registered in the name of the village community responsible for paying taxes on it, and distributed by the shaykhs among the fellaheen. As in the eighteenth century, the peasants were not given the ownership of their fields, merely the right to cultivate them and to use their produce. Meanwhile, the shaykhs al-balad themselves

received their customary portion of tax-free land. Ard alwasiya was excluded from the registers in Lower Egypt and remained in the possession of the former concessionaires. But waqf land was taken over by the Government.! In executing this programme, so similar to that proposed by the French, Muhammad ‘Ali ensured for himself the triple advantage they too had hoped to achieve: the replacement of the old system of tax collection by one more directly under government authority, 1 Baer, History of Land Ownership, pp. 4-6.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 19 the simplification of collection by the conversion of all former taxes into one, and the extension of the land subject to tax. In the second place, Muhammad ‘Ali turned to trade. Here, events conspired to allow him to make large profits from the sale of Egyptian agricultural products, for the reconquest of the grain-growing areas in Upper Egypt in 1810 coincided with a vast demand for cereals to provision the various European

armies engaged in the Napoleonic wars. English ships in particular began arriving in Alexandria in the spring of 1810 to take on wheat, and already by October of the same year the French consul was estimating that Muhammad ‘Ali must have made at least 3 million francs from such sales.! Money from this

source continued to increase as prices more than quadrupled between 1810 and 1813, before the finish of the Peninsula campaign and the resumption of Russian grain shipments brought the boom to an end. Muhammad ‘Ali’s handling of this profitable situation is an important illustration of his commercial acumen. In 1810 he was content to sell the large quantities of Upper Egyptian wheat his army had seized at prices considerably above local market ones and to allow speculators a share in the trade on payment of a high export duty. But the next year, loath as always to share his profits with anyone, he prohibited all competition, ensuring for himself a monopoly of the collection and foreign sales of Egyptian grain. Finally, in 1812, he entered the export business still more actively, hiring or purchasing ships, and sending cargoes of grain abroad on his own account to agents he had appointed in Malta, Portugal, and Spain. A third method of raising revenue stemmed from his in-

creasingly tight control over the country’s economic life. Initially, this was created through the medium of the monopolies

over the purchase and sale of certain local and imported products which he granted, on payment ofa fixed sum, to merchants or officials or, indeed, as al-Jabarti commented, to anyone who

could think up some fresh item to control.2 But soon the Government itself became more and more involved in such practices. This tendency was particularly manifest in the case of the grain trade, where Muhammad ‘Ali first squeezed out 1 Saint-Marcel, 11 Oct. 1810: Driault, Mohamed Aly et Napoléon, p. 86. 2 El-Djabarti, vill, pp. 354-5.

20 Muhammad ‘Ali and the rival speculators, and then, as stocks began to dwindle in 1812,

ordered the governors of the Upper Egyptian provinces to seize the entire cereal crop. Much of the part reserved for fellah consumption was taken; direct sales from fellah to merchant were forbidden; searches were made of huts to ensure that nothing was hoarded. This gave the final touch to a system

devised to ensure that the maximum amount of grain flowed into the government store-houses for export. Direct control over the land followed the expropriation of the multazims, the area under grain cultivation was extended, and more than 2,000 boats were built in the Bulaq arsenal to re-equip the old river fleet. Meanwhile, prices were manipulated in such a way as to provide Muhammad ‘Ali with the greatest possible profit.

By these means Muhammad ‘Ali increased his income to such an extent that by 1812 it may have reached an estimated 30-40 million francs compared with the 4 million francs of .1798.! However, perhaps a third to a half was made up of the sales of grain which ceased almost entirely after the following year, and, although the new system of land taxation probably more than made up for this loss, expenses continued to climb faster. By 1813 further recruitment in Albania had raised the army to 20,000 men, a large part of which was immediately

sent to Arabia to fight against the Wahabis. Meanwhile, Muhammad ‘Ali had built a fleet to operate on the Red Sea, and remodelled Egypt’s defences. Two years later, in 1815, he instituted a costly programme of army reforms designed to produce a new army trained according to the latest European methods. ‘Thus it was the need for money which once again was very largely the spur for the new series of measures on

which he embarked on his return from the Hyaz in 1815, designed to use the growing machinery of government further to develop the country’s economic resources. Muhammad ‘Ali had already taken over rice culture in the Delta in 1812-13, using his own officials to advance the working capital previously supplied by the local merchants and to purchase the crop from the growers at whatever price he chose t According to Drovetti, Muhammad ‘Ali’s income was to million francs from grain sales, which seems very low, and 3o million francs from the land-tax, which seems very high. Drovetti, 28 Nov. 1812: Driault, Mohamed Aly et Napoléon, p. 202.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 21 for sale on his own account. In 1815 this system was extended

to Upper Egyptian sugar-production, and in 1816, a year of sweeping reforms, to the vast majority of crops grown in Lower Egypt—hemp, sesame, indigo, cotton, carthame, barley, beans,

and wheat. All were bought from the cultivators at a fixed price which was paid only when it was ascertained that they were up-to-date with their taxes; sales to merchants were forbidden; agents were sent everywhere to ensure that all supplies were in fact handed over. Al-Jabarti reports a government decree of this year ordering the muzzling of field animals

lest they eat the beans and barley and chick-peas which Muhammad ‘Ali required.! The Government was also active in promoting new crops and new techniques. For example, 500 Syrians were brought to the Wadi Tumaylat and provided with the sagiyas and animals and labour to cultivate the mulberry trees which Muhammad ‘Ali had had planted there.

Again, an organized effort was made to repair the entire system of irrigation by ensuring the regular cleaning of existing canals. In addition, a great many of them were deepened so as

to be able to hold summer water. This was a task which only the Government had the resources to undertake, and by so doing it greatly augmented the agricultural productivity of the Delta area by extending the land available for summer crops. Labour was provided by corvées of peasants. Although there was no immediate repetition of the profitable conditions of 1810-13, Muhammad ‘Ali continued to look on commerce as one of his major sources of revenue and a vital complement to his agricultural policies. It was conducted in the way he found most profitable. Certain crops for which there was a good demand were often monopolized entirely and sold abroad by the agents he had appointed at the major European ports; other products were delivered only to merchants with whom he chose to deal; every effort was made to keep prices high, and if what he was offered was unsatisfactory he did not hesitate to hold on to his stocks until a better offer came along.

The foreign merchants, who were beginning to return to Egypt, complained bitterly to their consuls about these practices. Nevertheless, as a result of the opportunities for quick profits which this system provided, more and more Europeans 1 E)-Djabarti, ix, p. 185.

22 Muhammad ‘Ali and the came to Alexandria to set themselves up in business, a trend Muhammad ‘Ali was himself anxious to encourage, for he saw foreigners as important collaborators in his plans to modernize the country. To this end he agreed to the removal of many of the disabilities which had previously made life difficult for the Christian trader, and continued to allow their ships to use the safer ‘old’ harbour at Alexandria previously reserved for Muslims. Some became his advisers; others, like the Englishman

Samuel Briggs, were appointed as agents for the sale of his crops or given commissions to import the goods he needed.! Native merchants engaged in European trade, on the other hand, were generally unable to survive the competition from the state unless protected by some foreign consul. Muhammad ‘Ali’s interest in trade also led him to improve

the system of communications inside Egypt. Robbery and piracy were put down, boats for Nile traffic built, and, most important of all, the Mahmudiya Canal was constructed between 1817 and 1820 linking the Nile with Alexandria, Egypt’s only natural harbour. Previously, goods had been shipped down the river to Rosetta and then transferred to small seagoing vessels which took them to the European ships waiting at Alexandria. But during the first decade of Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign these vessels were experiencing increasing difficulty in crossing the bar at the mouth of the Nile, and in the spring of 1817, when passage was prevented for several months, he suffered considerable loss from being unable to export his

agricultural produce. This setback stimulated him to order work to begin on the canal in the same year. Once completed, it confirmed Alexandria’s growing commercial hegemony, and

by 1820 it was no longer the small, out-of-the-way town of 8,000 people to which Napoleon had laid siege but a busy, rapidly expanding port of nearly twice that size,? the growth point in the economy where the presence of Muhammad ‘Ali's

favourite summer residence and a sizeable European community provided a large market for goods and a centre for local investment in house property. 1 Rodkey, F. S., “The Attempts of Briggs and Co. to Guide British Commercial Policy in the Levant in the Interests of Mohamed Ali Pasha, 1821-1841’, Journal of Modern History, vol. v, no. 3 (Sept. 1933), pp. 325-7. 2 Le Pére, G., ‘Mémoire sur la ville d’Alexandrie’, in Description de ’ Egypte, 2nd edn., vol. xviii, p. 403; Yates, W. H., Egypt, vol. i (London, 1843), p. 64 n.

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 23 In 1816, at the same time as Muhammad ‘Ali was introducing his policy of monopolizing the majority of Egyptian crops, he also undertook the monopoly of native industry by closing the workshops which manufactured cotton cloth, abolishing the customary usages of the corporation of weavers, installing looms in government establishments, and forcing the former masters and artisans to enter them as his employees. Goods manufactured there were either retained by the Government for its own use or sold to the merchants. All private weaving was forbidden. Later this monopoly was extended to include

the manufacture not only of cotton cloth but of all textiles. Village weavers were strictly supervised, their goods purchased

at a fixed price, and a stamp affixed to every piece produced without which no cloth could be sold. The reorganization of the textile industry along European lines followed almost immediately. In 1816 a silk factory was established at Khurunfish, a district of Cairo, and in 1818, when the machinery stopped working and could not be repaired, it was converted into a cotton mill under the management of Bockty, the Swedish consul. A second mill was established at Bulaq. Both were supplied with the latest European machinery. Later a bleaching factory, two dyeing establishments, and a foundry were set up near by, followed in 1820 by three more mills. Workers were recruited from abroad—the Bulaq mill being known as ‘Malta’ from the nationality of many of its spinners—or were conscripted locally. Three sugar factories were also set up at the same period.

Contemporary opinion differed, and continued to differ, on why it was that Muhammad ‘Ali attempted such an ambitious project. Drovetti, the French consul, saw it as an attempt to save money by a process of import-substitution, and this was

undoubtedly a very important factor. Where money was concerned, Muhammad ‘Ali’s mind seems to have worked with perfectly straightforward logic, and the realization that he was

spending large sums on imported European goods which he could probably produce himself may well have alone provided the necessary stimulus to industrialization, especially if, as seems likely, he was forcefully encouraged by some of his European advisers. All the factories he started made articles which were, or had been, imported. His policy was also defended

24 Muhammad ‘Ali and the as a way of using cheap, locally produced raw materials and, as Roussel, another of the French consuls, maintained, as a means of securing economic independence for himself.! There is, however, other evidence to show that the introduction of industry on such a scale was also prompted by a more general desire to revive Egypt by subjecting it to modern ‘civilizing’ influences. Muhammad ‘Ali was quick to realize that his plans to develop the economy could be hastened and expanded by the use of European assistance, just as his army could be given some of the skill and discipline it needed by European instruc-

tors. It is also important to note the interdependence of Muhammad ‘Ali’s various schemes. For example, the silk industry established in 1817 was a complement to the importation of Syrian silk-cultivators the year before; while the factory’s change to a cotton mill presaged a renewed interest in

the growing of cotton and an attempt, after 1818, to increase the area over which this was produced. In short, what he was ! aiming at in these years was a system whereby he could control | the economic life of the whole nation and direct it into the most , profitable channels. It was the Government which very largely ‘ decided what was to be grown; the Government which provided the necessary capital; the Government which was the sole intermediary between merchant and cultivator. Could such a system be operated with even a small degree of efficiency

its advantages were numerous. Not only was Muhammad ‘Ali able to make high profits from the sale of primary produce, but he was also able to increase or decrease the amount grown of a particular crop according to how well it was selling. Again, the Government could introduce any new crop which seemed to offer the prospect of a ready sale or which could be utilized in its factories. Finally, it could use the Egyptian market to sell

the crops grown and the products manufactured under its supervision, and as it was itself the largest purchaser (particularly of military materials) it could protect local production by ensuring its sale, even though the import duties fixed by the commercial treaties at only 3 per cent were clearly insufficient to keep out foreign competitors.? t Roussel, 31 May 1817: Driault, Formation de l empire, p. 57. 2 As far as British goods were concerned the tariff had been fixed at 3 per cent by

the Anglo-Turkish Treaty of 1809 (Treaty of the Dardanelles), Article XXXIV,

Egyptian Economy, 1805-1819 25 This systematic assertion of state control over the economy inevitably produced serious frictions. For one thing it pressed very hard on the population. The peasants lost much of their

former freedom and were often the victims of fraudulent practices by government administrators in the measurement and valuation of their crops; townspeople were forcibly conscripted for work in the factories; artisans left their jobs rather than submit to the new rules which governed the practice of their trade; there were frequent food shortages resulting from the Government’s policy of buying up the whole cereal crop. Open revolt was rare, such was the fear of Muhammad ‘Ali’s power and the long tradition of passive acceptance of authority,

but the stubborn refusal to co-operate actively in the new

schemes was just as harmful to the economy.

A more acute crisis arose in 1817 when Muhammad ‘Ali tried to fit the foreign merchants more closely into the pattern of state control he was aiming to establish. In the spring of that year, pressed for money, he reversed his usual policy of selling

Egyptian products for shipment abroad for long credits and disposed of several thousand ardabbs of wheat, beans, and lentils

to various merchants against payment in advance. However, a temporary rise in European price made him regret this action, and he then directed that the bulk of the cargoes of produce which were arriving slowly from Rosetta be loaded directly on to his own ships and sent to Europe. As a result the merchants received only about half of what they were owed, as well as suffering additional loss from having to keep vessels waiting

long in harbour for shipments which never came. Protests followed, but not, as the French Consul pointed out, to Muhammad “Ali himself, as everyone was anxious to remain on good terms with him in order to make good their losses by obtaining and selling a portion of the next harvest.! For this reason also, those who were asked by Muhammad ‘Ali to settle their debts

promptly did so. Almost at once the European cereal prices broke, and Muhammad ‘Ali, worried by this turn of events, a copy of which can be found in Hertslet, L., A Complete Collection of Treaties and Conventions at Present Subsisting between Great Britain and Foreign Powers, vol.ii (London,

1827), pp. 371~7. Thereafter, most of the other major commercial powers made similar treaties. In spite of such treaties there were occasions on which the Egyptian customs levied a higher rate. See, for instance, Missett, 11 Sept. 1811: F.O. 24/4. 1 Roussel, 24 Feb. 1817: Driault, Formation de empire, p. 46.

26 Muhammad ‘Ali and the reacted by forcing the merchants to accept considerable quantities of beans and wheat, and by sending the remainder abroad on his own account with instructions to his agents to sell at any price and to remit the funds he so urgently needed to finish the Hijaz war. This undercut the Alexandria merchants completely, and, as they were again hampered by slow delivery of their promised supplies, they were forced to accept great losses, so there was little question of their being able to pay their

debts when they began to be pressed in earnest. Trade conditions continued to be bad through 1818 and 1819, certain of Muhammad ‘Ali’s debtors had to sell their merchandise at a discount in order to raise ready money, and one house finally went bankrupt when refused any further extension of credit. The matter was finally settled only in 1820 when Muhammad ‘Ali agreed to allow those who had some chance of eventually paying to do so over five years, while the remainder, including most of those who were more speculators than merchants, were

handed back their promissory notes and told to leave the country. The results of this extended crisis were twofold. Firstly, it placed those merchants who remained in a very weak position. As Mengin, himself a merchant of long standing, then wrote of their dealings with the Government: ‘In these affairs it is no

longer a question of negotiations on equal terms. Frank merchants are forced to keep to the ante-chambers and to bow, and they must show due deference when they speak to Turks.’!

Conversely, however, it strengthened the resolution of the consular corps to take a stronger line against any similar exercise of Muhammad ‘Ali’s power in the future. Secondly, it left Muhammad ‘Ali himself in severe financial straits. The losses from bad debts, from his having held off selling any of the 1819 crop because of the prevailing low prices, and from the

continued low prices in 1820, came just at the time when he was being burdened with many additional expenses, including the heavy cost of setting up the new factories and embarking on the second stage of his projected army reforms, the recruitment and training of Sudanese and Nubian soldiers. Thus, although revenue had further advanced to some 50 million francs,? his 1 Mengin, Histoire de I’ Egypte, ii, p. 270 (translation).

2 Ibid., p. 384-7.

Esyptian Economy, 1805-1819 27 financial position remained a difficult one. His immediate reaction was to raise the land tax still further. But access to some other source of revenue was clearly necessary, and this was an important reason for his being so quick to seize on the chance of making money by the exploitation of the fortuitous discovery of one of his many foreign employees—that of longstaple cotton.

THE INTRODUCTION OF LONG STAPLE COTTON 1820-1837 I. THE DISCOVERY AND INTRODUCTION OF JUMEL COTTON

HE impulse behind the introduction of long-staple cotton as a major Egyptian crop came from Louis Alexis Jumel (1785-1823), a French textile engineer who was engaged in 1817 to come to Egypt as director of the projected spin-

ning and weaving mill at Bulaq.! It is not known when he actually arrived in the country, but some time in the course of the next two years he discovered, in a Cairo garden, a bush of a type of cotton which he recognized as being superior in length and strength of fibre to any cotton then being cultivated in the

Middle East. This cotton had been growing in Egypt for a considerable time, but according to Mengin it was spun only by a few women and its worth was unnoticed.? By the spring of

1819 Jumel was cultivating some of the new type in his own garden at Azbakiya and on an estate at Matariya. In 1820 these experiments yielded three bales; a year later, with financial assistance from the Alexandria merchant house of Messrs. Gibbara, output had increased to 2,000 bales.3 Muhammad ‘Ali encouraged Jumel’s researches from the start: he allowed him to spend time away from his factory, he 1 Dardaud, G., ‘Un ingénieur francais au service de Mohamed Ali’, B.L.E. xxii (Session 1939-40), p. 61. 2 Mengin, F., Histoire sommaire de l’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Mohamed Aly

(Paris, 1839), p. 4. 3 Dardaud, pp. 64-5. The weight of the bale changed as it became possible to pack cotton more closely. In the early 1820s it weighed about 175 lb. (See comparison between Gliddon’s figures for cotton exports in bales (pp. 46-8) and those in Table 1 of this work.) By 1831 it had risen to around 200 lb. (See comparison between J. A. Mann’s figures for Egyptian cotton exports to Great Britain— The Cotton Trade of Great Britain (Manchester, 1860), Table 27—and those of J. Bowring,

‘Report on Egypt and Candia’, P.P. 1840, vol. xxi, p. 66.)

The Introduction of Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 29 exempted him from paying land tax on the fields he devoted to cotton, and in 1822 he gave him the sum of 125,000 piastres with which to conduct further researches.! He seems quickly to have realized the worth of a new crop of this sort. Unlike

cereals, it was inedible and could not be consumed locally, making it an ideal product for monopoly. Again, it was an article for which there was a ready demand in Europe, where it

obtained a price which was perhaps two and a half to four times that of the ordinary Egyptian short-staple cotton,? and its sale promised to provide the Government with some of the revenue it so urgently needed. This was the more important as the wheat grown in Egypt, traditionally the country’s major

export, was of a poor quality and suffered increasingly in European markets from competition with Black Sea grain.3 Finally, its cultivation could be easily fitted into the existing pattern of agricultural administration. Thus, after the success of Jumel’s 1821 crop, he gave orders for the new cotton to be cultivated on an extended scale. Tracts of land were allocated to its growth in areas which were easy to irrigate in summer, mainly along the eastern bank of the Damietta branch of the

Nile; canals were deepened and cleaned to bring water to fields at some distance from the river; sagzyas were erected and

dykes constructed to keep out the annual flood.+ Altogether, some 100,000 to 150,000 feddans must have been affected by these measures. Animals were then sold to the peasants on credit, seed provided, and cotton gins and presses manufactured and distributed among the villages.5 In addition, when the apparent decline in quality of the 1822 crop convinced Muhammad ‘Ali of the need to instruct the fellaheen more comprehensively in the correct methods of cultivation, he brought experts from Syria and Asia Minor, each of whom was assigned 1 Dardaud, pp. 63-4. Due to the constant depreciation of the Egyptian currency before the monetary reform of 1834 it is difficult to provide accurate equivalents in contemporary European coin. But according to the French official, the Baron de Boislecomte, the piastre was worth o-40 francs in 1822 and 0-35 francs in 1830: Douin, G., La Mission du baron de Botslecomte (Cairo, 1927), p. 130. For further information about Egyptian currency, see Appendix 3. 2 Dardaud, p. 65. 3 Douin, Mission, p. 83. + Gliddon, p. 14; Mengin, Histotre sommaire, pp. 4-5.

5 Gliddon, p. 13. Dardaud (p. 70) mentions that by the time of his death in June 1823 Jumel had had 1,000 gins manufactured in his workshop.

30 The Introduction of a number of villages in which the peasants were placed completely under his control. They chose the land best suited to cotton, and then supervised every stage of the process of cultivation, as well as showing the peasants how to prepare the crop, once harvested, for export.! So great was the success of these measures that by 1823 the amount of cotton produced had risen to well over 200,000 cantars, and its quality was such that the first small consignments sent to Liverpool and other European ports were given a premium over all but the very best American varieties.? The system under which cotton was produced did not vary greatly from that employed previously for other crops. By order of Muhammad ‘Ali the provincial officials assigned to each village the number of feddans which they should cultivate, after an examination of locality and the nature of the land. Fellaheen deputed to grow Jumel, or Mako (as the new cotton was variously called), were expected to cultivate it according to carefully laid-down methods. Initially these rules had been spelled out by the foreign experts, but later they were codified in the Lathat zira‘at al-fallah, a law issued in 1830 which gave detailed instructions about every aspect of production, setting out precisely how the land should be prepared for planting, how the seed should be selected and sown, how the soil should be tended while the plants were growing, how the cotton should be picked, how the trees should be uprooted after their yield began to decline, and many other details. It also provided a list of duties for the various government officials whose task it was to see that these instructions were carried out. Jumel was planted in March or April after one working of the soil. It had then to be weeded regularly and watered every eight days during the summer, one man being able to tend, but not provide the water for, four feddans.’ Harvesting began in June or July and there were three pickings, the last taking place in December or January. Labour for gathering the bolls was I Grégoire, M., ‘De la culture du coton en Egypte’, in Mémoires et travaux originaux presentés et lus ad [’ Institut égyptien, vol. i (Paris, 1862), pp. 439-40.

2 Ellison, T., The Cotton Trade of Great Britain (London, 1886), p. 88.

3 Information from (undated) report by Drovetti, quoted in Guémard, G., Les Réformes en Egypte (Cairo, 1936), p. 457.

4 Rivlin, pp. 138-9. 5 Guémard, pp. 449-50, 454.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 31 . mainly provided by women and children, who could manage 15-18 lb. a day.! Contemporary estimates of the yields in these early years do not vary widely. Sir Gardiner Wilkinson gives two and a half cantars per feddan, and Bowring two.? It should be noted that such figures always refer to cantars of ginned cotton. As a rule 315 lb. was picked from the field for every 100 lb. of lint actually produced by the gin. After it had been collected the cotton was dried in the sun, or in ovens, so that the seed might be separated more easily; and

then it was either ginned by machine, ‘bowed’—a process by which it was agitated up and down on a series of taut strings— or hand-separated.3 Ginning was the most efficient of the three methods as the other two often failed to strip the wool from the boll cleanly, but it was a lengthy process and necessitated the cotton lying around in heaps, getting damp and discoloured.‘ Unlike America, where the invention of the Whitney gin had revolutionized cotton production, Egypt had to wait many years before a similar labour-saving machine was invented which did not harm its longer staple. In the case of the ordinary fellah it was generally the cultivator himself who undertook the ginning, managing to produce some 12-15 lb. of ginned cotton a day. Plants generally remained in the ground for three years, after

which they were uprooted. If this was not done their yield declined. Soon, however, some of the more efficient producers learned that there were important advantages to be gained by

re-sowing their cotton annually, and altered their practice accordingly.© The extra work involved was offset by higher yields and the fact that an additional crop or crops could be grown during the winter months. The labour required for cotton cultivation was considerable. 1 Ibid., p. 454. 2 Wilkinson, Sir G., Topography of Thebes and General View of Egypt (London, 1835), p. 270; Bowring, ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (G.B.), p. 19. As noted, the weight of the cantar was changed in 1836 from 1224 lb. to gg Ib. (see p. g, note 1). It must therefore be assumed that Wilkinson refers to cantars of the former weight, Bowring to cantars of the latter.

3 Guémard, p. 455. 4 Ibid., p. 466; Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 35.

5 Gliddon, pp. 19-20. 6 This practice seems to have been first mentioned in Viesse de Marmont, A. F. L., Voyage du maréchal, duc de Raguse en Hongrie, en Transylvanie . . . a Constantinople, dans quelques parties de l’ Asie-Mineure, en Syrie, en Palestine, et en Egypte, vol.

ii (Paris, 1837-8), p. 349.

32 The Introduction of And, though some of it could be provided by women and children who previously had been only briefly employed in the fields, the work necessary for ginning and watering and tending the plants must have borne heavily on the peasants, especially when one adds their increasing liability for corvée duty caused by the extension of the area under perennial irrigation. Nevertheless, to judge from the rapid increase of the first few harvests and the quality of the crop produced, the extra burden

must have been at least passively accepted. One explanation which might be suggested is that the peasants had no alternative, that they were used to being told what to grow and were well aware of the drastic penalties which would. accompany disobedience. But while there is undoubtedly some truth in this, it does not seem likely that they had learned so quickly to accede to government directives ordering them what to grow. Nor is it probable that a sullen and angry population would have been able to increase the size of the cotton harvest so radically

| between 1822 and 1824. A more plausible reason would seem to be that they remained sufficiently used to operating within a money economy to be stimulated by the prospect of profit, which the cultivation of Jumel originally held out. As Drovetti put it, when they saw how much the cotton trees could produce, and that the Pasha paid them 175 piastres per cantar for first quality, they worked even harder than before to ensure the success of the new crop.! The provision by the Government of credit, animals and seed, and irrigation machinery must have been an added inducement. After ginning, the cotton was pressed by foot into bales of about 220 lb., and then transported at the cultivator’s expense to the nearest government warehouse: no private sales were permitted. There it was weighed, its quality assessed, and the fixed government price assigned to it. Each fellah had an open account which was only closed at the end of the year, after taxes and the interest on advances had been deducted. Then, if the fellah made a profit, either the balance was handed over or he was given credit against the next year’s tax bill. Payment was occasionally made in coin, but was more generally in the form of ‘assignations —paper IOUs from the Government—which could be cashed at the Treasury only after great trouble, and 1 Guémard, p. 458.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 33 which were usually sold to merchants and brokers at a discount.!

Apart from the original type of cotton discovered by Jumel, Muhammad ‘Ali sought to introduce various other varieties, but only one—American Sea Island—prospered for more than a few years.? Its yield per feddan was low, however, and it quickly degenerated if new seed was not constantly imported.3 Thus, it too was finally abandoned in the 1830s, but not before it had crossed with Jumel to provide the type of cotton which existed more or less unchanged until after the American Civil War.4

2. COTTON PRODUCTION 1824-1837

After four good harvests in the mid 1820s there was a sharp fall in cotton output round about the year 1828.5 A number of

writers try to explain this by the fellaheen’s sudden disenchantment with its cultivation,® but the answer is not so simple.

It is undoubtedly true that many proprietors were beginning to find it less profitable and a greater burden to grow at this time.” But if the decline was really the result of a basic aversion to cotton it is difficult to explain how production rose again so rapidly between 1834 and 1836. Two other factors should also

be considered. In the first place, the cotton bushes responsible for the high yields of 1824-6 must have been planted mainly in 1823 and 1824 (at the time when foreign experts were most active), and were thus due for replacement in 1826 and 1827.

But these were years in which agriculture in general was suffering from the low Niles of 1824 and 1825 and when a large 1 Gliddon, pp. 22-4; St. John, J. A., Egypt and Mohammed Alt, vol. ii (London, 1834), p. 433; de Cadalvéne, E. and de Breuvery, J., L’Egypte et la Turquie de 1829 ad 1836, vol. i (Paris, 1836), p. 384 n.

24 Egypt, Gliddon, p. 14. 3 Ibid., p. 36. Ministry of Agriculture, Egyptian Agriculiural Products ... Cotton...

History, Development and Botanical Relationship of Egyptian Cottons, by Dudgeon, G. C.

(Cairo, 1917), p. 355 See Table 1, and also note 1, in which attention is drawn to the unreliability of the figures given. As a rule where the figures shown are for exports they may be taken to refer to the cotton produced in the previous year. But after about 1830 allowance should be made for the cotton consumed locally in Egyptian factories, see p. 35, note 2. 6 See, for example, Rivlin, pp. 140-1. 7 Grégoire, p. 441.

821643 D

34. The Introduction of TABLE I Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1821-377

Volume Value Price

Jumel Sea Island Jumel Jumel

quintals® = quintals® LES talaris/quintals4

1821 944 1822 35,108 154 16 1823 259,426

1824 228,078 154 1825 212,318 1826 216,181 12917 13

1827 = 159,542 5,604. 13 13 1828 59,255 26,285 1829 104,920 11,050 12 1830 213,595 8,702 12

1831 136,127 186,675 45544 9,239 104 1832 15 1833 56,067 1,833 15

1834 = 143,892 3,920 23°4-302 1835 213,064 — 1,068,020 1836 = - 243,230 894,383 1837 = 3155470 757489 SOURCES:

1821~34: de Cadalvéne and de Breuvery, i, pp. 383-4. 1835-7: Fowler, T. K., Report on the Cultivation of Cotton in Egypt (Manchester, 1861), p. 8. NOTES:

a. These statistics present one major problem. It is clear from de Cadalvéne and de Breuvery themselves (i, p. 73) and Gliddon (p. 43) that, with the exception of a few bales, there was no export of Jumel until 1822. Thus, it is possible that the series given here, or at least part of it, should refer to the year following that actually indicated. Some evidence for this supposition comes from a comparison between the figures for exports (above) and those for

cotton production for individual years in Geuemard (p. 343) and Rivlin (p. 143). On the other hand, it is equally possible that the problem has been caused not by erroneously shifting the series back by one year but rather by an effort to adapt figures which originally referred to years in the Muslim calendar for years in the Gregorian. In either case, of course, the series must be treated with the greatest caution. b. One quintal equalled Kg. 50 or 110°3 lb. (de Cadalvéne and de Breuvery, 1. p. 384.n.) But after 1834 the figures refer to cantars of 94 \|b., or so Fowler maintains. This is an unusual weight and Fowler may have copied it wrongly. For the weight of the cantar after 1835 all other sources give 98-9 Ib. c. Strictly speaking, the Egyptian pound was not introduced until 1885, but a number of sources use it for units of 100 piastres (Pt. 100) before that date.

According to the monetary tariff fixed by Muhammad ‘Ali in 1835, £1 (sterling) was to equal Pt. 974: Crouchley, Economic Development, p. 100.

d. One talari (or dollar) equalled Pt. 20: Ibid.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 35 number of men had been newly conscripted to fight in the Greek wars, and it is unlikely that the care with which the original land was chosen and the seeds planted was repeated on anything like the same scale. Indeed, many of the bushes may not have been replaced at all owing to the extra labour involved, and in this case yields would very definitely have decreased. ‘The year 1826 was one in which rural conditions were particularly disturbed. Food was short; declining export receipts meant that the peasants were being pressed hard for taxes, and a considerable number of animals needed for irrigation were sold to raise money; there was a short rebellion in Sharqiya, one of the main cotton-producing provinces. In the second place, the fall in European cotton prices after 1825 led Muhammad ‘Ali to order that more fields be planted with Sea Island cotton, seeds of which were first imported from America in 1826, on account of its higher value.' However, its yield per feddan was only half that of Jumel and any sizeable switch of land to its cultivation must have lowered output. Thus, in 1827-8, when Sea-Island production was at its peak, total production would have been perhaps 25,000 to 30,000 cantars more if Jumel alone had been grown. Finally, in so far as the decline in cotton harvests is measured by the apparent decline

in exports, this can partially be explained by the growing consumption of Jumel in the new textile factories. By 1831 they

may have been utilizing as much as 50,000 to 55,000 cantars a year.’ The unsettled conditions in the countryside continued through the early 1830s. In particular there was a growing shortage of manpower. A large army and navy had to be recruited for the war in Syria, and by 1833 there were about 125,000 men under arms,3 or something like a ninth of the adult male population.4 There was also considerable emigration from the villages to t Gliddon, p. 36. 2 Douin, Mission, p. 83. Other estimates include:

1833: 70,000 cantars: St. John, il, p. 418. 1834: ‘At least’ 40,000 cantars: de Cadalvéne and de Breuvery, i, p. 384 n. 1834-7: 50,000 cantars: Rivlin, p. 144.

3 Rivlin, p. 209.

4 The population may be assumed to have been about 4,500,000 at this time: Baer, ‘Urbanization in Egypt’, p. 3.

36 The Introduction of ~ avoid conscription or the attentions of the tax-gatherer. Thus,

there may well have been insufficient labour to ensure that cotton was sown, irrigated, picked, or ginned with the attention it required, and production remained at a low level.

The upturn in cotton production in 1834 coincided with the end of the First Syrian War. Once hostilities were over, Muhammad ‘Ali spent three years in which he very largely devoted himself to the study of rural conditions and the many abuses that he had found flourishing in wartime conditions. Each year he visited various parts of the country, hearing complaints, encouraging production, inaugurating public works, and trying to reform and revitalize the agricultural admuinistration.! The cotton-growing districts were particular objects of his attention, especially as in 1833 European cotton prices had begun rising to a height which, by 1835, rivalled their 1825 peak, and he tried to raise the level of the harvests by every means at his disposal. He sent troops into the fields to supervise cultivation; in 1834 he increased the price which the Government paid for cotton;? and two years later he began to pay for all agricultural commodities in cash rather than in assignations, as a further stimulus.3 3. METHODS OF SALE

Once collected in the provincial warehouse the cotton was taken by government boat to Alexandria, where it was housed in the large central shuna (warehouse) together with all the other agricultural products sent there for export.* It was then disposed of, either by Muhammad ‘Ali himself on one of his frequent visits to the town, or by the ‘Direction Générale de Commerce’, established in 1825 under Baghus Bey.5

A number of methods of sale were tried between 1824 and 1837, varying as the need for ready money came into conflict with the desire to maximize profits. Initially, as he was used 1 Duhamel, 20 Sept. 1836: Cattaui, R., Le Réegne de Mohamed Al: d’aprés les archives russes en Egypte, vol. ii, pt. 2 (Rome, 1935), p. 133; Rivlin, p. 141.

3 Rivlin, p. 141. |

2 Lavison, 24 Apr. 1836: R. Cattaui, il. pt. 2, p. 19.

4 Duhamel, 20 Sept. 1836: Cattaui, R., ii, pt. 2, p. 133.

5 Malivoire, 4 Jan. 1826: Driault, E., L’ Expédition de Créte et de Morée, 1829-1828

(Cairo, 1930), p. III.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 37 to doing with cereals and other crops, Muhammad ‘Ali ~ attempted to export the bulk of the cotton harvest on his own account, hoping thereby to take for himself the profit which would otherwise have gone to various middlemen. But such was his requirement of cash to move his cotton, and hence his unwillingness to wait for payment until it had been sold in Europe, that he was forced almost at once to turn to the foreign merchants for assistance. Thus, in the early part of 1824, when it came to the question of the first large harvest, he managed to

persuade two of the most important Alexandria houses— Briggs and Co., and Violier and Graban of Livorno—to take 50,000 bales for shipment to England, France, and Italy in return for the immediate payment which they alone, as prosperous concerns, could make.! They did this only with reluc-

tance because, like the other merchants, they were unsure whether they could dispose of such sizeable consignments on the terms which Muhammad ‘Ali had proposed. But when

Samuel Briggs, who had gone to Liverpool to talk to the spinners and brokers, discovered that, contrary to expectations,

it could be sold in so great a quantity and at such a price that he was able to realize a great profit, the others at once bid fiercely for the remainder of the harvest.2 Those whose resources were well known received consignments on credit: the rest paid cash. Many new merchants were attracted to Alexandria by the

prospect of profit that these methods engendered. The number of British houses, for instance, increased from two in 1822 to five in 1825, and a number of fortunes were made.3

The bulk of the 1824 and 1825 crops were again sold in Europe on Muhammad ‘Ali’s account, either by agents or by merchants whom he commissioned. He would clearly have liked to have continued this policy in 1827 as well, but the financial

crisis of the previous year, following the fall in cotton prices at the end of the European commodity boom, forced him to change the system to one in which he agreed to deliver cotton in exchange for payment made well in advance. However, in spite

of all his difficulties, he was still able to drive a hard bargain with the merchants, as an extract from a letter written in May t Drovetti, 24 July 1824: Driault, L’ Expédition, p. 26. 2 Rivlin, p. 142; Drovetti, 24 July 1824: Driault, L’ Expédition, p. 26. 3 Guémard, p. 345.

38 The Introduction of 1827 by Barker, the British Consul-General, shows. ‘Muhammad ‘Ali’, he wrote, being engulfed in enterprises which require pecuniary resources which all his revenues, great as they are, cannot supply, he is compelled, in order to raise ready money, to say to the merchants, ‘I have some many thousand bales of cotton which I will undertake to deliver to you in three, four or six months; you shall advance me now nine-tenths of the value of the goods, and then I will consign them to your correspondent for sale on my account.’ The cottons

are then, of course, promised to the best bidder and such is the competition in every branch of commerce that people are found to

strike bargains with him upon very hard terms; those with the French houses which he has lately made, at thirteen dollars per kintal [quintal], payable a third, ora half, or two thirds, immediately,

and the rest on delivery, are looked upon by many of my friends with whom I have conversed as ruinous. The probability is that the account sales of the cottons will balance on the wrong sides, and then

the merchant is completely at the mercy of the Pasha, who, it is said, has a wonderful talent for drawing in by hard bargains and liberal promises the merchants with whom he deals, so as to continue that he should be their debtor. A common manoeuvre of his is that at the time he consigns the cottons he gives commissions for expensive machinery, marble basins, etc., the cost of which he hopes the merchant in Europe will be fool enough to execute rather than risk the loss of His Highness’ favour by disappointing him in things on which he has laid great stress.!

Nevertheless, despite such bargains, commissions in advance also began to present certain drawbacks. As Muhammad ‘Ali could not always predict what prices would be in half a year’s time, any sudden rise in price allowed the merchants to make

an extra large profit. Again, the merchants became adept at adding interests, discounts, exchanges, and other items to their commission fees, and for this reason there were occasions when,

according to Gliddon, cotton which would have fetched fourteen dollars a cantar on the open market netted the Government only eight.2 Experience of this sort, as well as complaints from the less favoured houses, caused Muhammad ‘Ali to turn to another method of disposing of his crops—public

sales for cash at a fixed price. This new policy was first 1 Barker, J. B. B., Syria and Egypt under the Last Five Sultans of Turkey, vol. u1

(London, 1876), pp. 64-6. 2 Gliddon, p. 28.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 39 announced by the Russian Consul-General in June 1828,' but in fact it was only occasionally practised owing to the continued shortage of money, and remained subordinate to the system of sales in advance. Thus, for example, in June 1828 and April and November 1829, Muhammad ‘Ali was lent large sums of money against the next harvest by the French house of Pastré. And in December he borrowed more money from a number of merchants, on similar terms.? By these means he was able to avoid the necessity of raising a public loan which many then thought he would be forced to make. The price paid, however, was yet another commercial crisis, for the very small 1829 crop permitted the delivery of only a fraction of the promised cotton, and in December, and again in March 1830, strong protests from the French Consul accompanied Pastré’s complaints that the cotton his firm was owed was being sold to others. By July 1830 only a third to a half of the cotton had been handed over, and it was not until December that the 1829 contracts were finally fulfilled. In contrast to the similar crisis of 1817—109, it was the merchants who this time emerged with their position

strengthened, and from then on Muhammad ‘Ali had to take consular protests into account when concocting his sales policy, even if he could often still afford to ignore them in the end.

Sales in advance continued to be the primary method of disposing of the crop for the next few years, until 1834, when rising European prices led Muhammad ‘Ali to discover further

serious disadvantages in the system he employed. Certain important merchants were sweeping the whole crops away with

their large offers when smaller merchants, egged on by fastrising European prices, would often have bid considerably higher. Proof of this came from the fact that cotton bought from Muhammad ‘Ali for fifteen dollars a cantar in 1834 was being sold and resold in Alexandria for as much as twentynine and a half dollars even before leaving the port. Hence, in February 1835, Muhammad ‘Ali tried yet another method of sale, public auctions, although sometimes a pressing need would 1 Pezzoni, 28 June 1828: R. Cattaui, 1 (Rome, 1931), pp. 253-4. 2 Pezzoni, 6 July 1828: Ibid., p. 258. 3 Mimaut, 21 Dec. 1830: Douin, G., L’Egypte de 1828 a 1830 (Rome, 1935),

: 2.

° Gliddon, p. 31.

40 The Introduction of still lead him to accept a particularly tempting offer involving payment in advance. Cotton was auctioned in Alexandria for two years until April 1837, when the effects of the European commercial depression spread to Alexandria and brought trade almost to a standstill. Paradoxically, it was the auction system, which many people regarded as the fairest and best method of disposing of the crop, that caused the crisis to hit Egypt with greater severity than might otherwise have been the case, for the smaller houses, happy to operate with only the narrowest margin of profit, had made bids which pushed prices up so high as to be almost out of line with those in Europe.! The sudden interruption in trade found many of them with unsaleable cotton on their hands and there were six failures.2 Even the larger houses which had kept

: away from the auctions suffered, for several had acted as bankers for their less important neighbours.3 Sales were suspended in the spring, and it was not until the autumn that they finally restarted, this time by private treaty. 4. PROFITS FROM COTTON

Muhammad ‘Ali’s profits from cotton consisted of the difference between the price he paid to the fellah and that which he was able to obtain from the toreign merchants, less the cost of

transport from the provincial shuna to Alexandria. The only figures which exist for this are given by Lavison, the Russian Consul-General, for the years 1834~40 (Table 2). These must be used with caution. An even more rough guide to gross profits can be obtained by multiplying together the two series for the volume and price of cotton exports shown in Table 1. Calculations of this sort are far too uncertain to bear the weight of a detailed analysis of the influence of cotton sales on the country’s finance. But, very generally, it may be said that in the two periods of high prices and good harvests, 1825-6 and

1835-6, cotton profits may have contributed somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of total revenue. At other times, however, this proportion must have shrunk to as low as a tenth. ¥ Colin, A., ‘Lettres sur Egypte — Commerce’, R.D.M., 4th Series, xvii (1 Jan.

1839), p. 66. 2 Lavison, 9 Apr. 1837: R. Cattaul, 11, pt. 2, p. 293. 3 Colin, ‘Lettres sur Egypte — Commerce’, p. 66.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 41 TABLE 2 Government Cotton Profits, 1834-40

Total sales Total value Government profit

Bales £ Ea LE

1834 42,906 353,055" 198,593

1835 95,009 1,027,442” 685,410 1836 40,140 1,164,915° 768,411 1837 = 134,095 895,447 412,705

1838 112,472 904,378 499,479 1839 59,910 440,944. 225,268 1840 = 62,637 404,997 150,704

SourceE: Lavison, 16 Feb. 1841: R. Cattaui, iii (Rome, 1936), p. 543. NOTEs:

a. Value originally in silver roubles. Converted at a rate of 6°25 silver roubles = £,E1; see Crouchley, A. E., “The Development of Commerce in the Reign of Mohamed Ali’, £.C., nos. 168-9 (Feb.—Mar. 1937), p. 313. b. It will be noted that these figures disagree with those in Table 1.

Four further points can be made. Firstly, in good years, cotton was far and away the most profitable of the crops subject to Muhammad ‘Ali’s monopoly system. In 1834-5, for instance, it provided £320,000, or half the revenue obtained from the sale of agricultural commodities, while in 1836 its contribution had risen to 85 per cent (see Table 3). Secondly, although cotton profits were of the greatest importance in financing many of the projects begun in the mid 1820s, such as the construction of new factories, the enlargement of the army after the arrival of General Boyer’s military mission, and the purchase of a new fleet, 1t was the expansion in land-tax receipts that largely permitted the great increase in expenditure which took place between 1821 and 1837 (see Table 4). Thirdly, the fluctuations in the size of cotton profits played a very disruptive role in Egyptian finances. This can be clearly seen in 1837. During the two previous years Muhammad ‘Ali had come to rely heavily on cotton sales to meet a number of pressing expenses. In a series of reports Lavison describes how the proceeds of one cotton auction in 1836 were used to

42 The Introduction of TABLE 3 Profits from Agricultural Monopolies, 1834-5 and 1836

1834/5 1836

piastres piastres Long-staple cotton 32,500,000 58,379,520

Short-staple cotton 250,000

Sugar 1,000,000 Indigo 3,000,000 2,200,001 Opium 300,000 302,493 Flax and flax-seed 4,000,000 1,360,850°

Tobacco 5,000,000 | Rice 2,600,000 2,148,864 Wheat 13,000,0004 291,390 Beans 456,444 Barley 9735323 Others 1,630,000 2,451,105 Total 64,280,000 68,564,000 SOURCES:

1834-5 Colin, A., ‘Lettres sur Egypte — Budget et Administration’, R.D.M., 4th Series, xiii (1 Jan. 1838), p. 130. 1836 Duhamel, 6 July 1837: R. Cattaul, li, pt. 2, p. 340. NOTEs:

a. Includes lentils and maize. b. Flax seed only.

pay the peasants in cash for their produce in order to stimulate them to grow more, how the money from another in the same month went to pay off some of the arrears owed to Egyptian sailors, while the profits from a third and a fourth in May of that year were immediately dispatched to Istanbul as part of the

Tribute. Thus, when sales were suspended in the spring of 1837, Muhammad ‘Ali once again found himself plunged into serious financial difficulties. But on this occasion, unlike those of 1813-14 or 1817-20, he attempted to meet the crisis, not by

seeking new sources of revenue, but by several important measures of administrative retrenchment designed to curtail expenses, in particular the change in the system of rural administration which will be described in the next chapter. Finally, cotton profits were a vital means of meeting Egypt’s chronic shortage of currency. At the beginning of the ninet Lavison, 12, 14 Apr., 16 May 1836: R. Cattaui, ii, pt. 2, pp. 2, 19, 45.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 43 TABLE 4 Estimates of Egyptian Government Revenue and Expenditure, 1821-38

(purses? and francs) | Land-Tax Total revenue Total expenditure Purses Francs Purses Francs Purses Francs 1821 132,309 26,461,752 239,941 48,028,500 189,400 37,880,000 1829 110,780 19,400,000 511,200 89,463,000 1830 225,000 £ 1,406,250 498,794 £3,118,951 421,970 £2,661,187

1826 400,000 100,000,000

1833 (i) 506,000 76,000,000 1833 (ii) 187,500 28,125,000 =. 418,525 62,778,750 333,000 = 49,951,900

1834-5 281,000 35,125,000 622,820 77,853,500 611,200 76,400,000 1835-6 320,000 40,000,000 612,860 76,607,500 575,751 71,968,815

1838 720,000 90,000,000 SOURCES:

1821: Mengin, Histoire de l’Egypte, ii, pp. 384-9. (Original figures in purses con-

verted to francs at the rate of Pt. 1 = o-40 francs.) 1826, 1829, 1833 (i): Douin, Mission, pp. 126-7. (Original in francs converted at the rate of Pt. 1 = 0°35 francs.) 1830: St. John, ii, pp. 468-71. 1833 (ii): Clot, A. B., Apercu général sur l’ Egypte, vol. ii (Paris, 1840), pp. 207-11.

(Original in francs converted at the rate of Pt. 1 = o-30 francs.) 1834-5: Colin, ‘Lettres sur l’Egypte — Budget et Administration’, pp. 129-32. (Original in piastres converted to francs at the rate of Pt. 1 == 0°25 francs.)

1835-6: Duhamel, 6 July 1837: Cattaui, R., 1, pt. 2, p. 340. (Original in purses converted at the rate of Pt. 1 = 0-25 francs.) 1838: Medem, 25 Dec. 1838: Cattaui, R., ili, p. 253. (Original in piastres converted at the rate of Pt. 1 = 0-25 francs.) Nore: a. A purse equalled Pt. 500.

teenth century three main varieties of coin were in circulation, Egyptian coins, of which a few were minted in the citadel of

Cairo, Turkish coins, and foreign money, mostly Austrian thalers and Spanish dollars. However, owing to the rapid depreciation of both the Egyptian and Turkish money, European merchants soon began to refuse to accept them in payment, and foreign currency came more and more into domestic use. But with an expanding economy and a growing number of financial transactions there was never enough of it. The situation was made worse by the fact that foreign coins were often exported almost as fast as they entered the country—despite

decrees to the contrary—either by Muhammad ‘Ali himself, or , by foreign merchants who could see no opportunity for their

44 The Introduction of profitable employment locally once the cotton season was over.

This situation was only slightly improved by Muhammad ‘Als currency reform of 1835 (in force in 1836) which was supposed to lead to the minting of new Egyptian coins, but insufficient quantities were made and foreign coins continued in circulation.! Muhammad ‘Ali tried to get over the problem of inadequate coinage for internal purposes by paying peasants, troops, and civil servants in assignations. But when this was not possible, for instance when coins were necessary to calm a nearmutinous army or to pay bedouin to transport military materials, he could generally find the means to do this only by selling a cash crop like cotton. Again, cotton sales were one of the chief means of paying for European imports. Overseas payments were generally effected by exchanging cotton for bills which could be encashed in the relevant foreign city. 5. COTTON FACTORIES

Apart from providing some of the funds necessary for the establishment of large-scale industry in Egypt, the introduction of Jumel also provided a direct stimulus to the construction of spinning and weaving factories which could utilize it locally. Thus, although by 1822 a number of the existing mills had already stopped working, Muhammad ‘Ali was in no way discouraged, and between 1824 and 1826 twelve more cotton factories were constructed, situated either in the main Delta cotton-growing areas or in centres like Foua, Rosetta, and Damietta, where transport was easy. These were followed in 1827 and 1828 by nine in Upper Egypt. At the same time four bleaching establishments were added to the three which existed in 1821.2 With the exception of a few machines brought from Europe as models no cotton-spinning apparatus was imported, and all the factories were provided with jennies and looms made by Egyptian carpenters, smiths, and turners under the direction of French technicians.3 Power was generally provided

by animals—Lane records a street pedlar in Cairo advertising t Crouchley, Economic Development, pp. 99-101; Tedesco, A., De la situation monétaire en Egypte (Alexandria, 1858), pp. 7-11; Sultan, F., La Monnaie égyptienne (Paris, 1914), pp. 56-7; Arminjon, P., La Situation économique et financiére de l’ Egypte

(Paris, 1911), pp. 355-6.

2 Fahmy, M., pp. 23-5. 3 St. John, ui, p. 411.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 45 his cotton goods with the cry, ‘The fruit of the bull, O maidens’! —but, later, a few steam engines were imported. Mengin men-

tions some arriving from England in 1829 to replace others which were worn out; Colin writing of a visit to Egypt in 1834 stated that there were seven or eight machines in the country, but that only one or two were actually working.? The total number of cotton factories, as given by Fahmy, was thirty in 1833.3 They employed some 30,000 workers in the late

1820s, and though this shrank to 6,000 (with 1,200 oxen) in 1833, probably because the remainder were conscripted into the army, the labour force was again built up to something like the original size once the Syrian war was over.* Wages were

generous to begin with, but then, according to St. John, Muhammad ‘Ali ‘saw plainly that this entire revenue would be insufficient adequately to reward merit and industry’, and by 1832-3 they were only barely enough to provide a daily subsistence.5 Working conditions were bad, hours were long, and

there was every encouragement for the workmen to rob the factory or even, on occasions, to commit various acts of sabotage.

St. John reported that there was not one of Muhammad ‘Ali’s mills which had not been accidentally or designedly set on fire.°

The factories were not independent but were run as part of one unit. The Cairo factories provided the provincial mills with all the necessary equipment, while the latter sent the thread they had spun to Cairo, where it was either woven and bleached for the local market or exported.” A few of the provincial mills, however, contained looms of their own, and the construction of bleaching establishments in the Delta in 1827 suggests that some of the thread was processed locally to save transport costs. The quality of the finished article was generally low. St. John, for example, maintained that in many factories the value of Egyptian cotton when spun locally was less than 1 Lane, E. W., An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, vol.

li (London, 1836), p. 15. 2 Mengin, Histoire sommaire, p. 20; Colin, A., ‘Lettres sur Egypte — Industrie manufacturiére’, R.D.M., 4th Series, xiv (15 May 1838), p. 455. 3 Fahmy, M., p. 24. 4 St. John, ii, p. 417. 5 St. John, ii, pp. 414~-15. © Ibid., pp. 412-13. 7 Ibid., p. 413; Fahmy, M., pp. 25-6.

46 The Introduction of that when it was in its raw state!, but this cannot have been universally the case as a certain amount of yarn was exported to Trieste, Livorno, and Turkey. Contemporary opinion was quick to point out the many faults which existed in the system of factory administration. Hekekyan, for example, in a report written in 1831, pointed to machines which were in a bad state because neither managers nor workers dared stop for repairs and thus risk the punishments which would befall them if certain output targets were not reached; St. John stressed the low morale of the workers and the inefficient direction which resulted in 50 per cent of the raw material being wasted through carelessness; Bowring wrote of the drawbacks of the ox-driven machinery.? Nevertheless, Muhammad ‘Ali did not abandon his factories. ‘This may have been partly obstinacy, as some suggested, and a dislike of

admitting that he was wrong; it was no doubt also partly the result of his failure to understand the true state of Egyptian industry. On the one hand, he was rarely permitted to know what was really going on by his subordinates; on the other, he seems to have calculated profit merely by subtracting the cost of the raw material from the value of the finished article and to have ignored both working expenses and the depreciation of the capital involved.3 But this is not the whole story and a better case can be made for him than is usually attempted. To begin with, there is the fact that the output of spun cotton markedly increased between 1829 and 1837.4 Secondly, during this period he was able to export a sizeable amount of the materials produced; apart from the yarn sent to Europe, just mentioned, woven goods were exported to such neighbouring countries as Syria, Arabia, and the Sudan. Finally, it is not true, as many writers maintain, that he was unable to give his industry any protection from foreign competition. Not only did his army and navy provide an assured market for anything he wished to produce, but he had the power to force his subjects to purchase all the cotton goods his factories manufactured. By the same token, he could interfere with the sale of imported t St. John, ii, p. 414. 2 Hekekyan Papers, xiv, B.M. Add. 37, 461, 31; St. John, ii, p. 414; Bowring, ‘Report on'Egypt and Candia’ (G.B.), p. 35. 3 Duhamel, 6 July 1837: Cattaui, R., ii, pt. 2, p. 340.

4 Fahmy, M., p. 26.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 47 goods if he wished, either by imposing internal tariffs or by physically preventing transactions between the merchants and their customers. He could even undercut the price of imported cottons by selling his own goods at a loss.! Thus, though the import of the higher-quality British cotton goods increased during the 1830s, 1t seems that with inferior articles he was able to hold his own, and in 1829 the British Consul-General observed with some misgivings that the import of such cloth had

decreased and that Indian muslims, once in great demand, were now only rarely imported since Egyptian factories had begun to manufacture a similar type.? 6. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

In one sense the cultivation of long-staple cotton was only another stage in the agricultural revolution which Muhammad ‘Ali was trying to effect in the Delta after 1816, and it was for this reason that its introduction was managed without serious difficulty, as the administrative machinery and, in some areas, the summer canals necessary already existed. However, its extension required further works and changes of such magnitude that it is also entitled to be viewed as a major revolutionary

factor in its own right. To begin with, it was the spur to a vast programme of public works. In order to grow cotton and other summer crops it was necessary to deepen many of the winter canals to allow them to take off water from the river when it was at its lowest.3 By 1833, 240 miles of the new canals had been

dug.* In addition, dams and sluices had to be constructed and a large number of sagiyas erected. Once the canals had been completed, they had to be cleaned annually and their banks and dams repaired. ‘he necessary labour, provided by corvées, 1 For a further description of this sort of ‘administrative’ protection see alGiritli, A., Tarikh al-sina‘a fi Misr (The History of Industry in Egypt) (Cairo,

I? Downing, ° ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (G.B.), p. 35. The British Consul-

General was still expressing the same misgivings about Egyptian competition in 1838. Ibid., p. 187. 3 Linant de Bellefonds, M. A., Mémoires sur les principaux travaux d’utilité publique

(Paris, 1872-3), p. 35. 4 Boislecomte gives a figure of 80 leagues. This may include some canals built before 1820. Douin, Mission, p. 83.

48 The Introduction of was raised in a way which was quite new in Muslim Egypt. Previously, when the basin system had been all but universal, the fellaheen had been responsible for the upkeep of the dykes and feeder canals in their area, from which they so obviously benefited. Now they might be called to move many miles for their work, often to a totally unfamiliar area. Again, the size of the operation was larger than at any time since the Pharaohs. On the assumption that each man could excavate about half a cubic metre a day, and that each year’s corvée duty was for two months, canal-construction would have involved the work of something like 67,000 men annually between 1820 and 1831,

while canal-cleaning involved 400,000 more.! As they were rarely paid or fed most workers took their families with them to provide them with food, and it is not difficult to accept the truth of Linant’s remark that for part of each year almost the entire population of the Delta was involved in government works.2 Meanwhile, routine agricultural activity was brought to a standstill. Initially, the organization of the corvée was left to the various local officials, but this was soon seen to result in a great waste of effort as canals were dug out without sufficient study under

the supervision of untrained engineers. An order would be given to construct such and such a work in such and such a direction, then shaykhs would arrive with their contingents of men and at once be put to work digging roughly along a given line.3 An attempt to rationalize and improve the whole system

by introducing a centralized irrigation administration was begun in Upper Egypt in 1830, and in 1834 a similar organiza-

tion was instituted in Lower Egypt as well, with Linant as head of a permanent council of engineers. This in turn was adapted into something like a Ministry of Public Works in 1835. Under the new system the chief provincial engineers would come to Cairo annually to discuss the irrigation needs of their district and to issue the orders for the necessary works.* One result of all this activity was that by the early 1830s the area reached by summer water in the Delta had risen to about 1 Linant, pp. 30-1. Linant’s figure of half a cubic metre per day seems small, but is probably accounted for by the fact that as no tools were supplied the men had

to scoop out the liquid mud with their bare hands.

2 Ibid., p. 37. 3 Ibid., p. 39. + Ibid., p. 38.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 49 600,000 feddans.! This increase allowed cotton to be grown over

something like a quarter to a third of this total; it also permitted the extended cultivation of other lucrative summer crops like rice, indigo, and sesame. Figures illustrating the profitability of cotton have already been given. So have the proceeds from the government monopoly of rice, indigo, and opium in 1834-5. Taken together they made a very sizeable addition to agricultural income. Further advantages stemmed from the fact that their cultivation was very much less dependent on the height of the Nile than that of other crops. In addition, they must certainly have augmented the taxable capacity of the land. Whether these advantages were offset by any loss of income through the displacement of crops previously grown it is impossible to say. Too little is known about the system of land use at this time to make any definite statement. However, it seems safe to assume that such a loss, if it occurred, was more than balanced by more intensive use of the remainder of the land subject to summer irrigation. A description of a 1,000-feddan

estate in the Delta, given by Hekekyan in the early 1840s, shows that 500 feddans were planted with three crops a year and 300 with two.” This is a considerable improvement over the situation described by Girard in the years 1798-1801.3

Some contemporary writers attempted to link the introduction of Jumel cotton with the apparent decline in cereal output in the 1820s and early 1830s.4 However, as Rivlin is able to

demonstrate, the production of wheat, beans, and barley remained fairly steady during Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign, and the years of low exports and famines are to be explained rather

in terms of administrative confusion, as in 1837, when there was a delay in transporting the cereal harvest from Upper Egypt, by a series of low Nile floods, by conscription of part of the agricultural labour force, and, perhaps most important of all, by the needs of the army and navy.’ Bowring’s figures for the distribution of the 1830 grain crop indicate that about t Ibid., p. 449. This should be compared with the 250,000 feddans estimated to have been devoted to summer irrigation in 1798, see p. 8. However, once again it is not clear what size of feddan Linant is using.

2 Hekekyan, ii, B.M. Add. 37, 449, 43-5. 3 See p. 12. 4 See, for example, Duhamel, 24 May 1837: Cattaui, R., ii, pt. 2, p. 310. 5 Rivlin, pp. 157-9.

821643 E

50 The Introduction of — 25 per cent of it was destined for the armed forces or for garrisons abroad.! This was a larger volume than was exported in 1816, five years before Jumel’s introduction.2 Once

the army was reduced in size and more peaceful rural conditions returned in the 1840s, cereal-production rose to three or four times above its 1821 level.3 A very much more serious cause for concern was the strain

imposed by the extension of perennial irrigation on scarce manpower resources. On the one hand, the extension necessitated the employment of about 100,000 men and 150,000 oxen merely to work the sagzyas needed to lift the water up on to the

fields; on the other, the faulty construction of many of the summer canals meant that they rapidly filled up with the silt held in suspension in the Nile and could be cleaned only by the organization of corvées on a vast scale.+ Considerations of this

sort played an important part in the reports of the two commissions which were set up to study the question of a Delta Barrage, one in 1833 and a second in 1837. On both occasions _ it was argued that a great saving of agricultural labour could be achieved by a scheme to dam up the Nile at the point where it divided some twenty miles north of Cairo.5 It was proposed that three high-level canals should be run off from the pond behind the Barrage. These would allow a large area to be subject to flow irrigation, thus obviating the need for sagiyas; they would also push the water through the system at a faster rate, causing less sediment to be deposited. Again, it would no longer be so necessary to build earth dams across the Delta canals in an effort to raise their levels. However, these ideas were never put to the test for, although a start was twice made with the Barrage during Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign, work was soon abandoned on both occasions.® 1 Bowring, “Report on Egypt and Candia’ (G.B.), p. 17. 2 For 1816 export figures see Rivlin, Table 8, p. 157. 3 Ibid., Table 9, p. 158. 4 Linant, pp. 446, 449. 5 Summaries of the reports of these two commissions are to be found in Mazuel, DT’ Guore géographique, pp. 141-61, and Linant, pp. 446-54.

6 The Barrage was completed in 1861. But it was never properly utilized as almost immediately cracks began to appear in the foundations, and it was not until it was strengthened between 1887 and 1890 that it was able to hold up the head of water for which it was intended. Brown, R. H., History of the Barrage at the Head of the Delta of Egypt (Cairo, 1896), Chs. 1 and 3.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 51 7. THE SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL ADMINISTRATION

That the introduction of Jumel was greatly facilitated by a system of administration geared to the supervision and direction

of every aspect of the rural economy has already been mentioned. However, this structure was not able to cope for long with the increasing complexities of government produced by the change and expansion in every part of the economy in the 1820s, and by the middle of the decade the existing provincial organization no longer sufficed to satisfy the increasing demands

made on it for conscripting soldiers and factory workers, for the execution of public works, for the close supervision of cotton-production which Muhammad ‘Ali required, and for the more efficient means of collecting taxes so as to maximize the financial returns of the new crop. Such considerations led Muhammad ‘Ali to decide on a policy of administrative decentralization in which he created provincial governments and assigned to them many of the powers previously concentrated in the hand of officials at Cairo. However, this formal system by which, among other things, the Government’s agricultural policy was transmitted to the provinces never worked to Muhammad ‘Ali’s satisfaction, and it was constantly being changed and reorganized owing, as Colonel Campbell, the British Consul-General, put it, ‘to the government’s feeling the evils of many parts of its system and wishing to correct them, without knowing how to do so’.! In particular it failed in the three main tasks assigned to it: the provision of sufficient men (for the army and the factories), the collection of taxes, and the production of cotton. And almost before it had been tried it was being supplemented by simpler methods of executing government policy: special meetings of provincial officials, and tours of inspection by Muhammad ‘Ali himself and by high government officers. Thus in 1826 Muhammad ‘Ali ordered his pirincpal subordinates to make a personal

investigation of the provinces to ascertain the reasons for the decline in tax remittances. They were instructed to report to him all cases of peculation among the provincial officials and to enter into every detail of local administration, rendering Justice where necessary and punishing those whom they found 1 Campbell, 22 Jan. 1838, quoted in Rivlin, p. ror.

52 The Introduction of to be misappropriating funds. Then, in May 1826, he held a three-day meeting at Tanta to which they submitted their findings. The next year, when conditions had still not improved, Muhammad ‘Ali convened a meeting of 120 shaykhs to devise means of forcing the fellaheen to pay their taxes; and two years

later, ways and means of correcting abuses and ameliorating the wretched state of the peasants were discussed at an Assembly

by Ibrahim, his son.! Thereafter, assemblies of a similar sort were held every year, usually under ‘Abbas, Muhammad ‘Ali’s grandson, at which provincial officials reported on the districts under their jurisdiction. Meanwhile, Muhammad ‘Ali himself frequently ignored the administrative structures he had created and went on personal tours of inspection of his own. Apart from its failure to produce men, cotton, and taxes in the quantities Muhammad ‘Ali required, the rural administration also experienced increasing difficulty in carrying out the other main task assigned to it, the close supervision of agricultural production in general and cotton production in particular. During the 1820s the attempt was still being made to maintain the Government’s monopoly over almost every major crop. With them, as with cotton, the official purchase price was generally fixed at less than half of that which could have been

obtained on the open market, and constant vigilance was necessary to prevent black-market sales. This system was modified in 1831, when the food shortages of the previous year led

Muhammad ‘Ali to allow the peasants to cultivate wheat, beans, barley, and maize without restriction and to sell them directly to the native merchant or consumer.” The fellaheen at once used this licence to take advantage of the high food prices

ruling in the towns. In addition, it seems likely that cerealproduction was further encouraged by the Government in order to provision the large army being prepared to fight in Syria.

Strict control continued to be maintained over the cultivation of summer crops, however. Each year the area to be sown was laid down by Muhammad ‘Ali, and it remained the duty of the provincial administrators to ensure that such crops were grown according to the proper methods. But, inevitably, the attempt to direct every stage of cotton’s cultivation with t Rivlin, p. 103. 2 Barker, 14 Sept. 1832: F.O. 142/3.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 53 inefficient, ignorant, and often untrustworthy government officials led to many abuses. Muhammad ‘Ali’s orders about how much land should be placed under cotton must have been frequently circumvented; in 1836, for example, he told Duhamel that 300,000 feddans had been planted with Jumel, when that year’s harvest could have been produced by 200,000 feddans at the very most.! Wilkinson pointed out that it was a common practice for fellaheen to bribe their shaykhs to excuse them from the burden of producing cotton,? and procedures of this kind were undoubtedly an important reason for the size of the annual harvests increasing so slowly despite all the efforts made by Muhammad ‘Ali himself. Again, the detailed instructions about how cotton should be grown were often ignored: vegetables were planted between the rows of cotton or picking delayed until the bolls had fallen off the plants on to the muddy ground, both of which were expressly forbidden in the lazhat zira‘at al-fallah3 And government officials who were the sole judges of the weight and quantity of the peasant’s crop often cheated and managed to keep a large part of the profits for themselves.

8. THE CHANGING POSITION OF EUROPEANS

At the beginning of the period the European houses which had survived the long financial crisis of 1817—20 were in a very

weak position: they were entirely dependent on Muhammad ‘Als favours for their future prosperity; their consuls were unable or unwilling to protect them, being for the most part either merchants like themselves or advisers of the Pasha, like

Drovetti; Muhammad ‘Ali had recently demonstrated his power by forcing many of their number to leave the country. But for a number of reasons this situation did not last for long. To begin with, the size of the merchant community increased rapidly and more than doubled in the twenty years after 1820. Muhammad ‘Ali’s initial encouragement had something to do with this, but the real magnet was cotton and the large profits which were seen to be made from its sale. As their numbers rose they began to feel more aware of their own power. They 1 Duhamel, 27 June 1836: Cattaui, R., 11, pt. 2, p. go.

2 Topography of Thebes, p. 279. 3 Rivlin, pp. 139-40.

54 The Introduction of might need Muhammad ‘Ali’s favour to get cotton delivered; he, for his part, was just as much in need of their money to meet his ever-pressing financial demands. At the same time, those who were unable to break into the circle of courtiers who lobbied for the grant of firmans began to complain of their exclusion and to press for a more equitable method of disposal. Finally, the consuls themselves became more outspoken and less unwilling to take their criticisms straight to Muhammad ‘Ali himself; while he, in his turn, conscious of the need not to antagonize any of the great powers during his struggles with Istanbul, was forced to pay them more attention. These changes happened quickly. In 1827, for example, the British merchants, with the exception of Briggs, signed a petition in protest against the monopolies, asserting that, ‘the will and interest of the Pasha are the sole principles which regulate the commerce of Egypt’.! Four years later Mohammad ‘Ali was so worried by pressure

from the consuls that he did not dare to give them official

notification of a new ‘appalto, for transporting cotton;? meanwhile the latter were for the first time able to prevent the conscription of Arabs working in European houses.3 After this, instances of the use to which the Capitulations were put to extend European interference in the economy multiplied. As consular power increased Muhammad ‘Ali’s authority over the European community diminished, and this at a time when the number of foreign adventurers arriving in Alexandria was continually increasing. Several decrees forbidding Europeans to establish themselves unless they had means of support testify to Muhammad ‘Ali’s concern but, as he had always to rely on the consuls themselves to implement actual expulsion, there was little improvement. Muhammad ‘Ali’s reaction to this changed situation was twofold. In the first place, he was forced more and more to use evasion and subterfuge in his dealing with Europeans, where

before he had been able to settle matters with a straightforward exercise of his own power. And, secondly, he sought to limit to Alexandria the sphere of European interference in the 1 Barker, 24 Aug. 1827: F.O. 142/2. 2 Mimaut, 27 Nov. 1831, Douin, G., La Premiére Guerre de Syrie, vol. i (Cairo, 1931), P. 579 3 Mimaut, 1 Aug. 1831, ibid., p. 541.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 55 economy. This was one of the strongest reasons why he was so anxious to prevent foreign-owned boats sailing on the Nile or foreign merchants making direct contact with the peasants. It would be wrong, however, to over-estimate the extent of the change in balance of power, and in commercial matters at

least Muhammad ‘Ali was still able to exercise considerable

influence over the merchants, who were never strong or determined enough to unite against him, and he benefited greatly from their presence. It was they who provided the sales outlet for his goods, which he himself would have been unable

to create; they who lent him money when he needed it; they who introduced such improvements as the hydraulic cotton press. Again, Muhammad ‘Ali was able to use men like Briggs as unofficial ambassadors to present his case to the various European governments. But the price Egypt paid for these services continued to rise. Much of the money made by the merchants left the country; they were able to play on Muham-

mad ‘Ali’s weaknesses and to persuade him to undertake enterprises for which there was no justification; difficulties and

frustrations in the dealings between them and the administration increased rather than diminished. And, perhaps most important of all, they were a bridgehead in Egypt of the assertive, self-confident, intolerant spirit of European commercial expansion which came inevitably to regard the country as just another market to be invaded and its people as no more than irritating, obscurantist obstacles in the path of progress. Q. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECONOMY

Outside the agricultural sector of the economy Muhammad ‘Ali’s attempts to develop the Egyptian economy took two main forms. One was the establishment of new industries. Beside the cotton manufactures, other new factories included those for the weaving of woollen cloth, for the fabrication of silk and sulphuric acid, and for the preparation of rice and indigo, as well as glass-works, tanneries, a paper-mill, and arsenals which produced guns, swords, and powder.! In every case, as Muhammad ‘Ali told Boislecomte in 1833, the impetus to manufacture

came from a desire to replace imported goods with local ! Fahmy, M., Ch. 3.

56 The Introduction of substitutes.' Some of the products from these factories were exported, but the major proportion were used by the Egyptian armed forces, given to cultivators in exchange for agricultural

products, or sold, sometimes forcibly, to merchants and retailers.?

This effort to introduce industrial plants on a European scale led, in turn, to improvements in the system of education, for what the country so clearly lacked was men with any sort of technical ability.3 In 1826 there was a revival of the policy of sending educational missions abroad, and in the next eight years 108 students were sent to Europe. The importance attached to training in skills necessary to operate the Egyptian factories can be seen from the fact that, of this total, 69 studied industrial subjects.4 Muhammad ‘Ali also extended the sphere of technical education in Egypt itself and established schools of engineering and applied chemistry as well as of irrigation and agriculture.s Taken together, Muhammad ‘Ali’s industrial, commercial, educational, and agricultural schemes can be seen as a comprehensive attempt to develop the resources of the country which good fortune and his own enterprise had enabled him to seize. For him, as for his contemporaries, military strength was very much the basis of national power. But, unlike them, he seems to have begun to see that in the world of the early nineteenth century a strong economy was in many ways a more secure basis for power than an army or navy. The latter, for example, could always be replaced if the technical facilities, the trained workmen, and the money were available—as they were after his fleet had been destroyed at Navarino. Together with his

great energy, this ability to see beyond immediate appearances was the trait that most sharply distinguished him from those who served him. However, in all his schemes he was hampered not only by the fact that the country was unready for them and that he had too few officials on whom he could rely, but also by the fact that he himself was unacquainted with the new techniques he was trying to introduce. For this reason he was forced to listen to the

1 Douin, Mission, pp. 93-4; see also Colin, ‘Lettres sur l’Egypte — Industrie

manufacturiére’, p. 519. 2 Tbid., pp. 519~22.

3 Heyworth-Dunne, J., An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt

(London, n.d.), p. 105.

4 Ibid., p. 176. 5 Ibid., pp. 142-5, 150-2.

Long-Staple Cotton, 1820-1837 57 advice of Europeans, of whom most had no clear knowledge of Egyptian needs and many were interested in deliberately misleading him for their own profit.! Money was spent hurriedly

on unnecessary items which seemed to promise wealth or strength, and which were suddenly abandoned when they were thought to have failed. Or 1t was not spent on works of undoubted utility, like the Barrage. A second difficulty stemmed

from the fact that he was never able to devise any lasting method of getting the Egyptian population to co-operate in his plans other than by force. Discipline was no substitute for the

stimulus which the hope of profit provided, and yet after monopolies had crushed rural enterprise and ruined the domestic craft industry he was able to offer no alternative. It was for this reason as much as any other that Muhammad ‘Ali’s attempt to set the state at the centre of Egyptian economic development contained in itself the seeds of its own destruction. By the mid 1830s his resources were too overstrained to provide

the detailed direction of the economy he required, and in 1837-8 he was forced to institute a policy of administrative decentralization which led rapidly to the abandonment of his monopoly system, the revival of a free market in agricultural

produce, and the establishment of direct contact between cultivator and European merchant. This was the main theme of the next two decades and provided the necessary groundwork

for the great expansion of cotton-production which was to come after 1861. 1 See, for example, St. John, u, p. 421.

IT] THE RETURN TO A FREE MARKET IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCE 1838-1860 I. CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM OF RURAL ADMINISTRATION—THE INTRODUCTION OF LARGE

ESTATES, 1838-1848

HE years 1837 and 1838 mark an important change in | ) Muhammad ‘Ali’s agricultural system, for it was then

that he began a series of modifications in the rural

administration, withdrawing government control from a large proportion of the cultivated land and reallocating authority to members of his own family, high officials, army officers, and foreigners. There were two major reasons for this change. ‘The first was the sharp decline in European cotton prices during the early part of 1837, followed by the suspension of Alexandria

cotton sales during the summer. Even though trading was

resumed in the autumn—to dispose of what had been a bumper crop—profits from cotton were halved compared with those of the previous year. The other was the increasing difh-

culty experienced in collecting the land-tax: the result of widespread rural poverty. Just how important was this second factor is difficult to gauge, for contemporary accounts throughout Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign were generally so full of stories of deserted villages, fleeing fellaheen, and uncultivated fields that one year was made to sound as bad as another. But there is some evidence for supposing that the effect of his agricultural policies was in fact cumulative, and that by 1837 conditions in the countryside were worse than they had been for a considerable time. This destitution was largely the result of the system of monopolies. Even in good years in the early 1820s the fellaheen seem rarely to have been able to grow more than enough merely to meet their current tax liabilities, given the prices at

Return to a Free Market in Agricultural Produce, 1836-1860 59

which the Government purchased their crops; so that, as taxes rose and the government purchase price of major commodities declined, a growing burden of debt was the inevitable consequence. By 1832 land-tax arrears were estimated to have reached 140,000 purses—roughly three-quarters of a whole year’s receipts.'! Subsequently, the situation deteriorated still more. Renewed conscription, which pushed the size of the army

and navy to some 140,000 men in 1837, reduced the rural labour force further, while the system of tax solidarity by which

villages and even whole districts were responsible for the short- | comings of their neighbours helped to impoverish those areas where profit remained possible.2 As tax-collections became more and more frequent in order to make up this backlog, the peasants’ only defence was to take refuge in the city or in another part of the country, as repeated orders against this form of emigration testify.3 Thus, even though agricultural conditions recovered a little in 1835 and 1836 as a result of high

cotton prices and Muhammad ‘Ali’s energetic efforts to im-

prove the local administration, total arrears had risen to 190,000 purses in the spring of 1837.4 A year later it was repor-

ted that some villages in Lower Egypt were as much as four years behindhand with their taxes.5

Land-tax receipts and cotton profits were the two vital props to Muhammad ‘Ali’s finances, providing nearly 75 per cent of total revenue in 1836, and the fact that both were

threatened at a time when he was preparing to face new threats against his possessions 1n Syria and Arabia produced a serious crisis. He reacted by calling a Council of State attended by all the provincial governors in January and February 1838 to discuss the situation. ‘There was general agreement among the officials that the people could no longer meet the Government’s

demands, and that the only answer was a new survey to be made of the land, followed by its redistribution among those villages which were still able to pay taxes. Rivlin maintains that

Muhammad ‘Ali was too urgently in need of money to agree to any solution the results of which would be so long delayed, 1 Barker, ro Apr. 1832: F.O. 78/213. 2 Viesse de Marmont, iii, p. 336. 3 Rivlin, pp. 116-17. 4 Rivlin, p. 131. 5 Campbell, 26 Feb. 1838: F.O. 142/9.

60 The Return to a Free Market : and that the final outcome of the meeting was a decision to make renewed efforts to collect the arrears.’ But in fact he had

already begun the programme suggested by the Assembly, although in a slightly different form. Evidence is provided by a dispatch from Colonel Campbell, the British Consul-General, in February 1838. ‘Of late’, he then wrote, ‘many villages have

been ceded to new proprietors who have undertaken to discharge their arrears... .22 Muhammad ‘Ali did not wholeheartedly embark on this new policy, however, until 1840, when in a decree of 23 March he compelled those officers, high

officials, and others who had grown rich in the war to pay off the back-taxes of villages they received as estates (‘uhdas), and to guarantee their tax liability for the future.3 The system thus established was in many ways a return to that of the zltzzams which had been finally abolished in 1814. The fellaheen still worked the land, but paid their taxes to the estate-holder (muta‘ahhid) instead of to the Government. He, unlike the multazims, was unable to levy a tax higher than that inscribed in the registers; but like them he received a parcel of land, sometimes as much as half the ‘uhda, tax-free, which he

could cultivate, using the unpaid labour of the fellaheen.* Meanwhile, Muhammad ‘Ali continued to issue orders as to which crops should be cultivated. Then, at harvest time, the muta‘ahhid stored what he himself had grown and bought the

remainder of the ‘uhda’s crop from the peasants at a price previously fixed by the Government.’ ‘The whole was sold to the Government or sent on its account to certain privileged

merchants in Alexandria. The other part of the monopoly system was abandoned, however, and the muta‘ahhid himself had to provide the fellaheen with working capital, to supervise cultivation, and to exercise the judicial and executive powers previously discharged by government servants. Muhammad “Ali was thus divested of the cost of the rural administration and of providing agricultural funds, while maintaining his ability to profit from the sale of Egyptian agricultural products. 1 Rivlin, p. 132. 2 Campbell, 26 Feb. 1838: F.O. 142/9. 3 Baer, History of Landownership, p. 13.

4 Ibid.; Artin, 7, The Right of Landed Property in Egypt, trans. (London, 1885), - Ol.

P : Bowring, ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (G.B.), p. 45.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 61 The area of two other kinds of estate, ab‘adiyas and jifliks, was similarly extended at this time. The former consisted of parcels

of uncultivated land which was excluded from the cadastral registers. For some years before 1837 it had been Muhammad ‘Ali’s practice to grant portions of such land to officials, foreign-

ers, and others, exempting them from taxes for a period of time on condition that they spent money on improving it. Later,

in 1842, holders of ab‘adiyas were granted what amounted to almost complete rights of ownership, including the rights of sale and transfer, in an effort to encourage further investment.! Fifiks, on the other hand, were estates granted exclusively to members of Muhammad ‘Ali’s own family.2 They were taken either from ab‘adiya land or, more usually, from villages which were unable to pay their taxes. Administration was by government officials who received their instructions from Cairo. Apart from financial considerations, a further stimulus to the creation of the jz/lzks came from the confirmation of the Muhammad ‘Ali

dynasty as hereditary rulers of Egypt contained in the Sultan’s

firman of 1841. This provided security to build up family possessions.3 By 1844 over 1,500,000 feddans, or about twothirds of the cultivated land of Lower Egypt, had been taken over either as ‘uhdas, ab‘adiyas, or jifliks.4 Fiflilks alone accounted

for 677,000 feddans two years later.s The policy of creating large estates ran into great difficulties almost immediately. A series of natural calamities, particularly

a disease which killed a large proportion of Egypt’s cattle in 1842 and 1843, made it impossible for the muta‘ahhids to pay off the tax arrears of their villages. Meanwhile, Muhammad ‘Ali, pressed for money himself, gave them no relief. “The government has come down rather heavily on those who took lands’, Hekekyan wrote in his diary in 1843, for besides stopping their monthly appointments, he [Muhammad ‘Ali] demands the crops before they are sown, and a quarter in ready money besides. The late loss of cattle having ruined many of the takers of land, they preferred to lose all they had expended and ™ Baer, History of Landownership, pp. 16-17.

2 Ibid., p. 18. 3 Rivlin, pp. 64-5. 4 Barnett, 12 Dec. 1844: F.O. 78/583. 5 Hekekyan gives this figure as the amount of land owned by all the members of

the royal family: iii, B.M. Add. 37, 450, 68.

62 The Return to a Free Market leave them rather than continue possessing them, but the Pasha threatened to flog anyone who proposed to leave their farms.!

Another hazard was the system of tax solidarity which was still maintained. Conditions on the jifliks, with rare exceptions, were not much better, even though they had started off with certain initial advantages. They were largely composed of the best and most easily irrigated land.? In addition, Muhammad ‘Ali had

paid great attention to building canals on them and ensuring that they were well stocked with animals and labour—seizing peasants from neighbouring villages if necessary and sending

units of the army to help with the harvest. But they too suffered severely from the cattle murrain and also from bad management. Central direction from Cairo occasioned numerous bureaucratic delays, as well as orders which were issued without any attention to local conditions; the size of individual estates was generally too large for efficient direction; and the

fellaheen, deprived of their land and irregularly paid, had every incentive to steal and to work as little as possible.+ Dissatisfaction with rural conditions came to a head in 1844. According to Rivlin, whose account is based on British consular dispatches, Muhammad ‘Ali then made what were regarded as

unreasonable demands at his annual meeting with the jifltk directors in July and, in reply, was shown a report setting out the true situation on the farms, about which he had been kept in ignorance. He immediately either fell into a great rage or, some said, suffered an early attack of the mental condition which was later to impel him to retire from active governing in 1848; and announced that he would at once leave the country

for a pilgrimage to Mecca. But on 5 August he had reconsidered the matter and, assembling all his chief officials at Shubra, he fined them a large amount and then continued to govern as before.’ Hekekyan, however, wrote of another report

on the state of the country at this time, drawn up by the shaykhs al-balad, perhaps at the instigation of certain grandees.®

And other scattered references to the affair in his diaries imply 1 Hekekyan, i. 112. 2 The Russian Consul-General maintained that the jifliks occupied two-thirds of the most fertile area—Krehmer, Dec. 1843: R. Cattaui, iii, p. 749. 3 Hekekyan, ii. 63; Barnett, 15 May 1842: F.O. 142/13.

4 Rivlin, pp. 68-70, 5 Ibid., pp. 70-2. 6 Hekekyan, iii. 12, 63.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 63 that the opposition stemmed not only from the directors of the qifiks but also from the muta‘ahhids, who, among other things, were concerned at the continual drain of their villagers to the royal farms. On 12 June 1845, for example, he wrote that as a result of the confrontation of 1844 the latter had extracted a promise from Muhammad ‘Ali to get their labourers returned.!

This change in the balance of rural power is important. Between 1816 and 1837 Muhammad ‘Ali had striven both to build up a system of tight control over rural economic life and to improve Egyptian agriculture by large investments in irrigation, tools, and new crops. Then, in the years 1837-40, while hoping still to profit from the system he had created by seizing the land which had received the major portion of his attention as jzflzks and by maintaining control over the sale of agricultural products, he relinquished authority over much of |. , Egypt to muta‘ahhids, shaykhs, and others, who were able to use

the powers previously exercised by the central government for their own ends. Shaykhs al-balad, for instance, were freer to use their right to reallocate the land of fellaheen who died without heirs or who were conscripted, and to seize any vacant plots.? | They were also able to amass capital by keeping back some of the taxes or accepting bribes from the fellaheen who wished to be relieved of certain duties, so that by 1846 a Turkish mudir could complain of them, “They have become as fat as pigs. Many of them are enormously rich from plundering the poor fellah.’3 Their letter to Muhammad ‘Ali in 1844, though perhaps an isolated instance of their power to effect a change of policy in Cairo, is significant as an illustration of their new

position. Meanwhile, in the countryside, their authority increased as that of the central government declined, and by 1846 Hekekyan was writing: “The temporary absence of the Viceroy and Ibrahim Pasha has already produced a species of passive revolt in some districts if it be allowed to use that alarming expression in applying it to the refusal of some village shehs [sic] to pay their customary taxes and to send men to the government service.’4 t Ibid. im. 63. 2 Baer, History of Landownership, p. 53; Baer, G., ‘The Village Shaykh in Modern Egypt’, in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization, vol. ix (Jerusalem, 1961), p. 140.

3 Ibid.

4 Hekekyan, ill. 153.

64 The Return to a Free Market The growth of a privileged rural class is also apparent in the greater prosperity of the jifliks after 1844. Their owners paid no taxes; they had greater opportunity to sell their produce direct to the merchants; they were able to manipulate the irrigation system as they wished, Sa‘id Pasha, for example, once damming up the Khatatba canal to provide extra water for his own fields.! In addition, they could force the fellaheen to work for them for little or no money. On the other hand, for the next

fifteen years members of the royal family and a few other notables were the major source of Egyptian agricultural innovation. [brahim was the first Egyptian to import a steam pump. His estates, under the direction of Bonfort Bey, a European, were regarded as the best managed in the country. Particular attention was paid to improving the quality of the cotton they produced. But, like his father, Ibrahim also encouraged the

cultivation of such products as mulberry trees, olives, and sugar, which he processed in two private mills.2 Another notable interested in agricultural improvement was Khurshid Pasha, the owner of some 30,000 feddans of Delta land. When visited by Hekekyan in 1845 he possessed thirty-two locally made cotton gins turned by eight oxen, and was planning to replace them by twenty-four American roller-gins powered by two 14-horsepower motors. He also pressed his own cotton, producing bales which were ‘well-developed, clean and neat’.3 The cattle murrain was a further incentive to the purchase of agricultural machinery, as Hekekyan’s report of the following conversation with ‘Abbas Pasha in 1842 shows: His Highness observed that the introduction of steam-power for ploughing as well as for irrigation would be the only and effectual remedy for the evils which the agriculture of the country would be liable to suffer from similar epidemics and was pleased to order me to take the necessary measures to procure on his own private account a locomotive steam-plough from England as an experiment on his own fields.4

However, even for an efficient farmer who was able to employ a European mechanic, steam-engines still cost almost twice as much to use as animals.5 t Hekekyan, i. 29. 7? Fowler, p.15. 3 Hekekyan, ili. 103, 196. 4 Ibid. i. 59. § Ibid. iii. 33; Poulain, J.,“Rapport 4son Altesse Mehemet Ali, Vice-Roi d’Egypte,

sur la filature et le tissage du coton’, Hekekyan, xix, B.M. Add. 37, 466, 93-4.

In Agricultural Produce, 1836-1860 65 2. THE ABANDONMENT OF AGRICULTURAL MONOPOLIES

Muhammad ‘Ali’s policy of creating large estates was partly

stimulated by his desire to circumvent the conditions of the Anglo-Turkish Convention of 1838 in which government monopolies were specifically outlawed. This treaty, which applied to the whole Ottoman Empire, was originally to go into

effect in March 1839, but by the time the firman announcing its introduction had arrived from Istanbul, Muhammad ‘Ali was at war with the Turks, and it was not until the political settlement of the Egyptian question in 1841 that either the Porte or the foreign consuls were able to turn their attention to enforcing adherence to its provisions. Muhammad ‘Ali, for his part, expressed himself as anxious to establish a free export trade. But in fact it is unlikely that he seriously considered forgoing the profits he had always been able to make on the sale of Egyptian agricultural products, and he was constantly placing barriers in the way of commercial intercourse.! An article in The Times of 4 June 1841 provides a good example of the obstacles the merchants had to face. Europeans, the correspondent reported, had recently purchased goods on the Nile from the little cultivators, for the first time in Egypt in the present age. The latter came down the river in little boats with a few baskets of linseed, and returned rejoicing with a few dollars in their pocket; also, perhaps, for the first time in their lives, receiv-

ing the fair value in exchange for their commodities. The Jews were | particularly active and efficient as negotiators and _ travellers, , regardless of the plague and all the difficulties of a struggle with such a monopoly as that still exercised by the Pasha. . . . However, they succeeded in an incredibly short time (unprovided as they were

in the matter of workmen, baskets, boats and storehouses, and almost left destitute by the exigencies of the Pasha, who is even now

setting his soldiers to work for his own profit), in bringing a large quantity of linseed, the only grain at present available, into Alexandria; and knowing that delays were dangerous, prepared at once to ship it. But yesterday, even while Messrs. Joyce, ‘Thurburn & Co.,

were presenting the Pasha the address of the merchants of London expressing their most grateful acknowledgment for the protection ™ Barnett, 18 Dec. 1841, 20 May 1842, 20 Mar., 10 June 1843: F.O. 142/13;

821643 F

The Times, 27 Apr. 1842.

66 The Return to a Free Market he afforded persons carrying on commercial pursuits, and their fervent prayer that he may continue to develop the commercial energies of Egypt, unfolding to their fullest extent the blessings of prosperity and civilization, he was issuing counter-orders to prevent

the exportation of the linseed. All the merchants concerned, and even the Consul-General of France, hastened to Bhogos Bey to request to be informed of this strange and contradictory veto at the

11th hour, and were told that it was the result of the Pasha’s

anxious foresight for the necessity of next year’s seed-time etc. ... I have enquired into the fact, and learn that the Pasha himself sold

a ‘bearskin’ of linseed to Messrs. Tozzizzia and others; but that when he came to ‘catch and deliver’, he found that there was little or none to be had. The merchants and Jews had been before him,

paying ready money... . Orders and bastinados were urgently issued to make up the Pasha’s deficit, but the dollars had been beforehand in the market, and now nothing remained for the Pasha but to order all the boats to be unloaded into his own magazines... ‘to be preserved for seed next year’, and to be paid for at the Pasha’s price as usual, that is, what he pleases to give; for he makes both sides of the bargain and there is no appeal.!

Merchants who attempted to buy produce in the villages were faced with similar discouragement. They generally found that the muta‘ahhids and others had been ordered not to sell, or that the crops in question had been taken as taxes. And even when the purchase had eventually been made it was almost impossible to secure a boat with which to transport their produce back to Alexandria, for Muhammad ‘Ali would not allow any of his own subjects to hire their own craft or to man those owned

by Europeans. According to Barnett, the British ConsulGeneral, the merchants found it easier and no more expensive to purchase direct from the Pasha himself.2 Thus, as before, the vast majority of Egypt’s crops found their way into the Government’s warehouse, and both merchants and consuls

concluded that the best that could be hoped for was that Muhammad ‘Ali would sell his produce at regular auctions at which all might have an opportunity to bid.3 However, in spite of repeated protests, private sales continued, at least until the winter of 1844—-5,.4 1 The Times, 4 June 1841.

2 Barnett, 20 Mar. 1843: F.O. 142/13; Rivlin, p. 188. 3 Ibid. 4 The latest instance of a private sale which I have been able to find is one in Jan. 1845: The Times, 5 Feb. 1845.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 67 Nevertheless, consular pessimism was not wholly justified,

and some foreign merchants were able to establish contact with the cultivators in one way or another. As early as February 1842 the correspondent of The Times wrote that the Govern-

ment was unable to prevent the purchase of small quantities

in the possession of private individuals; three years later Hekekyan saw ‘jobbers’ at the market in the Delta village of Salamun ‘buying for other markets and for foreigners’.! This process can be seen as a logical development of the policy of creating large estates, for, in handing over rural authority to their proprietors, Muhammad ‘Ali was giving it to the very men who could have been expected to be most anxious to profit from the free sale of their produce. Wheat, for example, which could be grown for only a little less than the government purchase price of forty piastres an ardabb in 1843, was fetching ninety-four piastres an ardabb in Alexandria the same year, and a roughly similar price in 1844 and 1846.2 Hence there was every incentive to evade government regulations. As a result the monopoly system became less and less effective, until by January 1848 The Times was reporting that the peasants could sell their produce to whom they wanted.3

This trend towards the break-up of the monopolies was maintained during the short regency of Ibrahim in 1848, and then in the first few years of the reign of ‘Abbas (1849-54), Muhammad ‘AIli’s successor. In ‘Abbas’s case, however, the decision to allow the merchants to continue to purchase direct from the peasants was not the result of any sudden conversion to the principle of free trade: it is more likely that it stemmed from his desire to keep the goodwill of the European consuls at a time when his relations with Turkey were at a low ebb and when he feared the Porte was lending its support to a group of disaffected Egyptians at Istanbul who were intriguing against him. But, once this danger was averted in 1852, attempts to reintroduce parts of the monopoly system became more and 1 The Times, 11 Feb. 1842; Hekekyan, iii. 36. 2 Figures given in Hekekyan, uu. 118. 3 The Times, 10 Jan. 1848. The breakdown of the monopoly system may also have

been due to the decline in Muhammad ‘Ali’s energies and in his ability to move about the country. Hekekyan wrote of him in 1843: “The old Pasha is becoming older than we think. He cannot support the motion of a steamer more than ten hours; he gets fatigued, ride he cannot, nor can he go in a carriage’: ii. 191.

68 The Return to a Free Market more frequent until, in February 1854, an order was issued absolutely forbidding the sale of produce to anyone but government officials.! ‘This order was never entirely put into effect. But, so long as he was able to demand the payment of taxes

| in kind and to use his own purchasing-agents, ‘Abbas could prevent all but a small volume of private sales. And, in this instance, he was assured of the co-operation of the jzfuk-owners, who were able to make considerable profits by selling their own crops at famine prices once ‘Abbas had begun to interfere with

the normal channels by which the Alexandria merchants received their supplies. ‘Abbas’s policy in this respect was almost certainly prompted by falling revenue and the heavy expenses incurred in 1852, as well as by a desire to amass a large personal fortune which he could leave to his son [hami. A similar motive seems to have been behind the changes he made in the system of landholding. During his reign he took over many of the ‘uAdahs created by Muhammad ‘Ali, generally

incorporating them into his own private estates or those of his son. According to a source quoted by Baer, some two-thirds to three-quarters of them were assumed in this way.? ‘Abbas’s moves towards the reintroduction of monopolies were immediately reversed by Sa‘id (1854-63), who at once ordered the abolition of all obstacles to free trade, again allow-

ing the cultivators to grow what they wanted and to sell it how and to whom they wished.3 Rural contact with the money economy was also encouraged by Sa‘id’s efforts to reform the system of tax-collection. By a decree of September 1854 the tithe (‘ushr) was imposed on ab‘adiyas and jifliks, and in October

of the same year it was extended to usya land as well. All three types, which had previously been free of tax, were thereafter known as ushr land.4 Under Sa‘id they were initially assessed at between ten and twenty-six piastres a feddan, a rate which was meant to represent a tenth of their gross yield, but which, in the

case of the areas where the more lucrative crops like cotton were grown, was a considerably smaller percentage.5 Mean1 Huber, 28 Feb. 1854: A.A. 1854, Box 26; The Times, 15 Mar. 1854. 2 History of Landownership, p. 14.

3 Merrau, P., ‘L’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Saad Pacha’, R.D.M., and period, xi (15 Sept. 1857), p. 347. 4 Artin, Landed Property, pp. 100, 102-3. 5 Ibid.; Huber, 30 Dec. 1854: A.A. 1854, Box 26.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 6g while, taxes on the remainder of the land (known as kharajtya)

were equalized to some extent by raising the lower ones and decreasing the upper. The general level was raised, however; and it moved upward still further in the following years.! As a result of these measures land-tax receipts increased from roughly

£1,700,000 in 1853 to £2,500,000 1n 1858, well over half the

total revenue.2 An attempt was also made to increase the proportion of these amounts paid in money, but how successful this was is not clear. Merruau, writing in 1857, maintained that these taxes were then being collected in cash.3 However, it is unlikely that there was sufficient money in circulation in rural areas to make this possible. And, in the case of ushr land, an 1854 law specifically laid down that the demand could be met in either cash or kind, at the proprietor’s discretion.4 Nevertheless, such policies must inevitably have stimulated the further

extension of cash crops to pay taxes. They may also have increased the role played by the money-lender in the village economy. When taxes were levied in kind they could be collected

only after the harvest; but when money was the rule, they could be taken at any time, whether the cultivator had just sold his crops or not.5 In such cases the latter had often to obtain a loan to meet his obligations.® Once crops could be sold freely, the Alexandria commercial houses began sending their agents into the villages to purchase

them.” Thereafter, however, they began to face mounting competition from local merchants, many of them Greeks. In this situation the agents suffered from several important disadvantages. ‘l’o begin with, there was no sure way of sending money from Alexandria to the interior. It is true that Muham-

mad ‘Ali had attempted, in the 1830s, to institute a system whereby a person wishing to transfer cash could do so by 1 Artin, Landed Property, pp. 84—7, 104. 2 A Comparative Statement of the Revenue Collected from the Muri or Land Tax of Egypt

... tn the Years of the Hegira 1269 (A.D. 1853), 1272 (1856) and 1274 (1858), enclosed in

Green, 1 May 1858: F.O. 78/1401.

3 Merruau, p. 343. 4 Artin, Landed Property, pp. 103-4.

5 For an example of taxes being collected in advance, see Green, 1 May 1858: F.O. 78/1401. 6 Fowler (p. 18) mentions the practice of borrowing money to pay taxes in 1861; but it can be assumed that it also took place in the 1850s. 7 Merruau, p. 347; Wallace, D. M., Egypt and the Egyptian Question (London 1883), p. 315.

70 The Return to a Free Market depositing it at the office of a mudir (the governor of a group of

provinces) in exchange for a bill drawn on the relevant local authority ;' but there is no evidence that this was still possible in the 1850s, and it was not until the introduction of a government postal service under Isma‘il that such transactions could be made with any ease. Again, it was difficult for an agent to obtain sufficient security for any advance he might wish to make. Even though Sa‘id let it be known that any mercantile contract with a fellah drawn up in the presence of a shaykh would be upheld by the mudir, the behaviour of the Egyptian authorities in a case where produce was not delivered was by no means predictable and recourse to the local courts no more sure.2 A Greek trader, on the other hand, could make his own private arrangements with the local administration. Finally, whereas the agent could provide a loan only against future delivery of a crop, the other had money at his disposal for such purposes as weddings or the sudden visit of the tax-collector. His methods also fitted more easily into the traditional pattern of fellah borrowing, designed to circumvent the Muslim prohibition against usury.3 Thus, by 1861, a correspondent of the Manchester Cotton Supply Association was complaining that it was very rare for an Alexandria merchant to buy direct

from a peasant, as the latter was usually in debt to some middleman who had first call on his crops. Free sale of crops also allowed the cultivators to make large profits from the boom conditions of 1854-6, when the need to provision the British, French, and Turkish armies fighting in the Crimea raised cereal prices to tremendous heights. Nassau Senior reported Hekekyan’s description of the situation and the fellaheen’s response:

. . . the peasants have been receiving, during the past two years, fabulous prices for all commodities. ... ‘The European demand has tripled all our prices. ‘The capital in the hands of the proprietors must be greater than was ever known; but it is buried, or if employed, it is in some portable form which is as useless as 1f it were buried. No

prudent man, especially in the unprotected position of a fellah ventures to appear to possess money. It would expose him to being t Arminjon, p. 441.

2 Fowler, p. 18; Grégoire, p. 475. 3 Grégoire, p. 476. 4 Byrne, J., “The Cultivation of Cotton in Egypt’, C.S.R., 15 May 1861.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 71 robbed and beaten by a hierarchy of oppressors, beginning with the sheykh-el-beled and ending with the Pasha.!

Some of their profit, however, may have been spent on the purchase of goods, particularly cottons, whose imports greatly increased in volume during these years. And a few of the richer fellaheen are reported to have deposited money with the Bank of Egypt, founded in 1855.2 But, later, ever-increasing taxation took away much of this windfall, and by 1859, according to Artin, petitions to be allowed to abandon the land had multiplied, and a special law was issued allowing a fellah who was unable to pay taxes to give his fields to the state.3 The richer

proprietors spent some of their extra money on importing steam pumps and other machinery. This was important, as the irrigation system was in such bad repair in the middle-1850s that by 1855 the amount of land fed by summer canals had shrunk to 300,000 feddans.+ But, in general, the amount of money invested in agriculture during the 1850s must have been small.

Grain, the basis of the boom in the middle of the decade, required little capital; there was as yet no well-developed market in land;5 for those with cash to invest, the purchase of government bonds offered a more attractive field for speculation. 3. THE PRODUCTION AND EXPORT OF COTTON

1838-1860

In his manceuvrings with the foreign consuls over the application of the 1838 Commercial Convention, Muhammad ‘Ali

was particularly anxious to retain his control over the sale of

the cotton crop which, even at the very low prices which persisted throughout the 1840s, still provided about a quarter of Egypt’s total export earnings. Thus, when the majority of the estates were created in 1840-2, it was made clear to their 1 Senior, N. W., Conversations and Journals in Egypt and Malta, vol. ii (London, 1882), p. 131.

2 The Times, 30 Oct. 1856. 3 Artin, Landed Property, pp. 188-9. 4 Rapport de la commission des savants venus en Egypte pour arréter les bases du projet du

Canal de Suez en 1855, Annexe No. 2, quoted in Papanot, F., L’ Egypte, son avenir agricole et financiére (Paris, 1884), pp. 44-5. The land irrigated by summer canals had been estimated at 600,000 feddans in 1837: see p. 49. 5 Byrne, C.S.R., 15 May 1861.

72 The Return to a Free Market holders that they would be expected to grow a certain amount

of Jumel and to deliver it to the Pasha at whatever price he fixed. Similar provisions were laid down for the Europeans who grew cotton, and it was stated that they would have to give up

their concessions if they did not agree.’ As with most of the other crops, the cotton produced was sold to the Alexandria merchants by a combination of public auctions and private sales. The former, however, were often only a cover for the

latter, merchants who had appeared to outbid their rivals having previously agreed to purchase the cotton at a lower price. On other occasions the reserve price was so high that no merchants could profitably make an offer and a private sale followed.3 In spite of the fact that his position might seem to have been weakened by increased consular pressure and low

prices, Muhammad ‘Ali continued to maintain most of his commercial power over the merchants. Some were dependent on him for commission; others were creditors of the Government and took cotton when it was offered, fearing that otherwise their debts would never be paid. As a result, Muhammad ‘Ali was still able to secure loans against cotton or simply to run up debts. In October 1843, for example, he owed fifteen houses over 29,000 purses (£150,000).4 Again, by working mainly through favourites he was able to prevent the merchants from banding together and forcing the low prices still lower.

During this period a larger and larger proportion of the cotton must have been grown by the wealthy proprietors and by members of the royal family, a trend Bowring had observed as early as 1837-8.5 For one thing, Muhammad ‘Ali and his relatives owned much of the most fertile land; for another, the

rich were clearly in a much better position to provide the necessary fixed and working capital now that the Government had ceased to discharge this responsibility. Again, the Egyptian notables were always able to use their authority to secure water for their fields and to seize animals and fellaheen to work for 1 The Times, 3 Mar. 1841. 2 Merruau, p. 346; Paton, A. A., A History of the Egyptian Revolution, and edn., vol. ii (London, 1870), p. 240; The Times, 5 Feb. 1845. 3 Barnett, ro June 1843: F.O. 142/13; The Times, 27 Apr. 1842. 4 Hekekyan, xiv, Bm. Add. 37, 461, 271-2. 5 ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (G.B.), p. 11. 6 See p. 61, note 5.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 73 them; and it is no doubt for this reason that, in spite of a continual series of agricultural crises in the early 1840s, cotton- — production remained more or less steady, testifying to their ability to get their cotton grown and harvested whatever the

cost (see Table 5). Some Jumel continued to be grown by peasants, however.! But their standards of cultivation declined sharply. As state direction of agricultural activity diminished over the decade many of the fellaheen seem to have changed to a method of production known as balli. This involved only TABLE 5

Volume .

Volume, Value, and Price of Cotton Exports, 1838-59

Cantars Value Alexandria price

(94. lb.) £4 dollars/quintals 1838 238,833 716,670 15 1839 134,097 468,105 18-25 1840 159,301 414,722 13 1841 193,507 540,006 13°25 1842 211,030 390,882 10 1843 261,064 391,596 7°75 1844 153,363 230,046 8 1845 344,955 561,920 6 1846 202,040 404,080 10°25 1847 257,492 487,752 10 | 1848 119,965 167,961 7°25, 1849 257,510 515,020 10 1850 364,816 839,176 11°75 1851 384,439 688,980 8°75 1852 670,129 1,341,128 10°25

1853 = 471,397 954,794 10 1854 = 477:905 764,740 8-8

1855 520,886 9373594 9°3 1856 = 539,885 1,295,724 -10°6

1857 490,960 1,227,420 16°3 1858 519,537 1,091,027 12°7 1859 502,645 1,113,419 r1°6 Source: Volume and Value. Fowler, pp. 8-11. Price. Egypt, Ministére de 1’Intérieur, Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Cairo, 1873), pp. 172-3.

Note: a. See Table 1, Note 2. ' Hekekyan, ii. 126.

74 The Return to a Free Market two main waterings—one in February when the fields were flooded before planting, the second in June or July as the river began to rise—and thus allowed a considerable saving of labour. There were also other advantages: fewer seeds were needed for sowing and it was not necessary to spend time in weeding the rows, as weeds flourished only where there was an

ample supply of water.! On the other hand, both yield and quality were lower, and dependence on the Nile flood was increased. For most of the decade Muhammad “Ali continued to demand

that a certain amount of land be planted with cotton. Without such orders it seems unlikely that it would have been grown by more than a small minority of cultivators. The Alexandria

price fell from an annual average of 18 dollars a cantar in 1835-9 to 10-4 dollars in 1840-4 and 8-7 in 1845-9.? This, in turn, must have led to a considerable decrease in the level at which the Government was prepared to purchase the crop, and only those privileged enough to avoid land-taxes and to deal directly with the foreign merchants, or small enough to employ neither animals nor labour could have hoped to make a profit.

Even Ibrahim Pasha, whose estates had every advantage, began to concentrate increasingly on sugar and flax. Wheat was another attractive alternative, especially after the opening of the English market following the repeal of the Corn Laws. Not only was it more remunerative, but it did not involve so much labour and working capital.3 As a result, cotton began to be produced with less and less care and there were continual complaints of deterioration in quality. Between the years 1850 and 1852 the size of the cotton crop rose sharply until, by 1853-4, exports were averaging about 500,000 cantars a year, a figure at which they remained for the rest of the decade. The reason for such a sudden increase can 1 Grégoire, pp. 462-3. The balli method may not have been new but merely an adaptation of the means used to cultivate cotton before 1820. Its introduction may

have been partly connected with the fact that the fellaheen had been turned off most of the easily irrigated land to make way for the jifliks. See p. 62. 2 For source see Table 5. 3 Fowler, p. 10. 4 For example, Egypten in Fahre 1844, 24 Mar. 1845: A.A. Box 21. It should

be noted that some of these complaints were based on the fall in the price of cotton which people, wrongly, assumed was caused by the decline in its quality. Egyptian prices were, in fact, following American ones. See p. 163.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 75 only be guessed at. But the most likely explanation would seem to be the final abandonment of the restrictions on cotton sales

under Ibrahim and ‘Abbas, which allowed the cultivator to keep all the profits for himself. The rise in European prices after

the depressed conditions of 1848-g may also have been a subsidiary cause.!

Once again it would seem that the bulk of the cotton was produced by the richer proprietors. The Englishman, Thomas Clegg, who made a tour of the Mediterranean cotton areas in the mid 1850s, reported that something like three-eighths of the

total Egyptian crop came from the estates of ‘Abbas and the family of Ibrahim alone.? Such producers continued to enjoy numerous advantages. They possessed the most easily irrigated land, if they paid land-tax after 1854 it was only at. the ‘ushr rate, and they were able to afford a system of rotations by which

their fields were put under cotton only once every four or five years, thus preserving the quality of the soil.3 However, it is also true, as in the 1840s, that it was members of the royal family, as well as some of the Pashas, who paid most attention to the production of quality cotton. It was grown as an annual plant on their estates; it was picked only when it was ripe; it was ginned with care.* There was also an increasing tendency for the important landowners to use European cotton-selectors.5 One such was an Englishman, James Bryn, who was employed on the estates of IIhami Pasha in 1859 and 1860. Bryn’s chief task was to grade the cotton to suit the demands of the market. As soon as the day’s pickings were brought in, he attempted to select the cotton according to colour and ripeness. Such activity was particularly necessary, for in the forty years since the introduction of Jumel a number of new strains had appeared due to hybridization and experiments with such foreign varieties as

Sea Island, Pernambuco, and New Orleans, and it was not 1 It may have been at this period that some of the wealthier cultivators decided to grow cotton rather than rice because of its greater profitability: see Grégoire,

p. 8. 3 Grégoire, p. 448.

° Report on a Journey to the East and on the Cultivation of Cotton (Manchester, 1856),

4 It would not be true, of course, to maintain that all large proprietors employed such methods. Some allowed their cotton to remain in the ground for a second year; others grew cereals between the rows. See Egyptian Agricultural Products (Eg.), - 41-2. Letter from Henry Lockwood, C.S.R., 15 Oct. 1858.

76 The Return to a Free Market uncommon to find white, yellow, and brown cottons growing together in the same field. The price paid by merchants for a mixture of all three was considerably lower than that which could be obtained for a selection of the higher grades.!

The peasants who grew cotton, on the other hand, were mainly concerned to realize a profit as quickly as possible and to prevent any costly delays in the repayment of money they

had borrowed at, perhaps, 3-4 per cent a month. Poverty also forced them to practise a shorter rotation in which cotton

was grown on a particular field once every three, or even once every two, years. Furthermore, they were unable to leave their land fallow for as long as the wealthier proprietors and were often forced to add a crop of maize to the latter’s birsim and cotton. Other practices were equally detrimental to the production of good cotton. Little or no attention was paid to seed-selection which was not believed to influence either quality or yield, ripe and unripe pods were picked together and then dried in an oven to hasten maturity, while the process of ginning by dulab tended to cut the cotton to pieces and to mix the fibre with particles of leaves and bolls. In addition,

lack of capital meant that peasants had to rely almost exclusively on the ball: method. Further evidence for this decline in the high standards of cultivation established by Muhammad ‘Ali is provided by Grégoire’s account of the way in which the younger men in the villages were astonished and almost disbelieving when their elders told them of the care and attention which they had once been forced to devote to their cotton.3 It was for reasons such as these that, by the end of the 1850s, a marked difference was being observed in the crops produced by the two groups—that from the largest estates being known as zawat or ‘Princes’ cotton and generally enjoying a premium

of one and a half to two dollars a cantar, on account of its greater cleanliness and length of staple.t There was also an increasing divergence in the yields which were obtained. Ball cotton rarely produced more than two cantars a feddan, whereas those with money to invest in the oxen and sagiyas necessary 1 Quotations from Bryn’s diary are to be found in Egyptian Agricultural Products (Eg.), pp. 39-42.

8. gee pp. 454-6, 464-5; Letter from Henry Lockwood, C.S.R., 15 Oct.

| 3 Grégoire, p. 449. 4 Ibid., p. 444.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 77 to provide adequate watering could produce one to one and a half cantars more.! Once harvested, peasant cotton was sold or delivered to a local merchant, generally to the same man who had advanced money for its cultivation.? At the other extreme, the princes and some of the larger proprietors had their own agencies in Alexandria through which they effected their sales. This left little cotton for direct purchase by the Alexandria merchants unless, as was sometimes the case, they employed local mer-

chants as their agents, But more often they purchased their supplies at some central point in the Delta, perhaps a shippingpoint on the Nile.3 The main method of transport continued to

be by river, although an alternative was provided after 1856 by the Alexandria—Cairo railway. However, the trains were ‘capriciously run’, according to one European resident, and the merchants used them only when every other means had failed.3 Services were irregular, there were a number of robberies in transit, and so little care was taken that in April 1856 twenty wagons loaded with 11,000 bales of cotton were burned up after having been set on fire by sparks from the engine.* Another

drawback was the price. In 1858 the cost of conveying one cantar from Cairo to Alexandria was sixt¢en to twenty piastres whereas the steam-tug company then starting operations was offering three and a half to four piastres. As the correspondent of The Times reported: “The tariff for the carriage of goods [by

rail] would elsewhere be looked upon as an absolute prohibition.’5 Later, conditions improved, and by the end of 1859

the gap in price between the two methods had narrowed considerably.®

Apart from the case of a few men like Grégoire or the Swiss,

Ninet, both of whom owned large estates, European capital played only a small role in the actual cultivation of Jumel. But by the end of the 1850s it was beginning to be very active at another stage of the production process, ginning. Various attempts had been made to introduce mechanical methods in the 1840s, but no suitable machine had then been available, nor 1 De Leon, E., ‘Answers to Queries on Cotton Culture in Egypt’, 20 July 1856: U.S. Egypt, ii; Fowler, p. 29.

2 Grégoire, p. 467. 3 Letter from S, Miller, C.S.R., 1 Nov. 1858.

4 The Times, 18 Apr. 1856. 5 Ibid., 29 Apr. 1858. © Fowler, p. 32.

78 The Return to a Free Market were there sufficient mechanics to maintain the few inferior types which were imported, and it was not until about 1854-5 that the newly developed McCarthy gins began to be brought

into the country and set up in the cotton districts under European management.! Large profits were at once made by such enterprises, for the actual cost of the operation could be covered by the retail price of the seed, leaving the ginner the difference in price between ginned and unginned cotton, something which usually amounted to one to two dollars a cantar. A net return on capital of 20-25 per cent a year was not uncommon.3 As a result, new factories multiplied fast. But even so, by 1859, they were able to cope with only about an eighth of the whole harvest and the remainder of the crop continued to be processed by the old, manual, time-consuming, inefficient methods which, according to Fowler, were a serious barrier to increased cotton-cultivation. Whereas it took a fellah six or

seven days to gin one cantar by dulab, a single McCarthy machine could manage the same amount in only ten hours. Cultivators were quick to realize the advantages of the new factories. Fowler was told that when an establishment containing 100 gins was built at one village in the Delta by the German firm of Krupser and Co., the local fellaheen were so anxious to avail themselves of its facilities that they tried to make arrangements before planting. He also learned that they had been known to extend the area they placed under cotton when they had discovered that the director was willing to take more of their crop.’ They were not put off by the high cost, reckoning that it was worth paying, not only as a means to relieve themselves of the onerous burden of working their own primitive machines, but also because it allowed them to sell their crop immediately after it was harvested instead of having to wait until it had been ginned, thus avoiding a considerable loss of money through accumulating interest on the loans they had obtained.°é

The cotton seed was either sold back to the cultivators or exported to Europe for pressing. During Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign, surplus seed was generally used for fuel; but various ™ Ninet, J., ‘La Culture du coton en Egypte’, R.D.M., 3rd Series, xii (1 Dec.

1875), 583. 2 Grégoire, p. 467. 3 Fowler, pp. 21-2. ‘ Ibid., pp. 30-1. 5 Ibid., p. 22. 6 Grégoire, p. 467.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 79 attempts were also made to use it industrially and in 1844 a number of French merchants established a factory in Egypt for the purpose of cleaning and reducing the seed to the smallest possible compass for transport to France, where they hoped it would be used for making soap. However, the manufacturers for whom it was intended found that linseed and sesame seed answered their purpose better and the company collapsed.! Experiments continued, however, and when a French chemist found a cheap and easy way of purifying the oil in the early 1850s, exports began again on a large scale.?

Fowler provides figures for the cost of producing Jumel at this time. These indicate that a rich landowner whose fields yielded three cantars a feddan, and who paid only 50 piastres a feddan in land-tax, could produce cotton for 4 dollars a cantar (about twopence a lb.).3 This agrees fairly closely with the estimate made by Grégoire, three years later, of 44 dollars for well-irrigated land and 5% dollars for land where water had to be lifted over 3:6 metres. But in his case he assumes a landtax of some 120 piastres a feddan, and he also added the cost of ginning.* A third calculation was made by a correspondent of the Manchester Cotton Supply Association in 1858, who claimed that a rich cultivator who was paid 28s. to 295. per cantar on the spot for his cotton (roughly 63 dollars) would find this remunerative.5 To Fowler’s figures another one to two dollars should be added for the cost of ginning and about 0-5 dollars for transport, making an Alexandria price of perhaps 6 dollars (about threepence a lb.). Such calculations can, at best, be regarded as only the very roughest sort of guide, but they would seem to show that throughout the 1850s cotton must have been a profitable crop to produce, particularly after 1855 when, with one exception, monthly prices of Good Fair (medium quality) never shrank below ten dollars.® Information about the relative profitability of other crops is more difficult to obtain. We have Grégoire’s word that rice was now a less lucrative proposition than cotton;7 but the position 1 The Times, 27 Feb. 1845. 2 De Leon, 1 May 1856: U.S. Egypt, ii; Charles Roux, La Production du coton, PP. 335-6. 3 Fowler, pp. 29-30. One dollar equalled Pt. 20.

4 Grégoire, p. 469. 5 Letter from S. Miiller, C.S.R., 1 Nov. 1858.

6 Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 172-3. 7 See p. 75, note 1.

80 The Return to a Free Market in regard to wheat is not so straightforward. While the list of prices contained in Tables 5 and 6 would suggest that cotton provided larger gross returns throughout the period, it was a TABLE 6 Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Wheat Exports from Alexandria 1840-59 Price

Price (Great

Volume Value (Alexandria) Britain)

ardabbs L Pt. /ardabb £,/cwt.

1840 4543897

1841 590,698 1842 409,512 1843 484,977

1848 509,207 282,257 56 1849 544924 225,216 42

1850 1,309,716 652,508 50 1851 1852 865,591 573,8137 66 1853 965,793

1854 1,015,686 05 1855 1,674,852 0°577

1856 1,561,448 0°49 1857 7523573 0-458 1858 —=-1,1 70,448 0°339 1859 527,395 74° 0°36

SOURCES:

1840-3: Stoddart, 23 March 1844: F.O. 78/584. 1848-9, 1850, 1852: Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849, Deacon, 1 May 1856: U.S. Egypt, ii.

1853-9: (Volume) Statistique de Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. Ixxix (Price, G.B.). Computed from data in the British Annual Statement of Trade and Navigation. 1859: (Price, Alexandria) Fowler, p. 12. NOTEs:

a. Value in Egyptian pounds. b. Exports to Great Britain only. . Assuming an average wheat yield of three ardabbs/feddan (Barnett, 12 Dec., 1844: F.O. 78/583), gross revenue from wheat must have been around Pt. 150, 1848-52, rising to perhaps Pt. 300 in 1855, figures which any proprietor able to produce more than two cantars of cotton/feddan must certainly have been able to rival for almost all the period.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 81 much more expensive crop to grow and thus may well have provided a smaller net profit, a point which would seem to be substantiated in a report by the American Consul-General, De Leon, of July 1856.! Thereafter, however, the difference between the price of the two commodities may have lengthened sufficiently to offset the greater expense involved in producing cotton. But even if this was the case, it should not be forgotten

that wheat continued to possess certain positive advantages, particularly for the poorer farmer. Not only was it easier to cultivate, but it provided quicker returns and occupied the ground for a shorter length of time. It was attractions such as these which, very probably, continued to limit the size of the cotton area even after it had been shown that cotton provided

a higher income. ,

4. THE GROWTH OF THE EUROPEAN PENETRATION OF THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY

Seen in longer perspective, cotton-production played only a relatively minor role in the economic history of Egypt during the years 1837-60, being no more than a small part of the most

important change which occurred in the period—the rapid pace at which Egypt moved towards its almost total integration

as an agricultural unit in the European commercial system. This is particularly noticeable in the sharp increase in the value of trade after 1848, which led to exports in the 1850s averaging

some £3,000,000 a year, or 50 per cent higher than in the previous decade. The increase was due in part to the extension of cotton-cultivation, but a more positive influence was exerted by the expansion of cereal exports already described, a good example of the flexibility of Egyptian agriculture which

allowed it quickly to take advantage of favourable world trading conditions. Equally important, commercial ties with Great Britain became considerably more close during the 1850s

as England began to take roughly half Egypt’s total exports, including 50 per cent of its cotton and cereals instead of only 12-20 per cent in the early 1840s. As a result, by 1860, Egypt ' “In these last three or four years the production of corn has been more profitable (than cotton or flax)’: De Leon, ‘Answers to Queries on Cotton Culture in Egypt’: U.S. Egpt, ii.

821643 G

82 The Return to a Free Market — had become the sixth most important supplier of the British market.! A large increase in imports followed, again with England providing the predominant share. A second factor behind Egypt’s closer commercial links with

Europe was the final abandonment of Muhammad ‘Ali’s attempt to make the country industrially self-sufficient. In the case of his cotton factories this came in two stages. First, between 1837 and 1840, fifteen of the thirty mills were aban-

doned.?, Others were leased to private individuals. As the Russian Consul-General maintained, Muhammad ‘Ali belatedly discovered that it was more profitable to contract with entrepreneurs to supply him with industrial goods, to allow _ them to use the Government’s mules, jennies, and looms, and

to supply them with raw materials at a fixed sum, than to maintain the factories under the direct administration of the Government.3 ‘The next major decision came in 1843-4. Until then, Muhammad ‘Ali appears to have been anxious to continue to work the remainder of his factories. For example, as late as December 1842 he was still instructing Hekekyan to pursue an industrial policy ‘so that we should be independent of foreign countries’.t However, if this was to be the case, two almost insurmountable problems had to be faced. One of these,

the question of power, came to a head in 1843. By then the steam-engines which had worked intermittently through the 1830s had almost all broken down, while oxen, the more usual source of motion, were expensive and in short supply because

of the cattle murrain. To fill the gap, Muhammad ‘Ali had ordered groups of criminals and weak and disabled men to be brought in to turn the machines. The results, not surprisingly, were unsatisfactory. Output declined, and conditions were so bad that many workers tried to hang themselves, others to set the factories on fire.5 Secondly, by this time the old machinery

first installed some fifteen to twenty years before was so thoroughly worn out that it would have had to be almost entirely replaced at great cost if operations were to continue.® But Muhammad ‘Ali was by then no longer willing to spend such large sums, nor to hamper agriculture still further by 1 Landes, D., Bankers and Pashas (London, 1958), p. 85, note 1.

2 Rivlin, p. 197. 3 Duhamel, 6 July 1837: Cattaui, R., ii, pt. 2, p. 340.

4 Hekekyan, ii. 66. 5 Ibid., ii. 148, 173-4. 6 Ibid., ii. 123-4.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 83 continuing the drafts of men and animals from the fields. This was sufficient to break his stubborn persistence and by April 1845 he was willing to admit to Hekekyan that his industrial

policy had failed.t Some factories were abandoned, others turned to different purposes or sold, and by 1849 only two remained, consuming about 5,000 to 6,000 cantars of cotton a year and producing summer uniforms for the army.? With the government monopoly of production at an end, there was a revival of small-scale spinning and weaving—stimulated to

some extent by workers who had received their training in Muhammad ‘Ali’s factories—and by the middle of the 1850s some 15,000 to 20,000 cantars were being worked up in this way.3

But these workshops could supply only a small proportion of Egypt’s needs, and once the factory system was abandoned

there was a large increase in the amount of cotton goods imported, particularly from England.

With the increase of trade went a large inflow of foreign capital. If the trade figures can be relied on, there was a sizeable

export surplus each year. Egypt was also affected by the concerted effort by European financiers to exploit the financial possibilities of the Eastern Mediterranean, which led first to a

big increase in the number of private banks in Alexandria, many of them with drawing rights on merchant banks in France and elsewhere. This was followed, in 1855, by the foundation of the Bank of Egypt by a Greek who was able to use his London business connections to secure the support of a powerful

group of financiers, including the directors of the East India Company, the London and Westminster Bank, and the Oriental Banking Corporation. He also received the full support of the British Treasury which early committed itself to the principle that it was ‘desirable to encourage the investment of British capital in an undertaking which is founded for the purpose of extending to a country with which the mercantile community of this country is closely connected, the benefits of the banking system’.4 The financing of commercial transactions, however, formed only a small part of the bank’s business, and it im1 Thid., iii. 42-3. 2 ‘Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egyft, iit; Fowler, p. 10. 3 De Leon, ‘Answer to Queries on Cotton Culture in Egypt’: U.S. Egypt, ii. 4 Quoted in Baster, A., “The Origins of British Banking Expansion in the Near East’, Economic History Review, vol. v, no. 1 (Oct. 1934), Pp. 79.

84. The Return to a Free Market mediately became involved with viceregal finances, lending money to Sa‘id and members of his family, securing the profitable business of transferring to London that part of the tribute mortgaged as security for the first Turkish loan, and dealing in government bonds.! In this respect, like every other financial institution in Egypt at the time, it acted as a channel for capital attracted to Egypt by the methods Sa‘id employed to cover his budget deficits. Already, during “Abbas’s reign, the Government was beginning to need larger sums of money for sudden exigencies than the individual merchant houses could provide; and in 1852 recourse had had to be made to a loan from the

P, and O. Company, with whom the Government had an account for the settlement of transit business.2 Again, the Government no longer had large supplies of agricultural produce at its disposal with which to secure money by means of advance sales. As expenses rose, Sa‘id borrowed money from

several local banks; then, when their resources also proved too limited, he began to issue short-term bonds for sale to the general public. These immediately found ready purchasers; they were paid punctually as they fell due, they carried an increasingly high rate of interest, and their fluctuations made them an ideal subject for speculation.3 ‘Thus they were much in demand among foreign capitalists, as well as among the European merchants in Alexandria who were glad of this opportunity to invest their liquid assets, even though this was sometimes to the detriment of their commercial activities.‘ Some were also disposed of abroad by European bankers. Later, two other kinds of bonds were issued, the so-called bons d’ap-

pointements paid to government officials in lieu of salary and mainly sold by them at a discount to merchants and brokers who had a better chance of cashing them at the Treasury, and those created after 1860 to pay for the purchase of Suez Canal shares.5

Europeans were also attracted by the numerous profitable 1 Basker, p. 79; The Times, 15 Apr. 1857; Colquhoun, 1o Nov. 1860: F.O.

ese L. H., The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (London, 1938), p. 302. 3 J. C. (J. Claudy), Histoire financiére de l’Egypte depuis Said Pacha (Paris, 1878),

pp. 3-4; Colquhoun, 28 July 1860: F.O. 78/1541, 11 Nov. 1861: F.O. 78/1591. 4 J.C, p. 4; Colquhoun, 3 Aug., 11 Nov. 1861: F.O. 78/1591. 5 J. C., pp. 5-6, 15.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 85 openings provided by Sa‘id’s various schemes to develop the country’s economy. One form these took was the creation of joint foreign and Egyptian companies like the Egyptian Steam Towing Company, which was established to provide steam

haulage on the Nile and Mahmudiya. The concession was awarded in 1854, but it was not until 1856 that the company was formed, with a capital of £200,000, an important part of which

was put up by Sa‘id himself.1 Operations began in 1857. However, a year later the company collapsed and Sa‘id was forced to buy up the shares at an enormous premium.? Other Europeans vied for lucrative government contracts for the construction of public-works projects or the purchase of supplies. 3

Foreigners were not slow to take advantage of such opportunities for profit and they flocked to Egypt in ever-increasing

numbers, until by 1857 visitors were arriving at a rate of 30,000 a year.+ Alexandria, whose population had reached nearly 150,000 by 1847-8, grew rapidly.5 A building boom began in the late 1840s, and by 1856 the correspondent of The Times could write: A traveller returning to the town after the absence of a few years would find an extraordinary improvement in the appearance of the town and the condition of the people. Three handsome churches for the Christian worship have been erected. ... Bells are heard to

toll calling the Christians to divine worship. A railway has been completed to Cairo and new streets are springing up.®

Land prices, he later reported, had risen sharply and one small

property he knew of had increased in value from £1,500 to £32,000 during the last five years.” In the same period rents had

gone up by 500 per cent. House-construction attracted both Egyptians and foreigners alike; Ibrahim had started erecting buildings in Alexandria in the early 1840s and he was followed in this by his sons, particularly Ahmad.® French speculators were

also active, and in 1857 half the new building-lots belonged to them.2 Meanwhile, one Frenchman was given a concession to provide the town with gas lighting, and an English company

1 The Times, 2 June 1856. 2 Ibid., 20 Nov. 1858.

3 Green, 19 June 1858: F.O. 78/1401. 4 Landes, p. 87. 5 Ibid., p. 85, note 2. 6 The Times, 14 Oct. 1856. 7 Ibid., 1 June 1857. 8 Ibid., 7 Jan. 1841; 16 Mar. 1853. 9 Huber, 17 Mar. 1857: A.A. 1857, Box 31.

86 The Return to a Free Market was formed to build a tramway out to the fast-growing suburb of Ramleh where many Europeans had their houses.! With the growth in size and importance of the foreign community went an increasing emphasis on European privileges. Under ‘Abbas, Egypt’s weak political situation, caught as it was between the threat of European domination on the one hand and of its reincorporation as an Ottoman province on the other,

forced the Viceroy to make a number of concessions to the consuls. ‘Things became even more unbalanced under Sa‘id, who was particularly anxious to encourage foreign capital and foreign interest. On the European side, mutual rivalry and the growing size of the foreign population spurred the consuls to stretch and to extend their privileges to the utmost.? Again, European self-confidence in its own moral and commercial pre-eminence had by the 1850s produced a mood that would brook no opposition from a state which local foreigners came increasingly to denounce as an inefficient, cruel despotism. From the point of view of economic penetration, European privileges were extended in two particularly important areas. One was in the ability of foreigners to impose their own com-

mercial methods on the Egyptian Government and people. Traditionally, as with criminal matters, commercial suits

between natives and foreigners where the latter was the defendant were decided in the local courts, but in the years after 1815 the consuls were able to transfer the seat of such trials to their own consulates, trying the case according to their

own laws, in their own language, and with appeal to their own superior national courts.3 Jurisdiction in commercial cases when the native was the defendant was, however, less clear. In 1826 Muhammad ‘Ali established a mixed court to decide such

matters, but according to J. H. Scott it inspired little confidence as it was not necessary for the judges to possess any legal qualifications.4 Later, under ‘Abbas and Sa‘id, it was reorgan1 Douin, G., Histoire du régne du Khédive Ismail, vol. i (Rome, 1933), p. 265; Colquhoun, 17 Aug. 1860: F.O. 78/1541. 2 For a description of this process so far as the American Consul-Generals were concerned see Serpell, D. R., ‘American Consular Activities in Egypt, 1849-1863’, Journal of Modern History, vol. x, no. 3 (Sept. 1938). 3 Scott, J. H., The Law Affecting Foreigners in Egypt (Edinburgh, 1907), pp. 196-7. 4 Scott, J. H., “The Capitulations’ in A. Wright (ed.), Twentieth Century Impressions of Egypt (London, 1909), p. 112; Gemayal, P., Un Régime qui meurt: les capitulations en Egypte (Paris, 1938), p. 77.

In Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860 87 ized and provided with the code of commerce based on the code established at Istanbul in a series of reforms beginning in 1839.' However, this did little to increase its efficiency,? and

in cases where the defendant was an official, or even the Government itself, influential Europeans often preferred to bypass this procedure altogether and to resort instead to arbitration between the consul concerned and the Viceroy, a process marked by procrastination and bluff on the one side,

threats and bluster on the other, but usually ending to the European’s advantage.3 Secondly, in commercial as in criminal matters, foreigners managed to become less and less subject to Egyptian jurisdiction. The word ‘domicile’, used in the Capitu-

lations to signify the place which was immune from entry by the local police without the presence of a consular representative, was extended to include any property belonging to a

foreigner, with the result that European storehouses and factories were largely outside Egyptian control.4 Again, in cases of a misdemeanour by a foreigner the Government was often unable to secure the co-operation of the consul, who alone could have the offender punished.5 And when, with this situation in mind, Sa‘id sought to ensure that those who obtained Jand promised to pay their taxes, his regulations were evaded with impunity.®

Nevertheless, harmful though this was to the Viceroy’s prestige as well as to his finances, the result of such an extension

of privilege was greatly to increase the safety with which Europeans placed their money in Egyptian enterprises. Without such security it is unlikely that they would have been nearly so ready to invest capital in banking, ginning, and other activities,

which were to play so vital a role in the country’s ability to 1 The Times, 23 Sept. 1850; Gemayal, p. 78; Brinton, J. Y., The Mixed Courts of Egypt (New Haven, 1930), pp. 10, 12-13. 2 Scott, Law Affecting Foreigners, pp. 203-4; Calvert, 12 July 1861: F.O. 141/44. 3 See, for example, Colquhoun, 3 May 1860: F.O. 78/1522; 11 Aug. 1860: F.O. 78/1541; and 12 Aug. 1861: F.O. 78/1591. + Scott, “The Capitulations’, p. 112, and Law Affecting Foreigners, p. 137. See also the British Consul’s description of the resolute determination of Samuel Shepheard and a colleague to resist the application of certain new police regulations to their hotels ‘by every means at their disposal’, Walne, 12 Apr. 1858: F.O. 78/1401. 5 Scott, Law Affecting Foreigners, pp. 198-200; British Consular Court of Egypt, 27 Jan. 1866: F.O. 141/54. ° Baer, History of Landownership, p. 66.

88 Return toa Free Market in Agricultural Produce, 1838-1860

expand cotton-production in response to the world shortage caused by the diminution of American supplies after 1861. This more than counter-balanced the fact that, until 1875, commercial transactions between foreigners were complicated by the

pressure of fifteen different consular courts. Or that, as Professor Landes has illustrated with such skill in his book Bankers and Pashas, the reaction of Egyptian officials to these manifesta-

tions of ever-increasing European interference was to indulge in pinprick annoyance, evasion, and delay which raised new barriers to the orderly practice of industry and trade.! 1 See, in particular, Landes, pp. 322-6.

IV THE COTTON BOOM 1861-1866 I. THE OUTBREAK OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

HE years 1861 to 1866 mark an important turning-point in the history of Egyptian cotton-production. When the

period began some half a million cantars were being grown on perhaps 250,000 feddans of land; five years later the harvest had increased four times in size, the area by five, and from then on cotton became once and for all the crop which absorbed the major portion of Egyptian energies and produced an overwhelming share of its export earnings. The cause of this sudden metamorphosis was the American Civil War, which, by depriving the European textile industry of the greater part

of the supplies of American cotton on which it was largely dependent, drove up the price of cotton to enormous heights and conferred great prosperity on those countries which, like Egypt, were able to take advantage of the favourable situation. In England, for example, where 80 per cent of the raw-cotton requirements had previously been met by the southern United

States and where the Liverpool price of Middling Orleans (an average variety) rose from 74—8d./Ib. in 1861 to a high of 314d./lb. in July 1864, Jumel was able to increase its share of the market from 3 per cent to 12 per cent during the war period and its earnings from £1,500,000 to £14,000,000.! The war between South and North, which had been seriously

threatening since Lincoln’s election as President in 1860, finally broke out in April 1861. In the same month the Northern

blockade of Southern ports was declared, making further shipments of cotton in any large quantity impossible. In England, however, there was no immediate anxiety among manufacturers; the 1860 American crop, the largest on record, t Earle, E. M., ‘Egyptian Cotton and the American Civil War’, Political Sctence Quarterly, vol. xli, no. 4 (Dec. 1926), p. 535.

go The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 TABLE 7 Volume and Value of Egyptian Cotton Exports from Alexandria and of British Imports of Egyptian Cotton, 1860-6

Egyptian Exports British Imports

Cantars LE Cut. L

1860 501,415 392,447 1,480,895

1861 596,000 1,430,880 365,108 1,546,898 1862 820,119 4,920,660 526,897 3,723,440 1863 1,287,000 9,356,490 835,289 8,841,557

1864 1,740,000 14,842,700 1,120,479 I 4,300,507 1865 2,507,000 15,443,120 1,578,912 13,906,641 1866 1,785,000 11,424,000 1,055,900 9,200,580 SOURCES:

Egyptian exports 1860: Statistique de Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 174. 1861-6: Carpi et Vivante et Cie, (1) Goods Exported from the Port of Alexandria in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 (Alexandria, 9 Apr. 1866) and (2) Goods Exported from the Port of Alexandria in 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866 (Alexandria, 17 Mar. 1867).

British imports: United Kingdom Annual Statements of Trade.

had served to glut the market at a time when exports of cotton cloth were falling, and the news of war came to many spinners as a source of temporary relief.' But as stocks began to decline

and supplies from America came almost to a standstill the true extent of the crisis was revealed. In the first six months of 1862 only 11,500 bales were received, or 1 per cent of the usual quantity, while average weekly consumption fell from 45,048 bales in 1861 to 22,097 in 1862.2 Prices moved accord-

ingly. The quotation for Middling Orleans, which had been 74,d./lb. when war broke out and had then moved to read. in October on the first wave of uncertainty in the Liverpool cotton market, spurted ahead to 15d./lb. in June 1862, 183d. in July, and 264d. in August as pessimism increased and the

speculative movement gathered strength (see Table 8). 1 Adams, E. D., Great Britain and the American Civil War, vol. ii (New York, 1925), - O—-I0.

Pea Tid. 9; McHaffie, M. J., Was it a Cotton Famine? (London, 1865), p. 3A bale, at this period, weighed between 400 and 450 lb.: J. Pender & Co., Statistics of the Trade of the U.K. with Foreign Countries (London, 1869), Table XIII, p. 7. See

the same table for figures for the weight of cotton bales imported at Liverpool for the years 1850 to 1868.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 gI TABLE 8 Cotton Prices at Alexandria and Liverpool, 1861-6 Alexandria—(‘Good Fair’) dollars/cantar

1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866

January 134164 1634 3542% 44 35 3737% 41 February 123 March11z 12 174 32 424 29 40 42 April 184 32 44 26 May 124 18 33% 47 224 36 June 13t 183 31 49 24, 33 July 1413% 22 30 5052 302737% August 25 35 36} September 15 28 40 49 29 30 October 16 gl 464 44 33 33 November 174 31 43 39 40 30 December 15 32 43% 37 4! 27 (Annual

Average) 13°9 22°8 36°3 45 Ser 35°3

SouRCE: Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 172-3.

, Liverpool—(pence/lb. at end of each month)

1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866

SugO hugeo) be Sa O OfueOfang O

5= 2=2=&@ & 3>&B & es =€ es es a8 es

January 7% 13 23 22 27 27h 244194 23418} 18% = 223 February 1t 13 ait 20 27} 262 19¢ 22 March 72 128 Q2 Qt 26} 264 15} 144 19} 234

April 7%128 13423 22 21} 22 27% 29 14% 144 154 194 May 7k 284 29t 162 16} 14 184 June84 8 18% 15 2i¢ 204 30 294 204 184 14 18} July 22% QI 314 304 192 17} 144 23 August 9 264 24 23% 30 30} 18} 174 14 20 September 10 264 274 272227224 24 224 aif 20$ 14}174 19 October 12 234 29% 293 23 154 November 11g 214 28} 29 274 29t Qt 23 144 164 December 12 254 284 29 27 27% 21% 232 15% 17

Source: Henderson, W. O., The Lancashire Cotton Famine (Manchester, 1934), pp. 122-3.

92 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 Similarly in France, where pre-war cotton imports were running at a rate of some kg. 123,000,000 a year, the Le Havre price of Georgia long-staple rose by nearly 150 per cent between July 1861 and September 1862.' Alternative sources of supply were urgently sought, and European imports from India, Brazil, and Turkey as well as Egypt were rapidly expanded in an effort to make good the deficiency. Among these countries Egypt was particularly well placed to increase its production, although this was not the opinion of most contemporary observers. Henry Lockwood, writing in 1858, had pointed to the fact that the fellah cultivator was ‘umprovident’ and ‘the enemy of improvement’, and _ that except for the estates of the royal family and a few of the richer

pashas Egyptian cotton was badly produced; and he had concluded that ‘it may be questioned whether the annual exports of cotton from Egypt would admit of any extension, as long as the present system of culture and preparation is continued, even were the social system of the peasantry to improve’.? And even someone so well acquainted with local conditions as

Ninet was able to maintain, on the eve of the war, that the chronic shortage of agricultural labour would prevent even the smallest increase in the area sown with Jumel.3 Perhaps neither of these men could have been expected to foresee the high prices which the American war was to bring, but they also appeared to overlook the very important changes which had occurred in the agricultural sector of the economy in the previous ten years. During this period contact between merchant and cultivator had been re-established, the fellaheen were once again used to producing cash crops for immediate sale, and facilities for the provision of agricultural capital, albeit at a high rate, had spread throughout the Lower Egyptian provinces. In the meantime a number of cotton-ginning factories had been built, the Alex-

andria—Cairo railway completed with branch lines to the important cotton centres of Samannud and Zagazig, and the Mahmudiya canal dredged to allow easier passage. ‘Then, unlike the situation in India, where cotton changed hands so t Horn, J. E., La Crise cotonniére et les textiles indigénes (Paris, 1863), p. 9; Landes,

Table 2, p. 335. 2 Letter from Henry Lockwood, C.S.R., 15 Oct. 1858. 3 Ninet, J., ‘La question du coton en Angleterre depuis la crise americaine’, R.D.M., and Period, xxxii (1 Mar. 1861), p. 210.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 93 many times between cultivator and exporter that it was 1mpossible to fix responsibility for dirty or adulterated lint,! the Egyptian system, whereby the Alexandria merchants sent their agents to buy cotton at the main Delta collection points and made payment according to grade, allowed some control to be exercised over quality. In this respect Egypt also benefited greatly from the presence of a few rich proprietors who tradition-

ally were concerned to produce cotton by the most up-to-date methods and who set a standard for other cultivators to try to emulate. In what is admittedly a very rough piece of calculation, Thayer, the American Consul-General, estimated that two-thirds of the Egyptian crop was classified (according to colour, cleanness, strength of staple) as ‘average’ at this time, and only 47,000 to 56,000 cantars, or approximately 10 per cent of the total, as ‘inferior’.3

Another advantage Egypt possessed was that cottonproduction had once again begun to rise in the year before war was declared, having remained static throughout the previous

decade. Exports of the 1860 crop reached almost 600,000 cantars, and in 1861 this figure increased to over 700,000.* The reasons for this movement are uncertain, but it may have been

connected with the construction of ginning establishments (which greatly facilitated the preparation of cotton for export), the decline in receipts from wheat, and the slight rise in prices at the time of spring sowing in 1860. Another factor was undoubtedly the new market that had been established for cotton seed in the later 1850s. For every five cantars of ginned cotton ™ For Indian conditions see Mackay, A., Western India (London, 1853), pp. 51-2.

Mackay was sent to India to investigate the conditions under which cotton was cultivated and processed by the Chambers of Commerce of Manchester, Liverpool, Blackburn, and Glasgow. 2 This point refers to the cotton grown on the larger estates. That grown by peasant proprietors was generally taken by a usurer who, according to Grégoire (p. 465), accepted it all regardless of condition. However, peasant-grown cotton still provided only a fraction of the total crop. See p. 75. 3 Thayer, 20 July 1861: U.S. Egyft, iii. 4 This figure would have been even higher had not a portion of the harvest been inundated by the high Nile flood of 1861: Thayer, 30 Sept. 1861: U.S. Egyft, iii. It would also have been higher if the flood had not interfered with its transport to Alexandria. Asa result, some of the 1861 crop appeared in the 1862 figures: Saunders,

17 June 1863: F.O. 78/1773. For sources, see Table 7. These figures have been chosen from a wealth of rival sources. For some of the reasons which guided this particular choice, see Appendix 2.

94. The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 there were roughly three and a half ardabbs of seed, which at

1861 prices would have provided an additional income of eighteen piastres for each cantar produced, or nearly three dollars per feddan, augmenting total earnings by 10 per cent.!

That cultivators were quick to profit from this situation is shown by the fact that about 75 per cent of the seed from the 1860 crop was exported.? Finally, it is possible that, when sowing TABLE 9 Export of Egyptian Cotton Seed from Alexandria, 1661-6

Volume Value Price ardabbs LE Pt. /ardabb 1861 306,254. 122,500 39 1862 453,509 246,700 54 1863 726,200 475,560 65 1864 915,400 530,950 58 1865 I ,292,300 633,250 49 1866 705,077 427,140 60 SourcE: Carpi et Vivante, 1 and 2.

their cotton in March, April, and May 1861, some of the cultivators were sufficiently aware of the increase in demand which would accompany an interruption of American supplies as to

extend the area devoted to its cultivation still further, even though prices at this time were no higher than they had been a year earlier. But whether this is true or not, once war was actually declared and the price of Jumel started to climb, cultivators were quick to grasp the potentialities of the situation. By July Thayer was reporting that in expectation of scarcity in England some of the commercial houses

in Alexandria are sending agents into the interior to buy cotton in advance of the harvest. But so well understood is the condition in the cotton-growing region in the United States, even by the poorest 1 This calculation is based on the assumption of an average yield of two cantars/ feddan. For prices see Table g. 2 596,000 cantars of cotton and 306,254 ardabbs of cotton seed were exported from Alexandria in 1861 (Tables 7 and g). If there were roughly three and a half ardabbs of seed produced for every five cantars of ginned cotton this would indicate that the total harvest of cotton seed in 1860 was in the region of 400,000 ardabbs.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 95 fellahs, that it 1s difficult to persuade them to sell on terms which heretofore they would have been delighted to accept.

Jumel, he went on, was then being quoted at 134 dollars a cantar, ‘but some of the largest growers insist on 17 dollars, and are holding back for this unheard of figure’.! Such was the demand that cotton was sold and resold several times in Alexandria.? Prices continued to rise during the autumn and winter, and by the spring of 1862 had reached sixteen to eighteen dollars a cantar. More land was then placed under cotton, amounting to a total of perhaps 500,000 to 600,000 feddans as against some 350,000 feddans in the previous year.3 Grégoire mentions a

particular increase in the Cairo area, and also in Buhaira province, where it had been thought that manpower -was too scarce to make cotton-growing attractive. Meanwhile, Isma‘il,

the heir to the throne, was instrumental in planting 4,000 feddans with cotton in Upper Egypt, the first time Jumel had been successfully introduced into this region.’ Money was abundant following the completion of arrangements for a state loan in March, and the number of money-lenders, Muslims as well as Europeans, proliferated.6 The result was a crop of 1,200,000 cantars which was sold for nearly £9,500,000. In addition, seed worth £475,000 was exported, much of it going to Turkey and other neighbouring countries which were also trying to expand their production of cotton.’ 2. THE INTERVENTION OF THE MANCHESTER COTTON-SPINNERS

Sa‘id and other members of the royal family devoted more of the land on their own estates to cotton in 1862. They were also active in importing machinery and improving methods of cultivation.’ It was said of Isma‘il ‘that buyers fought to 1 Thayer, 20 July 1861: U.S. Egyft, iii. 2 ‘Letter from J. Byrne to G. R. Haywood’, C.S.R., 15 Oct. 1861. 3 Estimate based on crop size, not on contemporary accounts. 4 Grégoire, p. 445. 5 The Times, 28 Sept. 1863. 6 The Times, 30 June 1862. 7 Carpi et Vivante, 1; Thayer, 3 Feb. 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii. 8 ‘Egypt’, C.S.R., 15 July 1862; Thayer, 11 July 1862: U.S. Egypt, iii.

96 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 purchase his cotton because he paid special attention to tilling the soil so as to produce the best crops and to realize the best prices for them’.! But there is little evidence of direct government action to increase the area of cotton planted. ‘Prices alone will prove a sufficient stimulus without any effort on my part’,

Sa‘id had told a visiting Englishman in 1861,? and on the whole he was perfectly right. The common pattern was almost

certainly very like that described by Wallace, writing of a village in the Delta. There the fellaheen had returned gratefully to cereal-production after having been forced to grow Jumel during Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign. However, prejudices soon vanished in the face of the prospect of large profits. One peasant planted a little cotton and got a good price for it; the others then followed, with help from several Greeks who had arrived in the district and who offered to provide the seeds and money required.3

Nevertheless, as the cotton shortage in England became more severe, Lancashire pressure on Sa‘id to use his influence to expand production still further became increasingly intense. This was particularly the case during his short visit to Manchester in July 1862. After being shown a number of mills, he was presented with an address from the Manchester Chamber of Commerce urging him to take action. “The Directors of this Chamber’, it began, have watched with great satisfaction the encouragement afforded by your predecessor and yourself to the cultivation of the cotton plant and they indulge in the hope that the knowledge obtained by your Highness of the value and importance of the manufacturing industry of this district will make an enduring impression upon your mind and enable you to foresee the vast benefits which must accrue to both producer and consumer from the more extended cultivation of that most valuable material.

In reply Sa‘id assured his audience that the next crop would be at least half as large again as the one just planted.+ And on his return to Egypt he urged all proprietors to sow a fourth 1 Crabités, P., Ismail, the Maligned Khedive (London, 1933), p. 29. Isma‘il’s private estate produced 40,000 cantars of cotton in 1862: Smith, S., The Cotton Trade of India (London, 1863), p. 63. 2 Quoted in Report by Mr. Consul Stanley on the Trade and Commerce of the Port of Alexandria for the Year 1866, P.P., 1867, \xvii, p. 611.

3 Wallace, pp. 269-70. 4 Manchester Guardian, 10 July 1862.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 97 of their land with cotton, while occupying himself with organiz-

ing the cleaning of the canals and the better distribution of water.’

Pressure and influence on Sa‘id to increase production also came from the Manchester Cotton Supply Association. The Association had been founded in 1857, but its origins went back much further, and stemmed from the fears of such men as a Liverpool correspondent of the President of the Board of Trade who, as early as June 1828, had written of ‘the precarious situation of the cotton trade of this country from our too great dependence on the United States for the supply of the raw material’.2 Subsequently, alarm at the thought of a negro revolt or the partial failure of the American crop, and the increasing use of Southern cotton in northern mills, had led John Bright and Thomas Bazley to urge the Government and Lancashire businessmen to do all in their power to encourage the growth of good, cheap cotton in the Empire, particularly in India and the West Indies, and in Brazil.3 This movement led to the foundation of the Association, whose primary aim, as set out in an editorial of its newspaper The Cotton Supply Reporter in November

1858, was to increase the world’s supply of cotton by all available means.‘ The attention of the Association, both before and after 1862, was directed mainly towards India, which seemed to offer the

best prospects for an immediate large increase in supply, but the possibilities of other areas were also investigated. A number

of reports on Egyptian conditions were prepared, and in August 1861, G. R. Haywood, the secretary of the Association, paid a brief visit to the country. In an interview with Sa‘id he

offered the Association’s assistance in increasing cotton production and discussed with him a project to which the Viceroy attached great importance—the establishment of a system of government-guaranteed advances by English capitalists which would relieve the cultivator of his dependence on rural moneylenders who charged high rates of interest.5 Haywood then went on a tour of the main cotton-growing areas, and ended his stay

by writing a letter to the Viceroy in which he outlined his Thayer, 5 Nov. 1862: U.S. Egyft, ii. 2 Quoted in Henderson, p. 35. 351 ‘Letter Ibid., p. 36. + C.S.R., 1 Dec. 1858. from Mr. G. R. Haywood’, C.S.R., 15 Aug. 1861.

821643 H

98 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 findings. ‘These included the need for more mechanical gins, better seed, and the more intelligent management of some of the farms he had visited. He also spoke once again of the plan to establish a cotton bank to provide loans for cultivators.! On Haywood’s advice a number of packages of New Orleans seed were later sent to Egypt by the Association and distributed among the larger cotton-growers with full instructions as to their cultivation.? Several improved hand gins were also presented to the Viceroy, and a dispatch from Thayer suggests that a start may have been made in lending British money to cotton-growers in the autumn of 1861.3 However, the impact of these innovations was small. The New Orleans seed was never successfully grown, while the cotton-bank scheme was given up after Sa‘id’s death in January 1863—its abandonment necessitating no loss, as the money-lenders, as well as some Alexandria banks and credit institutions, continued to supply all the money

the cultivators needed. More machinery, including steam ploughs, cotton gins, and packing presses worth £71,000, was

sent to Egypt in 1863 in co-operation with the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.’ But by this time British manufacturers no longer needed convincing that Isma‘il’s Government was doing all in its power to increase production, and thereafter the Association confined itself to occasional verbal exhortation. 3. THE CATTLE MURRAIN AND NILE FLOOD OF 1863

The accession of Isma‘il (1863-79) as Viceroy in January 1863 was a signal for renewed faith in Egypt’s continuing prosperity. He was known as ‘a model farmer’ ;¢ his first speech to the foreign consuls, in which he expressed a desire to develop Egypt’s resources in an orderly and diligent manner, produced

a very favourable impression;? to a correspondent of the 1 ‘Mr. Haywood’s mission to Egypt and India’, C.S.R., 1 Oct. 1861. 2 Cotton Supply Association, Fifth Annual Report (Manchester, 23 Sept. 1862). 3 Thayer, 13 Nov. 1861: U.S. Egypt, iii.

I. “The . Viceroy of Egypt and Advances to Cotton Cultivators’, C.S.R., 2 Feb. S * Manchester Guardian, 26 Jan. 1864.

6 Crabités, p. 29; Colquhoun, 4 June 1860: F.O. 78/1522. 7 Douin, Histoire, i, pp. 1-2.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 99 Manchester Cotton Supply Association writing in February 1863, he seemed ‘alive to the importance of extending the cultivation of cotton still further’.! Meanwhile, cotton prices had reached thirty-one to thirty-four dollars a cantar and more

land than ever was devoted to Jumel, many of the larger proprietors increasing their crop area by a third.? However, almost at once Isma‘il was called upon to face a series of crises

which threatened to undermine all Egypt’s agricultural efforts. The first was the plague, which began attacking cattle in the Delta some time in the early summer. Once the serious

nature of the outbreak was realized in June, a number of measures were announced in an attempt to isolate the affected

districts: it was forbidden to move animals from village to village, fairs were cancelled, and orders were given that corpses should be burned rather than thrown into the river.3 However,

these restrictions were largely ignored, and by August it was said that most of the Lower Egyptian provinces were swept clean of cattle, the only exception being the Wadi district, where

an energetic European director with considerable local influence was able to save about a quarter of the total.* Isma‘il at once began to encourage the introduction of replacements from abroad. He sent his own agents, first to Syria, Libya, and Crete, then further afield to Marseilles, Trieste, and Odessa, to

purchase new animals; he also lifted the duty on imported cattle. Oxen as well as horses and donkeys began arriving in large numbers in the autumn and were immediately sold to the cultivators or given to them against promise of future payment.

But many were weak and small and failed to acclimatize, others died from overwork, while those from Russia brought new diseases with them. Finally, a second outbreak of the murrain in November and December killed off most of those that remained, and a new series of imports was necessary.5 Altogether, according to Isma‘il himself, 700,000 animals t “The Viceroy of Egypt and Advances to Cultivators’, C.S.R., 2 Feb. 1863. 2 Saunders, 17 June 1863: F.O. 78/1773. 3 Thayer, 18 June 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii; Colquhoun, 10 June 1863: F.O. 78/1755; The Times, 21 Nov. 1863. 4 Ibid., 29 Aug. 1863; Douin, Histoire, 1, p. 233. 5 For an account of measures taken to cope with the murrain see The Times, 29 Aug., 21, 28 Nov., 1863, and Ninet J., ‘La culture du coton en Egypte et aux Indes,’

R.D.M., 2nd Period, lxiv (15 July 1866), p. 353.

100 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 died.! As in 1843, the cattle plague provided a great stimulus to the introduction of steam ploughs and steam pumps. Isma‘il led the way. ‘We must look to machinery to supply the grievous loss the country has experienced in its cattle’, he told the British Consul-General. ‘My object is to set an example to my countrymen. I can afford to do so now... .’2 He removed the import duty on such machines.3 And he himself purchased large numbers, both for his own estates and for resale to other proprietors.*

The European merchants soon followed suit, and in 1864 and 1865 the value of agricultural engines imported from England alone amounted to well over £650,000. (See Table 10.) TABLE I0

I(£) 2(£) (£)3 tons

Value of Steam-Engines and Other Machinery Exported from England

to Eeypt, r860-6

Steam engines Other engines Coal, cinders, culm

1860 38,070 69,457 55,216 110,600 1861 9,208 62,362 58,458 118,492

1862 595540 74,854 78,831 156,034

1863 161,195 252,521 266,482 264,958 1864 312,884 402,071 4055337 356,816 1865 360,717 311,974 237,918 388,828 1866 101,204 105,428 579551 325,015 Source: United Kingdom Annual Statements of Trade.

While the cattle plague was running its course a second crisis

occurred, this time brought on by the highest Nile of the century, which, during the night of 25 September, infiltrated the dyke along the Rosetta branch six miles above Kafr al-Zayat. The waters spread rapidly across the countryside, destroying t Cattaui, J., Le Khédive Ismatil et la dette de V Egypte (Cairo, 1935), pp. 44-6. The Times correspondent estimated the loss at 900,000 animals (25 Jan. 1864), while Charles-Roux (p. 87) gives a figure of 600,000. 2 Colquhoun, 11 Nov. 1863: F.O. 78/1755. 3 Order of 28 Rabi Awal 1280 (12 Sept. 1863), Guindi, G., and Tagher, J., Ismail d’aprés les documents officiels (Cairo, 1946), pp. 130-1.

4 Colquhoun, 25 Sept. 1863: F.O. 78/1755.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 101 much recently harvested cotton and cutting the Alexandria— Cairo railway line for a month.! By great personal exertion

Isma‘il prevented further damage. At the same time he requisitioned all the steamers on the river and organized a temporary service between Cairo and Kafr al-Zayat to cope with the large quantities of cotton awaiting transport.? Nevertheless, in spite of both flood and murrain, exports of the 1863 crop reached 1,700,000 cantars, or 50 per cent above the previous year. Estimates of the size of the crop made before June put it at a possible 2,000,000 cantars, so that losses may

have been something in the nature of 200,000 cantars as a result of the murrain, and 100,000 from the flooded fields.3 However, such a calculation can only be the very roughest approximation. That the loss was not larger was due to the fact that the crop had been planted before the shortage of animals began to make itself felt. It also helped that the majority

of cultivators employed the Jallt method by which the cotton was watered by flow irrigation and shaduf once the Nile started to rise, rather than by an oxen or buffalo-turned saqiya. The effects of the murrain continued to be felt in 1864. Prices were almost at their peak during spring sowing, the area under cotton was extended by approximately 300,000 feddans, and the fellaheen in particular must have found the effort of preparing the ground a difficult one.4 Contemporary reports tell of them yoking themselves to their ploughs like animals.5 Many of those who had grown cotton in 1863 were forced to leave their

plants in the ground for another year.® As for the larger proprietors, some compensation was provided by imported machinery, although the great bulk of the steam ploughs did not begin to arrive until after the sowing season was over.? Again, cattle were not entirely unobtainable—according to the ™ Colquhoun, go Sept., r1 Nov. 1863: F.O. 78/1755.

2 Sacré, A., and Outrebon, L., l’Egypte et Ismail Pasha (Paris, 1865), p. 47; The Times, 6 Oct. 1863.

3 Based on estimates made by The Times correspondent: The Times, 28 Nov. 1863, 25 Jan. 1864.

4 Thayer quotes an estimate which put the area of cotton land in 1863 at 700,000: 5 Sept. 1863, U.S. Egypt, iii. An estimate of 1,000,000 feddans was given by the British Consul, Stanley for 1864: quoted in ‘Egypt’, C.S.R., 1 Feb. 1867.

5 Ninet, ‘La culture du coton en Egypte et aux Indes’, p. 355. 6 The Times, 8 Dec. 1863. 7 Tbid., 29 Feb. 1864.

102 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 correspondent of The Times 4,500 beasts were sold at the main Tanta fair during the spring.! The result was a crop of 2,000,000

cantars, but almost certainly a decline in yield. During 1862 and 1863 the average number of cantars per feddan can be assumed to have been rising—this was generally the case when

cotton was first extended to new areas. However, by 1864 many of the Delta fields had been under Jumel for three years and in some of the districts the soil was beginning to show signs of exhaustion. Again, owing to the scarcity of animals, much of the land was insufficiently ploughed and watered, while plants

which were not uprooted at the end of a season but left for another inevitably produced less lint.3 The murrain and flood had even more serious repercussions on Egyptian food-production. Isma‘il was first forced to import butter and meat; and then, in March 1864, when a large deficit in the coming cereal harvest seemed certain, he had to issue an

order suspending the duty on imported wheat and flour and forbidding its export. A low Nile made matters worse, and during 1864 and again in 1865 Egypt became a net importer of grain, although not on a large scale (see Table 11). Contemporary writers often tended to blame this situation on the ‘avidité sans bornes’ of the fellaheen who were prepared to sacrifice everything for cotton, but this stricture is not entirely fair. In 1863, when about 700,000 feddans were devoted to cotton, there was an average grain crop, according to the British Consul-General, while exports of wheat and beans were only a little below normal.® And although the cotton area was increased in 1864, the difference between the two years lay as much in the fact that

the flood destroyed a large proportion of the maize crop on which the fellaheen depended for food, forcing them to eat wheat instead, as in the fact that cereal-producing land was diverted to Jumel.’ 1 The Times, 21 Apr. 1864. 25,000 head of cattle had been sold at the fair in 1863:

oe Thayer gives a figure of three cantars/feddan for 1862: 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii. This had declined to two cantars/feddan by 1866: Hale, 1 Apr. 1866: U.S. Egypt, iv. 3 The Times, 21 Apr. 1864. 4 Douin, Histoire, i, p. 261. The prohibition was extended several times and not finally lifted until July 1866.

5 See, for example, Carpi et Vivante, 2.

6 Colquhoun, 16 July 1863: F.O. 78/1772. 7 The Times, 29 Feb. 1864.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 103 TABLE II Imports and Exports of Cereals at Alexandria, 1861-6 (in ardabbs) Imports

1863 1864 1865 1866 Wheat . 104,400 242,933 73,468

Beans . 1,890 1,176 963

Barley - 36,310 49,029 24,999 Exports

1861 1862 1863 1864 1865 1866 Wheat 938,534 1,293,877 858,400 87,000 - 11,815 Beans 607,961 590,000 510,700 58,000 _ 279,694

Barley 191,176 279,576 115,900 5,600 + i Maize 89,086 83,039 152,000 1,400 .. 1,430 SOURCES:

Imports: Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), Table 103, pp. 304-5.

Exports: Carpi et Vivante, 1 and 2.

In addition, the murrain left few animals for harvesting and transporting the cereal crop grown in the winter of 1863. It also confronted the peasants with a choice. They could devote their now depleted resources to preparing the ground for cotton, or they could forgo a portion of their prospective profits to concentrate on a winter cereal crop of the normal size. In the event, they appear to have chosen the first course, although at the same time ensuring their own personal food supplies—the small amounts of imported grain going largely to the urban population. In Upper Egypt cotton-production was not on a sufficiently extensive scale to make much difference to the cereal harvest. 4. THE CULTIVATION AND SALE OF COTTON

According to estimates made by the British Consul, Stanley,

in 1864, a million feddans, or about 40 per cent of the total cultivated area of Lower Egypt, was placed under cotton.! By 1 ‘Egypt’, C.S.R., 1 Feb. 1867.

104 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 then its growth had spread into every Delta province. In addition, it was sown over many thousands of feddans in Upper Egypt.! Methods used do not seem to have varied much from those described in earlier chapters. The majority of proprietors were peasants who owned land at some distance from the main

summer-water canals. For them, cotton generally followed a

crop of maize which was cut in November. After that the ground was ploughed twice, at right angles, and then left until February, when it was flooded for fifteen to twenty days. Two more ploughings followed, before sowing. In cases where cotton was preceded by some other crop another course of action was pursued. If the land had been under wheat, for instance, cotton was sown first without any preliminary working of the soil, and the flooding of the fields came next. But whatever the method, every effort was made to use the soil as intensively as possible in order to try and maximize production. The rows of cotton were planted more closely together than in earlier days,3 while extra crops were introduced into the rotation when possible.

Different practices were employed on the larger estates. There, the preparations for sowing cotton began in the middle of March when the land was ploughed, watered, then ploughed again. Planting began early in May, the seeds being placed in rows three feet apart. The cotton was irrigated approximately

four times during growth and weeded every thirty days. Artificial manure was used on some of the larger estates, notably that of Abdal-Halim Pasha, Sa‘id’s brother.5 Harvesting commenced in September. Figures from an American consular dispatch of March 1863 give some indication of the cost of cultivating one feddan in the Mansura district (see Table 12). Assuming a yield of four cantars a feddan, total expenses of

Pt. 480 a feddan would work out at Pt. 120 or six dollars a

cantar. It will be remembered that cotton could be sold for four or five times this amount. Later, however, the costs of those using Sagiya-irrigation almost doubled as agricultural wages

rose and new cattle had to be hired or purchased to replace . 1 19,000 feddans were planted with cotton in Upper Egypt in 1863. Isma‘il hoped that this would be raised to 70,000—100,000 feddans in 1864 but it is not clear whether this target was achieved: The Times, 28 Sept. 1863.

2 Grégoire, pp. 454, 462. 3 Ibid., p. 459. 4 Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii. 5S The Times, 24 Dec. 1863.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 105 TABLE I2 Cost of Cultivating One Feddan of Cotton in the Mansura District, 1862-3 Piastres

Tax 100

Ploughing 50

Irrigation 60 Average yield: Hoeing 100 Picking 100 Ginning 40 Total 480 (sic)

Seed 20 4 cantars/feddan

SourcE: Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, ui.

those killed in the murrain.! Machines were, at least in theory, less expensive to buy and operate, but contemporary calculations were generally based on an unrealistically low figure for the price of fuel. According to Ninet, coal which cost only 124 francs a ton f.0.b. Newcastle or Cardiff retailed at 75 to 100 francs in the interior of the Delta. Even then regular delivery could not be assured. Owing to the uncertainty of the railway service, consignments of fuel which reached Alexandria in April often did not arrive at their final destination until August or September, when the cotton season was almost at an end. In addition, Egypt did not possess the industrial organization to keep machines in good repair and the full-time employment of a European mechanic was almost essential.?

The money necessary to finance the cultivation of cotton came from a variety of sources. In the case of the peasants they

borrowed the cash they needed from the rapidly multiplying number of village usurers.3 The latter, in turn, either had links with Greek and other mercantile houses in Istanbul or Alex-

andria or had made their capital as village traders, selling manufactured goods to the fellaheen. The estate-owners, on the other hand, were able to obtain advances from banks and other ' Ninet, ‘La culture du coton en Egypte et aux Indes’, p. 356; Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii.

2 Ninet, ‘La culture du coton en Egypte et aux Indes’, p. 354. 3 Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii.

106 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 credit institutions against land or cotton.! The ease with which money was provided, first to finance, then to move, the crop, was a vital factor in promoting the extension of cotton. As the cultivators would accept payment only in gold, large amounts of bullion had to be imported each year, there being insufhcient coinage in circulation even for normal needs.

By the beginning of 1863 at least a third of the Egyptian cotton crop was being ginned in steam-ginning factories, of which there were then nearly eighty.? ‘This compares with the twenty-four which had existed in June 1862 and the fifty in November that year.3 Charges were high, being anything from

one to four dollars a cantar, in addition to the right to keep the seed, which was generally worth more.* Nevertheless, the demand for factory services was so great that, even working night and day, they were often unable to cope with their commitments. “During last season’, ‘Thayer wrote in March 1863, ‘I have seen many of these establishments entirely barricaded with cotton waiting to be cleaned.’5 The ginned cotton was then pressed into 500-lb. bales and sent to Alexandria for sale to the merchants, the majority of whom were now acting as brokers, receiving commissions from abroad, importing the

necessary gold, and purchasing the amounts required on commission; while the remainder of the crop was bought up by

their agents stationed at the main Delta collection points.® Cotton seed was also purchased for export. In addition, a small portion of the total was crushed into oil at a factory built on the

edge of the Mahmudiya canal at Alexandria by a company under the control of Edward Dervieu.’ 5. THE EFFECT OF INCREASED INCOMES FROM COTTON

There were many opportunities for profit at each stage of the production process. Ginning was such a lucrative business that

many owners were able to regain their initial outlay within 1 Sacré and Outrebon, p. 157. 2 Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, i. 3 Thayer, 5 Nov. 1862: U.S. Egypt, iii. By the end of the boom in 1866 there were 112 ginning factories in Egypt: Douin, Histoire, u, p. 121. 4 Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, ui.

5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.

7 Douin, Histowre, i, p. 264.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 107 two years;!' money-lenders obtained anything from 1 to 5 per cent a month for their loans; in 1862 it was said that there was not one of the Alexandria merchants who had not doubled

or tripled his capital during the first summer of the boom. But it must be supposed that in the first instance the bulk of the

proceeds from the sale of their cotton—some £40,000,000 to £50,000,000 between the years 1861 and 1866—went to the cultivators themselves. As far as the fellaheen were concerned, much of the gold they received was at once buried or converted into ornaments for their wives. Some, however, used their earnings for such traditional purposes as feasts or dowries or,

in a few cases, for making the pilgrimage; others to build houses;* others again to purchase silks, jewellery, silver, pipes, furniture, and slaves.5 Maize flour was widely replaced by wheat and many villages saw the erection of ovens owned by Greeks

and Maltese for making bread.° Imports do not seem to have played an important part in increased peasant consumption, with the possible exception of cotton goods and the animals introduced after the murrain. Less can be deduced about the pattern of expenditure of the richer cultivators. But in so far as the majority were as yet little acquainted with European ways of life it can probably be assumed that they too spent only a small portion of their increased income on imports. A study of British exports to Egypt during this period would seem to bear this out.” On the basis of the figures in Table 13 it may be suggested that, with the exception of agricultural machinery, the items where a large increase

occurred between 1861 and 1865 were unlikely to have been

purchased in any quantity by rich Muslims. The iron and copper were destined mainly for the Government and for the construction of European-owned buildings, the cotton textiles 1 Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, i11.

2 Sacré and Outrebon, p. 158. 3 ‘Thayer, 12 Nov. 1862: U.S. Egypt, ii. 4 Taylor, B., Egypt and Iceland in the Year 1874 (London, 1875), p. 137.

5 The Times, 9 May 1864; Taylor, p. 137. 6 Douin, Histoire, i, p. 259. _ 7 British export figures have been used owing to the unreliability of Egyptian imports statistics. Not only was the method of calculating the latter haphazard but many Europeans managed to import goods without passing them through the Customs in order to avoid paying duty. The official Egyptian figures for total imports given in Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.) (pp. 304-5) are, in fact, lower in 1864 and 1865 than the figures for British exports to Egypt.

108 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 TABLE 13 Quantities and Declared Values of the Principal Articles of British and Irish Produce Exported from the United Kingdom to Egypt, 1861, 1864, and 1865?

£££

1861 1864 1865

Apparel and haberdashery 240,778 283,236 338,414 Arms and ammunition:

firearms 13,741 18,601 49,212 gunpowder 1,101 5,009 16 Books, printed 65,535 94,064 88,127 Carriages 5,312 77:354 Coal, cinders, culm 58,458 168,65165,585 206,091

Copper, wrought and unwrought 81,611 405,337 237,918 Cotton yarn 48,384 146,658 211,802 Cottons:

entered by the yard 867,668 2,492,997 2,330,165 entered at value 10,456 35,954 155733 Drugs and chemical products 75737 24,223 19,933 Earthenware and porcelain 75725 17,482 18,917

Hardware and cutlery, unenumerated 31,411 67,620 59,283

Iron, wrought and unwrought 68,261 236,090 531,498

Linens, entered by the yard 27,438 151,151 88,201 Machinery:

steam engines 9,208 312,884 369,717 all other sorts 62,362 402,071 311,974 Mathematical instruments 13,741 13,688 16,836

Paper of all sorts 6,527 3,098 1,180 Plate, plated-ware, jewellery, and watches 176,859 132,434 141,764 Provisions, not otherwise described 8,429 19,155 23,704

Silk manufactures 179,647 271,850 314,813

Stationery, other than paper 28,201 46,794 52,834

Telegraph wire 30,547 7,470 entered by the yard 23,831 90,554 82,561 at value 3,865 10,922 7,772 Other articles 230,562 493,178 402,053 Woollens:

Totals £2,278,848 £6,051,680 £5,990,943 Source: M’Culloch, J. R., M’Culloch’s Commercial Dictionary, ed. H. G. Reid (London, 1869), p. 25. Note: a. M’Culloch’s figures are taken from the official British trade figures. It should be noted that these figures comprise all goods shipped for Alexandria regardless of their final destination and thus include goods re-exported from Egypt to the Sudan, Arabia, etc.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 109 were for the fellaheen or for re-export to Africa, while the carri-

ages and other luxury goods were mainly for sale to foreign residents.

Further evidence of the low import content of Egyptian consumption during the boom comes from the fact that British exports of such goods as cotton-manufactured articles, woollens, and haberdashery continued to increase through 1867, even though agricultural incomes had then diminished sharply due to lower cotton prices and heavy taxation. The fact that a large part of the cotton profits was devoted to the purchase of locally produced goods had two important results. In the first place, it was instrumental in spreading the

prosperity into other areas of the economy, to the wheatgrowers of Upper Egypt, for example, and to the artisans in the towns. Secondly, it was part of the cause of a rapid inflation in the price of all major food items, a situation made worse after 1863 by the murrain and the consequent shortages

of butter, meat, and cereals. “There is a large rise in every article of living’, wrote Colquhoun, the British Consul-General, in September 1863:

Our daily household expenses have doubled in a year . . . the enormous fortunes realised during the past two years have caused money to be abundant, and the merchants have adopted a style of luxury and extravagance that enables them to command the daily market and have forced up the price of articles of daily necessity to a ruinous height.!

And in the following year he forwarded a list showing the increase in the price of various staples during the previous four

years. Wheat, he said, had gone up from 25s. to 42s. 8d. a quarter (644 per cent), beef from 5:8d. to 15-4d. a lb. (165 per

cent), eggs from 1-9d. to 425d. a dozen (124 per cent), and geese from 12-8d. to 42°3d. each (230 per cent). Consuls never considered their salaries adequate and are thus not always the

best guides to changes in the cost of living, but in this case figures from other sources tend to bear Colquhoun out. Those who suffered the most were the urban poor. Not only was their food more highly priced but it was often unobtainable, and in ‘ Colquhoun, 25 Sept. 1863: F.O. 78/1755. 2 Colquhoun, 10 May 1864: F.O. 78/1818.

110 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 June 1864 the Privy Council was forced to ask Isma‘il’s permission to use government transport to supply the townspeople with the vegetables upon which they largely subsisted.! The rural population, on the other hand, can only have benefited from the rising food prices. They also received additional income by way of the concurrent increase in agricultural wages.

Others to prosper from the inflation were the importers of much-needed goods—it is significant that the price of coal, the

one imported item on Colquhoun’s list, rose by 100 per cent between 1860 and 1864—and the local middlemen who were able to use their position to force prices up still higher. Apart from the purchase of agricultural machinery by some of the richer proprietors only a small portion of the profits from cotton can have been spent on works of agricultural improvement. The majority of the cultivated land was farmed by peasants who had neither the means nor the mechanical aptitude to buy European equipment, and no effort was made to provide them with simpler but more efficient tools which might have proved attractive to them.? Furthermore, it must be supposed that the major piece of investment made by cultivators, both rich and poor, was the replacement of their dead animals after the cattle murrain. As the price of an ox was then {E50 this would have represented a very considerable outlay.3 There may also have been some purchase of land, but there is no evidence to show how important this was. 6. THE SYSTEM OF TRANSPORT

The rapid increase in Egyptian trade at this time imposed a severe strain on Egypt’s harbour facilities and transportation

system. In particular, the railway administration found it difficult to cope with the large quantity of cotton requiring to

be taken to the coast for shipment, a problem which was further augmented by the fact that the increasing use of McCarthy gins meant that the bulk of the crop was ready for carriage to the coast in the first six months after harvesting, 1 Guindi and Tagher, p. 132. Some compensation was provided for a few townspeople by the rise in wages of workers in cotton ginneries: Thayer, 5 Mar. 1863: U.S. Egypt, 111.

2 This point will be dealt with at greater length in Ch. XI. 3 Thayer, 18 June 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii; The Times, 6 June 1863.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 111 instead of throughout the following year as before. Some delays

were first experienced in the winter of 1862-3, and soon after his accession Isma‘il was forced to send government boats to assist in moving the harvest.! At the same time, he promised to accelerate work on doubling the main line which had begun in 1860.2 The following winter conditions worsened. Not only was the crop larger than ever, but the flood, by interrupting rail services in October, caused more and more cotton to pile up at the intermediate stations, while large numbers of cattle and machines accumulated at Alexandria for delivery to points in the interior of the Delta.3 Service became increasingly uncertain—there were sixteen collisions in March 1864 alone, passengers had to be refused, and to judge from a series of com-

plaints from Taylor and Co., a firm of British merchants, sizeable consignments of cotton were often lost, burned, or delivered to the wrong person, without payment of compensation.4 Another source of hold-up and confusion was the Alexandria dock area. Here there was only one wharf, so that the majority of ships had to be loaded and unloaded by lighter —‘always a work of much delay and frequently of danger’.s

Customs-house facilities were inadequate and the streets between the harbour and the town and railway station were unpaved and often deep in mud.®

Irritation at such conditions produced a long series of protests from the mercantile community. These became particularly virulent in the winter of 1863-4, when, in addition to the usual complaints about delays and losses, it was felt that Isma‘il, in his position as the largest cotton-grower and chief merchant in the country, was beginning to use the transport system for his own ends. A strongly worded memorandum, drawn up after a meeting of leading members of the British community in January 1864, accused him of monopolizing the railway for the carriage of his own goods and of taking over all the lighters and labourers in Alexandria to unload the coal and 1 Thayer, 27 Jan. 1863: U.S. Egypt, iii. * Colquhoun, 11 May 1863: F.O. 78/1754. 3 The Times, 24 Dec. 1863, 6 Feb. 1864. * Ibid., 14 Apr. 1864; Saunders, 29 Jan., Calvert, 13 Feb., Saunders, 20 Apr. 1864: F.O. 141/54. 5 Stanton, 12 Mar. 1866: F.O. 78/1925. © Colquhoun, 11 Mar. 1865: F.O. 78/1871.

112 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 machinery he was then importing in such quantity.! Later, after this first protest had been rejected, the same group claimed

that one of their number, wishing to send a consignment of goods into the interior, had been told by a railway employee that: ‘so long as there remained for transport a single package of the merchandise belonging to His Highness, the Viceroy, the goods of private persons could not be forwarded’.? Nevertheless,

it should be noted that by April perhaps three-quarters of the cotton crop had been exported.3 Nor did the protests go unheeded. A new director of the railway administration was appointed (‘the most able man in Egypt’), with an Englishman, Rouse, as chief engineer, more rolling-stock was ordered, and work on doubling the Alexandria—Cairo line finally completed.‘

Meanwhile, a personal inspection of the customs area by Raghib Pasha, the senior minister, led to a rapid clearance of the piles of goods accumulated there.5 Isma‘il ordered the construction of a screwpile iron jetty and an extra shed for merchandise awaiting inspection, but there were insufficient funds for any more comprehensive improvements and his good intentions were further hindered by what the correspondent of The Times referred to as the stolid and inert obstinacy of the chief customs officer and his perverse tribe of subordinates, who, instead of aiding by prompt dispatch of business, create the most vexatious delays, and obstruct the measures of the merchants to clear their goods and disembarrass

the customs house, and so confusion and difficulty magnify with every additional store embarked.®

7. THE FURTHER EXPANSION OF EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IN EGYPT

The cotton boom greatly accelerated the growth of European interest in Egypt’s financial possibilities. One manifestation of this was the large inflow of foreigners. Some idea of the size of this movement can be obtained from the figures provided for the French writers Sacré and Outrebon by the Alexandria 1 Memorial of 21 Jan. 1864, enclosed in Colquhoun, 25 Mar. 1864: F.O. 78/1818. 2 Memorial of 26 Apr. 1864, enclosed in Colquhoun, 3 May 1864: F.O. 78/1818.

3 The Times, 21 Apr. 1864. 4 Ibid., g May 1864.

5 Ibid., 29 Mar. 1864. 6 Ibid., 21 Apr. 1864.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 113 passport administration, which show that between the beginning of February and the beginning of August 1864 there was an excess of arrivals over departures of nearly 12,000 foreigners,

including 1,873 Greeks, 1,650 Englishmen, 1,187 Frenchmen, and 1,061 Austrians, bringing the total European population

of the country to roughly 90,000.! Most of the newcomers stayed in Alexandria, but an increasing number spread out into the Delta towns or settled in Cairo, a city of rapidly growing importance due to Isma‘il’s plans for its development and its position at the centre of the Delta retail trade. The arrival of so many foreigners created many investment opportunities

of its own. There were houses to be built, wood and other construction materials to be imported, and new tastes to be catered for. In addition, a number of valuable public-utility concessions were awarded for the provision of Alexandria and Cairo with gas lighting and supplies of domestic water. Several of those who arrived in Egypt during the boom were people who were later to become some of the best-known names in Egyptian business—for example, R. J. Moss, the founder of the house of the same name and the first Alexandria merchant to introduce hydraulic steam presses for his own use, E. A.

Benachi, the cotton-exporter, who joined the firm of J. P. Schilizzi in 1865,? and Charles Gill, who opened up the Alexandria branch of Carver Brothers and Gill, an enterprise which was soon to grow into one of the largest and most important in the country.3 However, the great majority of the really ambitious projects of the time were the work of a small group of Alexandria merchant bankers, all of whom had come to the country some years before the boom had begun. Among them were Edward Dervieu, Henry Oppenheim, whose Middle East

activities had started during the Crimean War, and Jules Pastré and Jean Sinadino, men whose association with Egypt went back to the days of Muhammad ‘Ali. Like other bankers,

they all expanded their own activities to take advantage of the boom, some investing in the cotton sector, others financing

trade and importing agricultural machinery. They were also involved, individually and in concert, with the four large 1 Sacré and Outrebon, pp. 213, 298. 2 Wright, pp. 326, 438-9. 3 Information obtained from Mr. R. B. Carver.

821643 I

114 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 companies which were established during the first two years of Isma‘il’s reign, the Anglo-Egyptian Bank, the Medyjidiah or Egyptian Steam Navigation Co., the Egyptian Commercial and ‘Trading Company, and the Société Agricole et Industrielle,

companies whose initial high expectations and subsequent misfortunes make them typical examples of Egyptian boom-

time finance. The Anglo-Egyptian Bank was founded on a combination of

the two houses of Pastré Fréres and E. Sinadino and Co. It came out on the London market in July 1864 with a nominal capital of {2,000,000 under the auspices of two leading English

firms, Agra and Masterman’s Bank and the General Credit and Finance Co. Prospective shareholders were recommended

that ‘through the increase of trade [in Egypt], especially in association with cotton, augmented banking and commercial facilities are required’.! Operations began in September 1864 and, in spite of the business difficulties which accompanied the fall in cotton prices and the tightness of the European money

markets, the bank made a profit of nearly £70,000, or 16 per cent of its paid-up capital on its first year.2 The Medjediah and the Trading Co., on the other hand, were largely Egyptian ventures, conceived, it would seem, by Isma‘il himself. The former, the purpose of which was to provide steam services in the Red Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, and on the Nile, was brought out in May 1863 by a syndicate representing Dervieu and Oppenheim, together with a group of Egyptian pashas

including Sharif, Nubar, and Raghib.3 Although the promoters had hoped to attract European capital, the majority of the shares were bought by Egyptians, the Viceroy himself taking half. As the prospectus made clear, it was very much a government venture: 6 per cent interest was guaranteed to shareholders; coal, oil, and other necessary materials were exempt from customs duty; and the company agreed to trans-

port all government goods at a discount of 25 per cent.* Capital was initially fixed at £E400,000 but was subsequently raised to £E800,000 and then, in April 1864, to £,E2,000,000.5 1 Banker’s Magazine, vol. xxiv (Aug. 1864), p. 788. 2 Ibid., vol. xxv (Dec. 1865), p. 1375. 3 Compagnie égyptienne de Navigation a vapeur, Firman de concessions et statuts

(Alexandria, 1863), p. 5. 4 Ibid., pp. 6-9. 5 Landes, pp. 149-50; Colquhoun, 11 May 1863: F.O. 78/1754.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 115 The Egyptian Commercial and Trading also had Dervieu and

Oppenheim as sponsors, joined on this occasion by repre-

sentatives from a number of Alexandria banks. Abdal-Halim Pasha was chairman of the board of directors. It was originally

known as the Soudan Company and was first intended to operate in the vast areas to the south of Egypt, but, as the result of pressure from European financiers who were invited to lend their support, 1ts name was changed and its sphere of activity extended to cover operations in Egypt itself.! A major part of

its enterprises consisted of crop loans to cultivators at 15 to 20 per cent a year.? The fourth company, the Société Agricole, originated in the project of an Austrian, Antoine Lucovitch, to provide the country with a system of cheap irrigation either by arranging to supply the cultivators with pumped water, or by selling, installing, and maintaining the necessary machinery on behalf of private individuals. This scheme was presented to the Viceroy for approval early in 1863 and, after some initial resistance, his permission was granted. In the meantime, Lucovitch had made contact with Dervieu, who took over the actual organization of the new company, finding directors, and drawing up the statutes. However, almost as soon as Isma‘il

had once again given Lucovitch the authorization he needed, the Viceroy brought affairs to a halt by indicating to Dervieu that he should have nothing to do with the project.3 Landes, from whose account these details have been drawn, suggests that the main reason for this change of mind was the Viceroy’s fear of the increased foreign interference in the economy which would certainly follow the establishment of European-owned pumps and workshops along the Nile and major canals.4 Such a supposition would seem to have been largely true, further proof being provided by a government circular issued on 11

July 1863, only a week before Lucovitch’s application for permission to proceed. In this it was laid down that, in future, plans to construct any pumps or ‘bridges’ (dams) would have to be submitted to government irrigation engineers who would say if they were to be allowed and, ifso, under what conditions. The ostensible reason given for this measure was that pumps

1 Landes, pp. 151-4. 2 Ibid., p. 235.

3 Ibid., pp. 261-3. 4 Ibid., p. 263.

116 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 and bridges involved the private use of what was public water,! but, as later events were to show, the primary purpose was to provide the Government with a legal basis for resisting European interference with the country’s system of irrigation. One of the main threads which ran through Isma‘il’s reign was his

determination to prevent further foreign encroachment upon areas vital to Egypt’s economic well-being which had remained

under Egyptian jurisdiction (such as the railways). This was not only a means of avoiding expensive litigation as the result of claims on the Treasury but also a part of his long-term aim

of obtaining European as well as Ottoman recognition of Egypt’s sovereignty. A second reason adduced by Landes for Isma‘il’s objection to the new company was that by July 1863 he had himself embarked on a major programme of importing steam-pumping equipment and was anxious to avoid competition.? Lucovitch’s scheme was resurrected the following year, the Viceroy giving his consent in exchange for what seems to have been an undertaking by Dervieu to take the company out of agriculture. For a few months after it was floated in July 1864

its stated purpose remained the provision of the machines necessary for cheap pumped water.? But by April 1865 Lucovitch had been removed and the company organized on quite a different basis—to undertake government public-works contracts and to engage in real-estate operations.* Few, if any, of the pumps imported were actually installed. Isma‘il’s attitude to the various companies provides an important example of his approach to economic policy. His most pressing need was, and remained, money. At a time when government expenses were mounting rapidly owing to the necessity of spending large sums on public works connected _ with the boom, of meeting obligations under the disastrous _; Suez Canal arbitration decision of 1864, and of paying interest “+ onthe debt of well over £10,000,000 run up by his predecessor,

- revenues were increasing at a very much slower rate. Receipts from railways and customs rose with the growth of trade but by 1 Egypt, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Circular No. 53, 12 July 1863: Colquhoun,

4 Aug. 1863: F.O. 78/1755. 2 Landes, pp. 263-4.

3 Société agricole et industrielle d’Egypte, Statuts (Alexandria, 1864), p. 5. 4 Société agricole et industrielle, Rapport du Conseil d’ Administration, 23 Apr. 1865 (Alexandria, 1865).

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 117 1864-5 had only reached some {1,370,000 combined,! while the land-tax, the major item, could not immediately be raised by anything like the amount that the general rise in incomes might seem to have justified. ‘his chronic shortage of funds led Isma‘il to encourage the establishment of banks like the AngloEgyptian from which he might borrow heavily in return for certain favours. Shortage of funds also led him to take steps to

augment his own private fortune as a means of benefiting directly from the country’s prosperity and thus supplementing the Government’s official income. No sooner had he become Viceroy than he started to extend his estates, adding 200,000 feddans in 1863 alone.? By July 1864 he was said to own over half a million acres, or between an eighth and a ninth of the

total cultivated area of Egypt.3 Some of these fields were purchased from relatives, others reclaimed from waste land, but

a large number were seized more or less forcibly from the peasants.* Corvée labour was used to provide these new lands with canals, while pumps, ploughs, presses, and other machinery were imported for them.’ As a result Isma‘il was able to place an estimated 100,000 feddans under cotton in 1864,° an amount which, at prices then current, must have given him a gross income from this source of some £2,500,000.” [he resale of animals

and machines undoubtedly increased this sum still further. Another aim of Isma‘il’s economic policies was to develop Egypt’s resources by using European expertise and, if possible, European capital, in companies placed strictly under government control. Unfortunately for him, however, this combination rarely worked. The standard of foreign management was low; financiers like Dervieu and Oppenheim were more anxious

to make a quick profit than to ensure a steady build-up of business; in order to attract and to keep financial support it was necessary to pay over-generous dividends.? ‘The companies

also suffered from Isma‘il’s own short-comings as a planner. 1 Anon., The Finances of Egypt (London, 1874), p. 32.

* Douin, Histoire, i, pp. 261-2. 3 Ayrton, 18 July 1864: F.O. 141/54. + See, for instance, Colquhoun, 25 May 1864: F.O. 78/1818. 5 Colquhoun, 25 Sept. 1863: F.O. 75/1755; Ayrton, 18 July 1864: F.O. 141/54. © Douin, Histoire, i, pp. 261-2.

7 This estimate is based on current prices. Douin’s own estimate is 80,000,000 francs ({E3,200,000). Ibid., p. 262. 8 See, for example, Colquhoun, 4 June 1863: F.O. 78/1755. 9 See ‘J. C.’s’ comments, pp. 26, 41.

118 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 Too much was attempted too quickly and on too large a scale. Again, the companies were constantly being used as counters

in short-term projects quite different from their stated purpose. For example, in November 1863 the Trading Company raised £700,000 by the issue of debentures in order to provide the Viceroy with money to pay for his imports of cattle and machines. Consequently, their contribution to Egyptian development was small. To those merchants excluded from Isma‘il’s schemes his

attempts to develop the country by patronizing companies founded by favourites and by enlarging his own estates were an immediate source of concern, and great alarm was expressed at the thought that he might be trying to reverse the free-trade

policy established by his uncle. “They fear the tendency of a spirit of monopoly so inherent in all preceding Egyptian rulers (except Said Pasha) which it required years of firmness on the part of foreign agents to counteract’, wrote Colquhoun of the British mercantile community in June 1863, after announcing the formation of the Medjidiah and Trading companies.? Suspicions of this same kind also seem to have lain behind much of the foreign irritation expressed about such matters as Isma‘il’s

decision to invest money in Dervieu’s bank, or the assertion that the Trading Company was preventing foreigners from lending freely to the cultivators by seizing all this business for itself, with the help of the local authorities. Complaints of this nature were clearly designed to show that Europeans would not tolerate any attempt to interfere with the ordinary pattern of trade built up during the previous reign. At another level, even more was involved than a display of resolute determination to uphold the principles of free trade. Commercial protests also seem to have been very much stimulated by a desire to reassert the position of Europeans at the start of a new reign (especially after the anti-foreign riots by which this start had been marked), to reinforce the current belief of the European community that the Capitulations provided them with rights rather than privileges, and to show Egyptian officials that any measure thought to restrict European activity would be fiercely resisted. 1 The Times, 9 Nov. 1863. 2 4 June 1863: F.O. 78/1755. 3 Ibid.; Colquhoun, 4 Aug. 1863: F.O. 78/1755.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 119 8. THE COLLAPSE OF THE BOOM

Cotton prices reached their peak in the summer of 1864. They then began to decline just as the Egyptian crop began to reach the market, falling from fifty-two dollars a cantar in August to thirty-seven in December. In reaction, many of the cultivators, including the Viceroy, kept hold of their cotton, preferring to borrow rather than to sell at what they considered

to be an inferior price. A number of ginning factories had to stop work. But those who were hardest hit were the banking houses and credit companies who had lent money against Jumel and who were forced to take up their now depreciated security. The crisis deepened and was at its worst in April 1865. Prices continued to fall as the American Civil War came to an end; business in Mansura, the centre of the most 1mportant Delta cotton-growing district, was at a standstill even though it was estimated that a third of the local harvest remained in the fields; finally, on April 9, G. Joyce and Co. of London, East Indian and Egyptian merchants, collapsed unexpectedly.! Most other firms made losses (the Bank of Egypt valued these at £2,000,000)? even though few actually went bankrupt.3 But then, almost at once, business revived. In the first place, Southern stocks of cotton were revealed to be far smaller than anticipated. Furthermore, there was no immediate prospect of a return to the large American crops of pre-war years. [hus prices began to rise again. And this, combined with the fact that the crop was 800,000 cantars larger than the previous year, meant that there was no decline in gross incomes from

cotton. In the second place, Isma‘il was persuaded by a committee of local financiers to assist those firms who had lent money

on land, now a worthless security following the collapse of the Egyptian property market. According to the plan proposed and accepted, the Government took over these ‘village debts’ as they were called, paying European creditors with bonds carrying 7 per cent interest, while arranging to collect the money from the debtors over a period of seven years at 12 per cent.

To Isma‘il this had a double advantage. Not only did it 1 The Times, 6 Apr. 1865. 2 Bank of Egypt, Half-Yearly Meeting, 26 July 1865, Banker’s Magazine, vol. xxv

(Aug. 1865), pp. 1015-16. 3 Landes, pp. 237-8.

120 The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 provide an opportunity to make some money and perhaps to gain control over more land, but also the Government would be spared the confusion and recriminations which would certainly have accompanied a general expropriation by European creditors.! The total of such debts was fixed at 17,000,000 francs (£680,000). As they comprised just those loans made on land, they represented only a small portion of total indebtedness. Nevertheless, their prompt repayment provided muchneeded relief for many members of the Alexandria business community.?

Meanwhile, the sowing of the 1865 cotton crop was in pro-

gress. In an attempt to compensate for lower prices, many cultivators extended the area they devoted to Jumel, Isma‘ll himself increasing his ‘cotton fields by half. Others, particularly

peasants, sowed their cotton more closely together. Thus, although agricultural credit was more difficult to obtain and the shortage of draft animals still persisted, it is probable that

the total amount of land placed under Jumel was further augmented.3 But to offset this there was a further decline in yield, there being neither workers nor cattle enough to cope with such a large area.* In addition, on land where cotton had been grown before, the soil was exhausted after two and three

years of continuous cultivation. Hence, in spite of all the efforts made the harvest was some 30 to 40 per cent lower than the previous season. Its sale coincided with the final collapse of the boom. Trade had remained steady throughout the rest of 1865, but most firms were working from capital or by means of loans, so that when the London Stock Market crash of May 1866 finally put an end to the credit obtainable from Europe, many of them were unable to continue. A large number of Egyptian houses went bankrupt; the Anglo-Egyptian Bank lost £205,000 on its second year’s activities when it proved

impossible to issue more than a small part of a projected 1 Hale, 14 June 1865: U.S. Egypt, 111.

2 Landes, pp. 240-1. 3 Stanley, in a series of estimates already quoted, put the cotton area in 1865 at 1,500,000 feddans: ‘Egypt’, C.S.R., 1 Feb. 1867. See also p. 103, note 1. On the basis of crop size this would seem to be too large. Just over a million feddans would probably be nearer the truth. 4 ‘Letter from W. Wanklyn’, C.S.R., 1 June 1865; Hale, 1 Apr. 1866: U.S. Evypt, iv.' 5 Wallace, pp. 320-1.

The Cotton Boom, 1861-1866 121 government loan for which it was the contractor, and was forced to reorganize; the Trading and Agricole were finally driven to suspend operations.! In addition, several ginning establishments were abandoned for lack of work, some owners

attempting to sell their machinery at a third or a half of its original cost.2 As for Isma‘il himself, surrounded on all sides

by eager creditors and unable, temporarily, to borrow the sums he needed, he at once began a series of increases in the land-tax which in a few years were to wipe out most of the boom-time profits which still remained in the hands of the cultivators. 1 Anglo-Egyptian Bank, General Meeting, 30 Nov. 1866, Banker’s Magazine, vol. xxvii (Jan. 1867), p. 29; Landes, pp. 288, 303-4. It was, however, several

years before both companies were finally wound up. ° .

2 Hale, 17 June 1867: U.S. Egypt, iv. ,

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF COTTON’S DOMINANT POSITION IN THE RURAL ECONOMY 1867-1879 I. THE PRODUCTION AND EXPORT OF COTTON AFTER THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

HE year 1866 marked the end of the cotton boom and of

the great prosperity it had brought to the Egyptian cultivators. Though prices remained high until the autumn, exports of the 1865 crop totalled only 1,800,000 cantars valued at £11,400,000, compared with 2,500,000 cantars and £E15,000,000 a year earlier.! Thereafter, however, production remained more or less constant for the next four

years, the size of the crop varying between 1,100,000 and 1,400,000 cantars.2, Meanwhile, on the assumption that the average yield at this time was in the region of two cantars per feddan,? the area placed under cotton must have diminished to some 600,000 to 700,000 feddans, leaving perhaps a quarter of a million feddans to be reallocated to other crops or left

fallow during the summer. Some small compensation for cultivators was provided by the continual expansion of the 1 For sources, see Table 7.

2 There are a great number of alternative series of figures for crop size and volume and value of cotton exports for the period 1866 to 1879. I have chosen to use those for production and the volume of exports to be found in Table 14; and those for the value of exports to be found in the following sources: (1866) Carpi et Vivante. 2; (1867-9) de Regny, E. (ed.), Statistique de l’ Egypte (Alexandria, 1870), pp. 59-60; (1870-3) Statement Showing the Quantity and Value of Exports at the Port of Alexandria for the Years 1865 to 1875 Inclusive, ‘Report Upon the Commercial Relations

of the United States with Foreign Countries for the Year 1876’—‘Egypt’, Executive Documents (U.S.), and Session, 44th Congress, pp. 928-33 (hereafter, Statement, 1865-1875 (U.S.); (1874-9) Egypt, Direction Générale des Douanes, Le Commerce extérieur de I’ Egypte. Statistique comparée, 1884-1889 (Cairo, 1891), pp. xvii—xix. None

caution, 3 See Table 14.

of these figures have any great claim to accuracy and all should be used with

Cotton’s Dominant Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 123

TABLE I4 Production and Export of Egyptian Cotton, 1866—7 to 1879—80* Export

Production? (from Alexandria)

cantars quintals°

1866—7 1,127,895 1,260,946

I 867-8 1,207,402 1,253,455 1868—9 1,306,156 1,289,714 1869-70 —:1, 362,514 1,351,797

1870-1 1,970,717 1,966,215

1871-2 2,04.4.,254. 2,108,500

1872-3 2,298,942 2,061,000 1873-4 2,533,351 1,974,000

1874-5 2,106,699 2,280,000 1875-6 2,928,498 2,632,000 1876-7 2,773,258 2,456,000 1877-8 2,593,070 2,325,000 1878-9 1,683,749 1,465,000

1879-80 3,198,800 SOURCES:

Production: G. P. Foaden, ‘The Cotton Season of 1899’, 7.K.A.S. i, no. 5 (Sept./Oct. 1899), p. 181. Export: 1866-7 to 1871-2: Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 174.

1872-3 to 1878-9: J. Rabino, ‘Some Statistics of Egypt’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society of London, vol. xlvii, pt. 3 (Sept. 1884), p. 428. (Rabino gives as

his own source, the firm of Carver and Co.) NoTEs:

a. The years given refer to the cotton year 1 Sept. to 31 Aug., with the exception of those for export 1866—7 to 1871-2 which refer to the Coptic year, 15 Sept. to 14 Sept. b. Figures for production actually refer to cotton grown in the previous cotton year, but harvested in the given year. c. Figures given are in quintals 1866-7 to 1871-2, after which they are in cwts.

market for cotton seed, but once cotton prices had begun to decline this did not prevent a fall in their gross incomes of more

than 50 per cent from the 1865 level;! and the main factor inhibiting a further decrease in production was probably that, though low, prices remained well above their pre-war average and, as a rule, well above those of any alternative crop such as wheat. Harvests began to increase again around 1870. Initially, this seems to have been largely the result of a rise in yield, but 1 The estimate for the decline in income is based on the extent of the fall in the price of cotton and other crops after 1865: see Table 16.

124 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant later, for reasons which are unclear, more land was devoted to cotton.' By 1875-6 exports had reached some 2,600,000 cantars, over 100,000 cantars more than their boom-time peak.

They then remained around this mark until 1880, with the exception of 1878-9, when cotton, in common with all other Egyptian crops, suffered severely from the disastrously low Nile of 1877.

This rapid recovery from the after-effects of the boom confirmed cotton’s predominant position in the Egyptian economy. The extent of this can best be seen in the more accurate foreigntrade statistics which began to be issued by the Government Statistical Department after its establishment in 1873. Table 15 shows that between 1874 and 1879 cotton and cotton seed TABLE 15 Exports of Egyptian Cotton and Cotton Seed by Value and as a Percentage of Total exports, 1874-9? Cotton and cotton seed as

Cotton Cotton seed ‘Total exports percentage of LE LE LE total exports 1874 10,751,424 1,456,592 = 14,914,969 = 81-9

1875 9,837,371 1,381,693 14,814,815 75°7 1876 9,736,345 1,617,621 15,068,095 75°3 1877 75954:045 1,806,154. 14,166,924 68-9 1878 5:559:455 «1,122,400 8,996,974 74°3 1879 9,020,947 1,463,183 14,932,286 70°2 Source: Le Commerce extérieur de l’ Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xii—xili, xviii—xix.

Note: a. In each case the original figures have been augmented by one-ninth. This is to account for the fact that the Customs undervalued exports by 10 per cent from 1873 to August 1911. See Appendix 1.

combined regularly contributed over 70 per cent of the country’s

export earnings. It is also demonstrated in the figures for the area placed under various crops. In 1874, for example, over 850,000 feddans, or practically a third of the cultivated area of Lower Egypt, were devoted to cotton. On the assumption

that Mako formed part of a triennial rotation, a large proportion of the Delta fields must have been planted with it once 1 For estimates of cotton area and yield, see Table 18.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 125 every three years.! Wheat, on the other hand, never regained its pre-Civil War position as an export crop. Although harvests soon increased again after the three lean years, 1864-6, the volume sent abroad rarely reached that of the 1850s, while its value relative to cotton declined to such an extent that, even after a good season like 1867-8, export receipts amounted to only

a little over a fifth of those of the other. This change, though almost universally deplored at the time, was not as unfortunate as it first seemed. To make the obvious point first, whereas in the late 1850s gross returns from a feddan of cotton and one of wheat were approximately the same, twenty years later the former were some three to four times the size of the latter, a differential which was to remain at more or less the same level until 1914.3 Again, Egyptian wheat was destined to. become increasingly uncompetitive in world markets. Not only was

its grain of an inferior quality,s but primitive methods of threshing meant that it was inevitably mixed with earth and other foreign substances and was thus almost impossible to preserve.5 Traditional techniques also kept the costs of production high compared with those in other countries. Whereas in Europe, according to one French agricultural expert writing in 1868, two men with two horses could harvest fifteen acres a day, in Egypt the same amount of work necessitated the employ-

ment of ninety to a hundred men and was very much more expensive.® For this reason Egyptian cereals were less and less

able to compete with those produced in America and Russia, where the advantages of large-scale farming and mechanization were already beginning to make themselves felt in lower costs. Cotton, however, suffered from no such drawbacks: its quality was good and, because the process of sowing, weeding, and picking could be performed only by hand, the expense of its

cultivation remained in line with that of the other major cotton-producing areas, India, Brazil, and the southern states of America.

' For area see Table 18. 2 See Table 16. 3 For the 1850s see p. 80, for the 1870s see the prices in Table 16. I have assumed yields of three cantars and three ardabbs/feddan. 4 Couvidou, Dr. H., Etude sur l’Egypte contemporaine (Cairo, 1873), pp. 196 f.

5 Ninet, ‘La culture du coton en Egypte’, p. 577. ,

6 Behmer, A., Observations sur Vétat actuel de l’agriculture en Egypte (1868), p. 7. (A

copy to be found in 4.£.P./., Doss. 12/1.)

,o

eT

S

o§

cep; ur agere®

i

eS ~ aOy 3 = 3 See” =S ODO KH HOM WM 7 © AaaAnaonrnR TNO ont*

35Drsv4 TO ONMOOO wee OMADOnrK + Ws 4

3) eR 8 too nO ONoe; v1 SSA OOS oD

~ % ms > = re 3 S S S 5 —¥ 3S5S3:3.

byGe+ |AOom marr & my aAaSGOSnoo aS ns ON nRMORO O= m _j=) 60 wi

iy) a Oo ¢

é. Ay +~ Ay — SRRARRERRO om = | Ss 7& = @SPOMA MMOaA mo HHO SS +dtoOaodrwo wo > = © m OOrmowooeo % S B

Ss ir & S 7 eo &™ & a oo 8 & . +B) = a} 6 LaooO 2

ie. = m~O OMmwo & =e S| a mmo NMO NOY sS ¢50 3@ Ye) co fx] +HONOW MR OACOT

S| O|e& alee 4 &

ww

ee oD

AY 2 r+lomnonmmmuoaonr bx ed |HO =e Om CON AN A qaae oO &o BA OPE HHO HHO asa dei sSoa

aw '> io S82335eRn5| 8834 ; SOAR NOD eaeASG OMA 6 O "Sen . 7h &8 ie 5 atomonrtonra oe SIE, |KCBS eeagarqagg SES & §|$& ATA pentaow ee oeim

ee tO ae 2656 ae2~oo7 eo ee WO RO DOK AMD Goes k®nnrnrhr 27O0O DODDDDDMOH reer ae ee ee ee opO Z=o

¢

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 127 The predominant position of cotton can also be seen in the development, during Isma‘il’s reign, of an important sector of the economy devoted almost entirely to its production and export. This sector was naturally centred on Alexandria, the site

of the main cotton market, the port from which an overwhelming proportion of the cotton was sent abroad, and the point of entry of the large sums of money which were needed each year from Europe to move the crop. In this period, the TABLE 17 Exports of Egyptian Cereals Before and After the American Civil War

(annual averages in ardabbs) 1849-50, 1852 1855 1861-2 1866—9 1870-4 ' 1875-9 Wheat 906,744 1,674,852 1,116,306 579,403 = 440,91 Beans =. 387,224 445,246 598,981 = 513,409 554,411 688,731

Barley 751566 54,765 15,030 47,109> 732,652 Maize*235,376 85,563 65,983

SOURCES:

1849-50, 1852: Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849, De Leon, 10 Jan. 1854: U.S. Egypt, i. 1855: DeLeon, 1 May 1856: U.S. Egypt, u. 1861-2: See Table 11. 1866-73: See Table 16. 1874-5: Statement 1865-1875 (US). 1876-8: R. J. Moss and Co., Egyptian Statistical Tableau for the year 1891 (n.p., n.d.)

1879: See Table 16. NOTEs:

a. Described as ‘corn’, 1861-75. b. 1875, 1879 only.

town’s facilities were considerably improved. New jetties, wharves, and docks built by Greenfield and Co. were completed in 1880, while, in the ten years after 1869, over £200,000

was raised and spent by an International Committee representing the European inhabitants on paving and draining the Streets around the railway station and Miniat al-Bassal, where most of the cotton was sold.! Alexandria also benefited from the government programme of public works, In the years after 1863 it was connected by rail and telegraph with the towns at the

centre of the main Delta cotton-producing districts, the 1 Report by Acting-Consul Calvert on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria for the Year

1878, P.P., 1878-9, vol. Ixxi, pp. 39-40.

128 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant Mahmudiya canal was dredged once again, and, in 1868, the Egyptian Post Office, established three years earlier, began to transmit money-orders of up to Pt. 8,o00, and gold and silver of any amount, to all branch offices in Middle and Lower Egypt, thus providing a regular, safe method of sending the necessary funds into cotton areas at harvest time.! In the meantime, the growing importance of the cotton trade was attracting greater and greater attention. Houses like J. & P. Planta, which were originally general merchants, began to concentrate exclusively on cotton.? B. Tilche and Sons took the same step when they moved the base of their activities from Cairo to Alexandria in 1869.3 There was also a trend towards horizontal integration inside the trade. Some houses, like Planta’s, opened branches in Liverpool to market their produce; later, others bought or established ginning factories or even, like Tilche’s, began to grow their own cotton.* But specialization at each stage of the production process also increased. The number of ginning factories, which had shrunk immediately after the boom when lack of business had forced some owners to close

down, revived, and in 1877 the French Consul-General reported that there were seventy-one such establishments at work in the Delta.5 Again, in the mid 1870s, C. F. Moberly Bell, an Alexandria merchant and occasional correspondent of Ihe Times who had previously worked for the firm of Peels, went into the business of transporting cotton through the town

, from railway station to port by means of horse-drawn carriages.° Little foreign capital was placed in the cultivation of cotton

itself, however, Tilche’s being a notable exception, while foreign ownership of land remained limited even after 1876 when the institution of the Mixed Courts introduced European

mortgage law and allowed creditors to foreclose on their I Francois-Levernay, Guide-Annuaire d’Egypte. Année 1872-1873 (Cairo, n.d.); Pp- 154.

2 Wright, p. 289. 3 Ibid., p. 452. 4 Ibid., pp. 289, 452. Planta’s were not the first house to establish a Liverpool

branch; Cavafy’s had done so in the 1850s and there may have been earlier instances. See Dalven, R. (trans.), The Complete Poems of C. P. Cavafy (London, 1961),

SY Guindi and Tagher, p. 196. See also Douin, Histoire, ii, p. 121. 6 Moberly Bell, 21 Oct. 1876, 13 Oct. 1878, M.B.P. (1876-81), ff. 54-5, 186-91; Wright, p. 459.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 129 debtors.' Thus, cotton-cultivation remained largely in Egyptian hands. Very little can be learned of the actual conditions under

which it was produced at this period, but two points can be made. Firstly, owing to the fact that cotton was grown over such a wide area, it can be presumed to have occupied the attention of the majority of proprietors in Lower Egypt whether

rich estate-holders or peasants. At one end of the scale there was Isma‘il, who in 1871 devoted an estimated 100,000 feddans

to cotton and by careful management obtained a yield of 5? cantars per feddan;? at the other were the vast majority of the fellaheen, who continued to employ the ball: method of cultivation and a short rotation which emphasized quantity rather than quality.3 In the second place, average productivity per acre rose during the period. After being roughly two cantars per feddan at the end of the Civil War boom, it was estimated to have reached two and three-quarters cantars by 1871 and three by 1874.4 Whether this represents a similar improvement in agricultural technique it is impossible to say. It would seem more likely that it was caused by such developments as the recovery of the soil in certain areas after its exhaustion during the boom, the effect of new canals dug after 1863, and, perhaps most important of all, the evolution of new types of cotton such as Ashmouni and Bahmiah with, at least initially, a higher yield.5

Direct contact between the small Muslim cultivators and European ginners and merchants was generally limited, owing to the many difficulties concerning differences of custom and language and commercial practice which still surrounded such ' By 1887, after the Mixed Courts had been in operation for eleven years, foreign nationals owned only 225,181 feddans or 44 per cent of the total cultivated area. Even if it is assumed that all these holdings were in the Delta, the percentage for Lower Egypt alone was only 8 per cent. See Baer, History of Landownership, p. 67. 2 Report by Consul Stanley on the Navigation, Trade and Commerce of Alexandria During

the Year 1871, P.P., 1872, vol. lvii, p. 382. ,

3 McCoan, J. C., Egypt As It Is (London, 1877), pp. 190-2. + For sources, see Table 18. > Ashmouni was introduced in the 1860s and was widely cultivated for the next twenty years. Bahmiah was discovered in 1873 and had a slightly shorter life. For an account of the evolution of these and other types see Egyptian Agricultural Products (Eg.), pp. 43-50, and the British Cotton Industry Research Association, Shirley Institute Memoirs, vol. xx: The Production and Characteristics of the World’s Cotton Crops, ii, pt. 2, ‘Egypt’, by E. Lord (Feb. 1946), pp. 27-34.

821648 K

130 The Establishment of Cotton's Dominant transactions, and even after the establishment of the Mixed Courts, the Alexandria houses, in particular, preferred to deal through intermediaries. Money-lending, for example, was left largely to the Greek, Syrian, and Jewish usurers who lived in the villages, supplied if necessary with funds from outside: Wallace mentions a lender who, by becoming the agent of an TABLE 18 Estimates of the Area Devoted to Cotton and of the Average Yield of Cotton per feddan, 1866-74

Area Yield

feddans cantars/feddan

1865-6 2 (5) 1869 750,000 (1) 2 (6)

1870-1 2% (7) 1871 718,997 (2) —- 2# (2) 699,000 (3)

1874 871,847 (4) 3 (4) SOURCES:

1. Report by Mr. Consul Stanley on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria during the

Year 1869, P.P., 1871, vol. Ixv, p. 526. 2. Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 283. 3. Lahita, M., ZYarikh misr al-igtisadi (Cairo, 1944), p. 287. 4. Report by Consul Cookson on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria for the years 1874

and 1875, P.P., 1877, vol. Ixxx1, p. 423.

5. Hale, 1 Apr. 1866: U.S. Egypt, iv. 6. Douin, Histoire, ii. p. 137.

7. Frangois-Leverney, pp. 18~19. ,

Alexandria merchant, was able to secure cash at 10 to 15 per cent a year which he would then relend at 3 to 4 per cent a month.! Again, the buyers sent into the villages to purchase cotton would often draw up a contract for delivery with a shaykh rather than with the fellaheen themselves. An illustration of this latter method, as well as of the dangers which continued to attend such business, is provided by a complaint sent to Stanton, the British Consul-General, in December 1875, by a lawyer representing the Alexandria firm of B. Whitworth.? 1 Wallace, p. 288. 2 L. D. Kirby, 8 Dec. 1875 (a copy of this letter is contained in A.E.P.I., Doss. 12/6).

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 131 His clients, the lawyer wrote, were used to buying considerable quantities of cotton every harvest-time by means of an arrangement with the shaykhs of a number of villages, who promised to

supply an agreed amount in exchange for an advance. At the same time, Whitworth’s dispatched a sufficient number of boats and sacks to collect the cotton, which was then brought to the canal- or river-bank by the cultivators, weighed, and taken off to be ginned. This method had always worked smooth-

ly until a month before, when a series of complaints had been received concerning the systematic attempts of the ‘Wekil’ (wakil) of Daqahliya to hinder the commercial arrangements thus made.! On one occasion he had seized eight sacks of cotton contracted for by Whitworth’s and sold them in Mansura for

the profit of the Government; on another, he had beaten a shaykh who had contracted to supply cotton, making him return the advance, of which £20 was then found to be missing; and, on a third, some fellaheen had themselves refused to hand

over their cotton without the ‘Wekil’s’ permission. The outcome of the protest is not known. The last instance mentioned by the lawyer is also interesting from another point of view. The cotton which the shaykh had originally agreed to supply at Pt. 255 a quintal was taken to Mansura on the ‘Wekil’s’ orders, and there Whitworth’s again tried to purchase it, this time for Pt. 280. On the assumption that the second price was a competitive one, based on the current Alexandria quotation for that type of cotton, less the cost of ginning and transport, the profit which Whitworth’s had hoped to obtain by making their own arrangements with the shaykh does not seem an excessive one and-suggests that the village leaders with whom they dealt were well acquainted with the price their product could command. Different methods of sale were employed where the owners of

large estates were concerned. A few ginned their own cotton, after which it was sold directly to an Alexandria merchant;

others received advances from European-owned ginning factories in exchange for future delivery of their crop.? Isma‘il ™ It is not clear exactly who the ‘Wekil’ was. The Arabic word wakil can mean anyone from a simple agent to someone who held important office. In this case it seems to have been some senior official of the provincial governor. * Great Britain, Intelligence Branch, Quarter-Master General’s Dept., War Office, Report on Egypt (London, 1882), p. 115.

132 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant himself took his cotton to a produce market he had established in Alexandria where the buyers were able to examine each bale

carefully.t But it is significant that even some of the large proprietors preferred to consign their cotton to a Muslim agent who, in turn, sold it to a foreign exporter. Information about this latter practice comes from the copy-book of one such agent, Mustafa Manzalawi.2 Manzalawi owned 600 feddans of land in the Delta at Abu‘l-sir, near Samannud. Day-to-day management was left in the hands of his brother, Shaykh ‘Ali Manzalawi,

and a nazir, but the general direction of affairs was exercised by Mustafa Manzalawi himself from Alexandria, where he had gone to live some time in the 1870s. In addition, he also carried on business on behalf of fourteen or fifteen friends, relatives, and neighbours, selling cereals which they consigned to him, standing as security for any loans they might require, assisting them in legal matters, and sending them the machinery and goods they requested. He also acted as their broker for the ginning and sale of their cotton. Manzalawi’s copy-book contains a record of letters sent both to his estate and to his clients between February 1880 and June 1882, a period which is strictly outside the limits of this chapter but described here because the type of business belongs also to the last years of Isma‘il’s reign. It seems unlikely that it includes all his correspondence, but there is sufficient to provide a picture of his activities throughout each cotton year. Starting in 1880, there is no mention of cotton until the autumn, the spring and summer being mostly devoted to the settlement of accounts between him and his correspondents, or between individual correspondents (he acted as a kind of clearing-house), and to details of the sale of wheat and beans. But on 31 August, as the harvest approached, he wrote to a firm of merchants, Messrs. Basili and Hanfuri and Co., to confirm his acceptance of a contract they had made with one of his clients to purchase 120 cantars of Fully Good Fair cotton and 200 ardabbs of cotton 1 Report by Consul Stanley on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria for the Year 1872-

73, pp. 1874, vol. Ixvil, p. 49.

2 I have been allowed to read this copy-book thanks to the kindness of Dr. Mahmoud Manzalawi, from whom I have also obtained the information about his family’s history. Mustafa Manzalawi inherited 400 feddans from his father. In addition he obtained another 200 feddans from his wife, who was left it by her father, Sobhi bey, Abbas’s Keeper of the Seal.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 133 seed, a transaction for which he seems to have stood as some

sort of security. Then, on 26 September he wrote to Hajj Muhammad al-Majlub of a conversation he had had with a certain Mr. Biya: ‘We have spoken to him about ginning your cotton. He showed readiness. He also said that if you are interested in some cash he can deliver it to you. If you agree please advise us so that we can get the money from him and send it.’

Again on this subject, he wrote a day later to his brother informing him that Biya had agreed to gin the cotton of alMajlub and others, after which it would be forwarded to him

(Mustafa Manzalawi) for sale. Cotton started to arrive in Alexandria at the beginning of October. On the 7th a letter was written to Hajj Ahmad Arabi acknowledging the receipt of twenty-seven sacks, which had immediately been sold. ‘There-

after, there was an increasing number of letters informing his correspondents of the arrival of their cotton and of the price it had received. At the same time, he generally advised themof the dispatch of a money-order to cover the amount in question. He also forwarded any additional cash or sacks they might require.

Occasionally he had to chide a client. For instance, on 26 October 1880 he wrote to Yahya Fakhri telling him that Messrs. Khuri, merchants, had inquired three times about the cotton he had contracted to deliver to them during the current month. This was no good, he went on, and he hoped the consignment would soon be forthcoming. Again, on 1 November

he complained to al-Sayyid Fattuha that, when after great difficulty he had sold his forty-three bales, the buyer had refused to take delivery because they were greatly underweight. ‘Please note this in future’, he added. Mustafa Manzalawi was also active in selling his own cotton. In October 1880 he seems to have been particularly anxious to get it to market as quickly as possible, presumably because of favourable prices, and two letters to his nazir tell him to com-

plete the ginning at once and to forward the cotton without delay to Alexandria, by rail. Later in the season he also obtained

cotton from other sources. A letter to the Alexandria stationmaster in April 1882 concerns his successful bid at an auction of cotton held at the station, while the same month he wrote to one of his correspondents asking him to buy seventy cantars which he had heard were for sale on the Daira (estate) of the

134 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant Khedive’s grandmother, and another, unspecified, amount from the Daira of the Khedive himself.

Whether, in the light of such activities, it is correct to call Mustafa Manzalawi a broker or a merchant is difficult to decide. His role seems to have been that of an agent for certain acquaintances who, it can be supposed, were much happier to

deal with a fellow countryman and a fellow Muslim than directly with foreign merchants. Again, it was greatly to their advantage to have someone living in Alexandria with a knowledge of European business practices. This was particularly so after the establishment of the Mixed Courts with their often baffling legal procedures. He was also better able than they to secure credit. Not only could he put his signature on bills as

security, but as an established member of the Alexandria business world he could borrow money on his own account at a lower rate than that offered directly to cultivators. In June 1882,

for example, he was able to obtain a loan of nearly £8,000 from a Greek firm at only 9 per cent, repayable the following November and February. It is not possible to say how typical such a role was. One present-day inhabitant of Alexandria remembers at least three other Muslims as being engaged in the cotton trade in the 1880s or a little later, but in view of the fact that their services were so useful it would be surprising if there were not more. The predominant position reached by cotton in the economy was also reflected in growing concern about the quality of the

crop and the methods by which it was cultivated. ‘Two particular causes for worry emerged after 1866. One was the appearance of the boll-worm. Signs of the widespread desstruction of cotton capsules were first noted in September 1865,

according to Joanovich writing in 1873.1! Damage again occurred in 1866, this time ‘dans toutes les localités’, and there-

after, for the next six years, the worm was responsible for ‘immenses ravages .? Initially, it was assumed that the destruction t Joanovich, Description de Vinsecte ravageur du coton en Egypte (Cairo, 1873), p. 3-

Individual instances of cotton fields being attacked by the boll-worm had been noted before 1865. For instance, James Bryn the cotton-selector mentioned on pp. 75-6

wrote in his diary on 2 Nov. 1860, ‘Rode into the fields and visited villages in Debaiba and Mit el Mor. Discovered traces of what looks like a boll-worm on the pods, and the trees in one field very full of cotton bugs’: Egyptian Agricultural

Products (Eg.), p. 42. 2 Joanovich, pp. 4, 13-

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 135 to the bolls was the work of autumn mists, but as soon as Joanovich began researches in 1866 he found evidence of a very small worm in the middle of the capsules, attached to the seed.! Experiments in his Cairo garden enabled him to learn more of its habits. Its eggs, he wrote, were deposited on the

cotton stalks in spring and flourished feebly there until the plant flowered, at which stage they began to attack the seed, preventing the development of the capsule. Damage became noticeable in September and was particularly severe in cotton grown by the dalii method, which reached maturity late due to the fact that it did not receive any major watering until the Nile started to rise in July.? In dalli areas there was often ‘la perte totale de la récolte’.3 Joanovich ended his pamphlet by suggesting ways and means of combating the new scourge. As

soon as signs of the worms appeared in any plantation a minute inspection of all plants should be undertaken and the infected ones uprooted, put in sacks, and then placed in water for eighteen hours. This procedure should then be repeated every eight days until November, when, after the final picking,

all the remaining capsules and plants should be burned.‘ However, as an American planter pointed out in a letter to Joanovich, methods of this kind would work properly only if all the cultivators in a particular area were prepared to co-operate,

otherwise the insects would merely move out of the infected fields into the neighbouring ones.5 In fact such a degree of coOperation rarely proved possible until 1t was enforced by the Government some thirty years later, hence the boll-worm continued its destruction. A few years later, towards the end of the 1870s, a second pest,

the cotton-worm, began to attract attention. Its attacks were distinguished from those of the boll-worm by the fact that during its caterpillar stage it fed not so much on the bolls as on the leaves, buds, and shoots of the growing plant.® This made it easier to combat as its presence was more readily detectable.

Nevertheless, until the Government undertook to organize leaf-picking on an extensive scale, few cultivators possessed

p. 4. 2 Ibid., p. ro. 3 Ibid., p. 6. 46Ibid., Ibid., pp. 13-14. 5 Ibid., p. 27. Willcocks, F. C., ‘The Insect Pests of Cotton’, C.S.7. iv, no. 42 (Mar. rgro), P- 57.

136 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant either the will or the resources to do it on their own initiative, One rare exception is mentioned in an article in the Bulletin de la Société Egyptienne d’ Agriculture in 1880. There, it was asser-

ted that in the previous year a certain Dranaht Pasha had managed to keep his cotton losses to 1 per cent of the total crop by arranging for the growing worms to be picked off the plants, but that his neighbours, who had neglected this precaution, had lost 30 per cent.! A second and equally serious cause for worry was the increasing volume of complaints from European spinners that the quality of Egyptian cotton was deteriorating. Observations of this sort go back to at least as early as 1867, when the American Consul-General noted that the crop for that year was far from satisfactory as to colour or strength of fibre.? This criticism was repeated several months later by a group of Alexandria merchants in a petition presented to the Minister of the Interior. Cotton from the 1867 harvest, they wrote, was white (instead

of brown, the traditional colour of ‘Egyptian’), weak, and woolly. ‘They blamed this state of affairs on the use of inferior seed.3 Complaints of this kind persisted, but they did not reach major proportions until 1874, when a deputation of six English

Members of Parliament from the cotton-manufacturing districts around Manchester presented a Memorial at the Foreign Office deploring the inability of the Egyptian Govern-

ment to stimulate the growth of high-grade cotton at reasonable prices. They wished, they said, to draw the Khedive’s attention to ‘the gradual but certain deterioration of the cotton crop of Egypt’. Although this deterioration dates for some years it is especially during the last eight years that it has become more evident. Formerly Egyptian cotton was brown in colour, but strong, silky and long, and was used for the superior qualities of yarn, obtaining in consequence a relatively higher price. It is [now] irregular in length and quality, and mixed with white and short cotton, which diminishes its value and causes difficulty and loss in spinning. We believe that this deterioration is produced by the following causes—very little attention to the quality of the seed sown, the bad seed coming from t Lascaris, A., ‘Insectes destructeurs du coton en Egypte’, B.S.E.A. no. 3 (30 Apr. 1880), p. 57. 2 Hale, 17 June 1867: U.S. Egypt, iv. 3 ‘Egypt’, C.S.R., 1 Jan. 1868.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 137 the ginning factories where cotton of different qualities is ginned without care to separate the good seed from the bad. ‘This system 1s

detrimental to the interests of everyone for, notwithstanding the suitability of certain lands for the cultivation of good cotton, this advantage is neutralised by the mixture of seed coming from the ginning establishments. Good seed can be distinguished from bad,

hybrid from Jumel, but there are difficulties in attempting to separate them once mixed... .! Whether the decline of Egyptian cotton was as sharp or as dangerous as the M.P.s asserted may now be doubted—spinners were always prone to over-react to any temporary fluctuations in quality.2 But what 1s certainly true is that the Memorial was taken very seriously at the time, and at once became the centre

of considerable discussion and debate. B. F. Cobb, in a paper read to the African Section of the Society of Arts in London in 1878, supported the M.P.s’ point of view. The plans for the

first ginning factories, he said, had been based on those of

similar establishments in the southern states of America. This meant that they had two deep longitudinal cellars under the gin-room floor into which the seed was dropped during the process of separation. Thus, the seeds of all those who sent cotton were mixed up together, this error being compounded by the ginners who then sold the mixture for sowing the next crop.3 Others were more ready to place the blame on the low prices which prevailed throughout the 1870s. The Times, for example, pointed out in a comment on the M.P.s’ Memorial that it would be difficult to meet their views, for, unless higher prices could be obtained for fine Mako than had recently been the case, it would pay cultivators to grow coarse white cotton. Yet another approach was provided by Ninet, writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1875. The real cause of complaint, he

maintained, was the lack of an adequate system of inspection and classification of cotton, which allowed ginners, merchants, ' “Memorial from the Spinners of Egyptian Cotton to His Highness, the Khedive of Egypt’ (presented to Lord Derby 12 June 1874): F.O. 78/2345. 2 Stanley, the British Consul at Alexandria, implied that the inferior quality of the 1873-4 crop was, in part, a temporary phenomenon produced by a low Nile and the fact that the cotton had been resown on the same ground as the previous year, Report on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria for 1872-1873, p. 48.

3 ‘Egypt: its Commercial Changes and Aspects’, The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. xxvi (London, 1878), pp. 355-6. * 5 Aug. 1874.

138 The Establishment of Cotton's Dominant and brokers to adulterate the bales of supposedly good cotton with low standard, dalli, cotton bought from the peasants for just this purpose. As a result, cotton classed as ‘fair’ in Alexandria

often only passed for ‘middling’ in Liverpool. The previous year he had discovered in such a bale cotton of all sorts of classifications, including some which was two to three years old with dry white lint.' European spinners generally bought cotton on the basis of telegraphed information about price, class, and quantity, so that if they were badly served by their local agents they often found they had paid for a consignment of a type inferior to that designated, their only recourse being to bring a troublesome and often costly case before the Egyptian

courts. By 1872 the existing situation had become so bad that the spinners of Zurich agreed among themselves to pay only go per cent on bills for cotton, leaving 10 percent as a guarantee until after delivery. Undoubtedly there is something in all these arguments. The extensive area placed under cotton during the boom, and the numerous different methods by which it was cultivated, encouraged the continual emergence of new strains, a develop-

ment which was further stimulated by the growing use of steam-ginning factories where the seeds of cotton of all sorts and

from many different districts were mixed up together, as Cobb described.3 Sometimes an improved type emerged, as with Ashmouni or Bahmiah, but more usually a hybrid was produced with noticeably inferior qualities to the original Jumel.

And, even in the case of the superior types, further mixing

reduced their better qualities. For instance, the yield of Bahmiah declined sharply in the late 1870s as a result of ginners adulterating its seed in an effort to increase profits. Again, the presence of a number of different strains in the same field meant that the lint produced was of irregular staplelength. Meanwhile, no penalties were attached to the growth of poorer varieties; they were cheaper and easier to produce’ and,

as Ninet pointed out, they were much in demand for the purpose of ‘salting’ cotton of higher quality.® 1 ‘La culture du coton en Egypte’, pp. 592, 594-5. 2 Ibid., p. 578. 3 Cobb, pp. 355-6. 4 Ibid., p. 356: Cotton—The Fournal of the Cotton Trade and Allied Industries, vol. |,

no. 1 (1 Sept. 1877), p. 513. 5 See, for example, Douin, Histozre, it. p. 121. 6 ‘La culture du coton en Egypte’, p. 594.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 139 Public discussion about the cotton-worm, and the complaints of the decline in cotton quality, contributed much to the growing expertise about the cultivation of cotton which is apparent, for example, in the reports of the foreign consuls after 1866. ‘The

need to employ more fertilizer in the growth of cotton was almost universally commented upon; so too was the necessity of better seed-selection.! Both suggestions may have had some

influence with some of the larger proprietors. Again, Isma‘il himself was easily persuaded of the dangers of allowing the plant to degenerate too far. As early as 1867 there was a govern-

ment investigation into the sources of the apparent decline.?

While a year later a passage in Isma‘il’s speech to the Assembly of Representatives calling attention to the need for measures to prevent any further deterioration} may well have been the spur to a series of experiments by government experts aimed at producing new, improved, varieties.+ Finally, following the M.P.s’ Memorial in 1874, the Khedive sent orders to the governors of the various Delta provinces, telling them to supervise the cultivation of cotton more closely.5 A letter in the Abdin Archives, which was written probably at this time, shows that the latter were to set aside the best seed grown in each area for sowing, and then to sell the rest.® These efforts may have been attended by some small degree of success, at least if we are to judge from an article in the trade journal Cotton, which maintained that, as a result of the action taken by both Government and factory-owners, the practice of mixing the various types of seed was much reduced.7 Others were more sceptical of their success. Some of the difficulties which had to be faced can be seen from yet another letter in the Abdin Archives, this time from nineteen Greek merchants ‘ See, for example, the report by the Swedish Consul-General, de Boedtker, enclosed in Vivian, 22 March 1877: F.O. 78/2862. 2 Guindi and Tagher, p. 127. 3 Address of the Khedive to the Second Annual Assembly of the Egyptian Representatives

(trans.). (A copy can be found in Hale, 20 Mar. 1868: U.S. Egypt, v.) 4 Egypt, Ministry of Agriculture, Cotton and Cotton Statistics in Egypt (Cairo, 1948), p. 22.

5 Ninet, ‘La culture du coton en Egypte’, p. 588. ° A copy of this undated letter to an unnamed governor was found in A.E.P.L., Doss. 12/6.

7 Vol. i, no. 16 (12 May 1877), pp. 245-6. 8 See the dispatch of the French Consul of 21 Mar. 1877 quoted in Guindi and Tagher, pp. 127-8.

140 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant at Zagazig. As they described the situation, the local governor’s

office had signed a contract with two merchants who were to have a monopoly of providing the province with good seed. But the latter were interested only in making a good speculation, and, instead of taking steps to obtain stocks of pure seed,

they purchased their supplies from the ordinary Zagazig ginneries, selling this inferior product at a profit of 20 to 25 per cent.! It is likely that similar difficulties continued to plague most of the early efforts to improve quality. At any rate, complaints of adulteration of cotton continued, and in 1879 it was still being asserted that bales exported contained from 7 to 12 per cent of foreign material. 2. THE AGRICULTURAL SECTOR OF THE ECONOMY

Cotton-cultivation must now be placed in a wider agricultural context. Too Isma‘il and his Government the land was Egypt’s main economic resource, a fact which the growing

predominance of cotton served only to underline, and it followed that it was a major recipient of government investment. Figures obtained by the British civil servant Cave in 1876 show that, if railway construction is included, some £,30,000,000 was spent on works connected with the agricultural sector between 1863 and 1875.2 In addition, an unknown sum was expended in reclaiming some portion of the 300,000 to 400,000 feddans which were added to the cultivated area during these years.3 Estimates given in Table 19 show that

the bulk of the former investment was divided between railways and canals, with small amounts going to the construction 1 Letter marked ‘De 1g marchands grecs’, n.d., A.E.P.J., Doss. 12/6. 2 “Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’, P.P., 1876, vol. Ixxxiii, p. 108. However, as these figures were given to Cave by Isma‘il himself (Cave, 1 Jan. 1876: F.O. 78/2539A) there must be considerable doubt as to their accuracy, for there was every incentive to inflate them so as to give a better impression. A similar doubt must extend to the other figures in Table 19, all of which certainly come from government sources. 3 Cave asserted, once again on the basis of ‘official’ figures, that there were 4,051,976 feddans of taxed land ‘under Sa‘id’ and 4,805,107 in 1874-5: ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’ (G.B.), p. 105. Artin, on the other hand, gives 4,395,302 feddans for 1863 and 4,703,456 for 1875: Landed Property, p. 219. Of these sources, Artin would seem nearer the truth. Not all this land came into cultivation as a result of government action.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 141 of bridges and telegraph lines. In the six years after his accession

Isma‘il tripled the existing length of railway track. As far as Lower Egypt was concerned, this involved the provision of

further links between the main areas of agricultural production, notably the line to Zagazig, which stood at the centre TABLE 19

I234

Estimates of Expenditure on Public Works by the Egyptian Government

during Isma‘il’s Reign (£)?

1863-73 1863-75 1863-75 1863-79 Railways 10,000,000 9,899,417 13,310,000 13,361,000

Canals 12,600,000 Bridges 246,000 2,150,000 Telegraphs 350,000 853,000

Sugar mills 6,100,000 Alexandria Waterworks 200,000| Alexandria Harbour 2,000,000 1,210,989 2,542,000 Cairo/Alexandria (general

improvements) 1,500,000 3,500,000 Lighthouses 174,130 188,000 Suez Canal 165,000 14,000,000 12,000,000 SOURCES:

1, Anon., The Finances of Egypt, pp. 10-12. 2. R. H. L., The Financial Position of Egypt (London, 1874), pp. 7-8, 25. 3. ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Position of Egypt’ (GB), p. 106 4. Crouchley, Economic Development, p. 117.

Norte: a. No great weight can be attached to these figures. See p. 140, note 3.

of the rich cotton-growing districts of Sharqiya and Qalyubiya; while in Middle and Upper Egypt the line to Rauda (extended to Asyut in 1874) greatly facilitated the export of grain, as well

as of the sugar grown on the Khedive’s own estates.! At the same time, the canals constructed throughout Egypt allowed a considerable extension in the cultivation of summer crops. In this context mention should also be made of the major works at Alexandria designed to cope with the ever-increasing volume of

traffic which the rise in agricultural exports had produced: t Wiener, L., L’Egyple et ses chemins de fer (Brussels, 1932), pp. 88-92.

142 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant during the twenty years between 1850 and 1870 the port had risen from the eleventh to the fourth most important in the Mediterranean (measured in terms of tonnage of incoming and outgoing ships).! To this end a breakwater protecting the exposed western harbour was completed in 1874, followed by the construction of an inner harbour mole and a line of quays to provide increased accommodation.? Isma‘il’s concern for agriculture also showed itself in his employment of a number of European experts to advise him and the newly created Ministry of Public Works and Agriculture (later the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce)? on practical means of improving agricultural techniques. One such man was W. L. Gastinel, the Director of the Government’s Jardin d’Acclimatation. In this post he conducted a series of experiments with a view to producing better strains of wheat, rice, and indigo. He also organized a study of local fertilizers, paying particular attention to the saums—mounds of decaying rubbish—which marked the sites of abandoned villages, and which were often employed by the fellaheen in lieu of manure. Another expert was the Frenchman, Behmer, whose report on Egyptian agriculture was presented to the Khedive in 1868. Behmer took as his starting-point the possibility of reducing the amount Egypt paid out for agricultural imports which it could readily produce itself, such as cows and oxen, sugar beet (for cattle food), butter, tobacco, and fruits.5 But development in this direction was inhibited by the fact that the peasants

were both ignorant and careless, while their tools, ‘datent encore de l’antiquité et sont tout a fait incompatibles avec agriculture rationnelle de nos jours, car ils consument tous, sans exception, beaucoup trop de force, sans fournir un travail proportionnel’. The plough they used, for instance, only stirred the top of the soil without exposing the subsoil to the air and water and sun it needed. Reforms would take a long time. But 1 New Cambridge Modern History, vol. x (Cambridge, 1960), p. 419. 2 McCoan, J. C., Egypt Under Isma‘il (London, 1889), p. 130. 3 The Ministry of Public Works and Agriculture was established in 1865: ‘J. C.’, - « See Direction du Jardin d’Acclimatation, Rapport a Son Altesse le Vice-Roi, Cairo,

26 Feb. 1868, and Gastinel, Rapport a Son Altesse le Khédive, Cairo, 1 Feb. 1871, A.E.P.I., Doss. 12/5. 5 Behmer, Observations sur Vagriculture (Eg.), p. 2.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 143 they should begin with the serious instruction of young men who would then train others. What was missing in Egypt was

practical education in modern techniques, and he recommended the creation of a rural school. In addition, workers should be trained in the use of specific implements; it was not

enough just to import them and hope that they would be correctly used.!

Several of Behmer’s suggestions were later followed up. Measures were taken to improve the stock of Egyptian cattle by importing Italian bulls. And about the year 1871 an agricultural school was created, although, as Behmer himself wrote four years later, too few pupils were enrolled and the instruction

given was too theoretical to make it a success.2 ‘I'wo other examples of the influence of expert advice should be mentioned.

One was Isma‘il’s attempt to diversify Egyptian agriculture by reintroducing such crops as indigo, and planting mulberry trees with a view to reviving the silk industry;3 the other, the strenuous efforts made during the early part of his reign to promote the use of mechanical equipment on the land. Of these, the latter was much the least successful. Steam ploughs and other pieces of machinery were imported in large numbers, many of them on government account, only for the vast majority of them to break down for want of attention or to be discarded by their owners as unsuitable for use in Egyptian conditions.4

But while Isma‘il was investing in agriculture he was also multiplying the demands made on it. According to the few budgets published during his reign, the land-tax continued to supply over half of total revenue and alternative sources proved

difficult to find. Profits from the railway, the next most important item, rose slowly; customs receipts declined after 186555

while an attempt in 1873 to impose a house tax on the foreign community failed in the face of consular opposition.® Increases in the land-tax began as soon as the boom was over, and by ’ Thid., pp. 5, 8-9. 2 Ibid., ‘Avant-propos’ (dated May 1875). 3 ‘Report on the Commercial Relations of the U.S. with Foreign Nations for the Year ending 30 Sept. 1871—“‘Egypt”’ ’, Executive Documents (U.S.), 2nd Session,

42nd Congress, 1871, 2, pp. 1103-11. 4 Wallace, p. 344. See also Russell, W. H., A Diary an the East (London, 1869), P. 47, for a description of a field near Cairo full of abandoned machinery. 5 Anon., The Finances of Egypt, p. 32. ® Beardsley, 21 Aug. 1874: U.S. Egypt, ix.

144 The Establishment of Cotton's Dominant 1868 the British Consul in Alexandria was reporting that the fellaheen then paid, directly and indirectly, 70 per cent more than they had done in 1865. “The Government’, he wrote, ‘has exacted more from them than it was thought they ever possessed and far more than they could hope to pay with any hope of afterwards prospering.’! Some slight relief may have been afforded to taxpayers in 1869 following 1868's low flood,

but the Government ensured that its losses, if any, were covered by a 25 per cent surcharge in 1870. A further large increase occurred in 1871, when not only was the extra sixth, imposed in 1868 as a temporary expedient, made permanent, but landholders were expected to avail themselves of the Mugabala law by which anyone who paid six years’ tax in advance, either in one lump sum or, later, by instalments, was to be freed of half his tax-hability for life. In theory this was voluntary, ‘but under the conviction that those who objected would incur the displeasure of the authorities, the majority of the landed proprietors acceded to the proposals, excepting those under European protection or who had sufficient influence to enable them to resist with impunity’.? Finally, in 1875, with bankruptcy only just round the corner, an attempt was made to raise a £5,000,000 non-reimbursable loan for which subscribers were to receive an annuity of 9 per cent for life. Of this, £3,400,000 was actually collected.3 In the mean-

time, the agricultural population was continually hampered by extra taxes, including the professional or poll tax, a tax on date trees, a house tax, a salt tax imposed in 1873, and an animal tax, as well as a great variety of such indirect levies as bridge and ferry tolls, duties on goods brought to market, octrois round the main towns, and many others. Finally, the corvée, which was really another sort of tax, remained as onerous as ever. The peasantry continued to form a pool of cheap labour which could be drawn on, as necessary, for use in the construction of government works. Again, the Khedive himself and some of the richer proprietors were often able to raise a corvée for employment on their own fields. Something 1 Report by Mr. Consul Stanley on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria for the Year

1867, P.P., 1868-9, vol. lix, pp. 526-7. 2 Report by Consul Rogers on the Trade and Commerce of Cairo for the Year 1872, P.P.,

1873, vol. Ixiv, p. 218. 3 McCoan, Egypt under Ismail, p. 169.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 145 of the disruption this caused to peasant agriculture can be seen

from contemporary accounts. According to Dr. E. Rossi, 150,000 men were taken away from their villages in 1874 to build roads. For this they received no pay, they had to provide their own food, and they were expected to work on the Khedive’s cotton when they returned home.!?

Cave’s report on Egypt’s financial state contains details of the 1876 budget which show that a sum of £4,200,000 was then supposedly being paid in land-tax on 4,800,000 feddans, with

an additional {1,750,000 in Mugabala instalments, out of receipts totalling £10,750,000.2 The average tax on kharapiya land was then {1-162 per feddan while ‘ushuriya paid £0:303. As for other direct taxes, a study of two villages in Giza pro-

vince in 1877 by G. Fitzgerald, a British employee of the Egyptian Government, indicates that in addition to the landtax the villagers were expected to pay as much as a quarter to three-quarters again for the professional tax, the date tax, and other impositions.3 However, it is unlikely that such figures

provide any real guide to the amounts of money actually collected at this time. Throughout Isma‘il’s reign taxes continued to be gathered by methods which varied little from those

employed under Muhammad ‘Ali. Collections were made at all times of the year, often necessitating the enforced sale of standing crops; animals and seed were seized when money was

not forthcoming; those with cash were expected to pay for defaulters; and in general the tax-gatherers were free to make any sort of demand they wished on an illiterate, unprotected peasant population. There were even occasions on which the Government was prepared to ignore the official collectors

entirely and try other methods. According to the author ,

writing under the pseudonym ‘un Ancien Juge Mixte’, it was

also its practice to borrow money from a banker against future taxes, leaving the actual collection to him. The latter, ™ La Population et les finances: question égyptienne (Paris, 1878), p. 55. , 2 ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’ (GB), p. 113. 3 Egypt, Ministére des Finances, Rapport sur l’ organisation de la comptabilité dans les

provinces, by G. Fitzgerald (Cairo, n.d.—1878?), p. 21. :

+ Wallace, p. 322; ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’ (GB), p. 109; see also Moberly Bell’s description of a forced loan obtained from the peasants by ‘stick torture’: 4 May 1867, M.B.P. (Jan. 1865-—June 1868),

821643 L

ff. 80-1.

146 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant aided by local officials, would inevitably try to raise more than

the legal amount.' Complaints against tactics of this nature were aired in the first and second sessions of the Assembly of Representatives, and on the former occasion reforms were promised,? but it is unlikely that this promise was ever meant to be taken very seriously. Without a thoroughgoing overhaul of the whole system of provincial administration the only way that the Government could ensure that taxes were paid was to allow the collectors a more or less free hand. Again, such was the urgent need for money to meet the ever-mounting volume of national debt that the methods by which it was raised were hardly likely to have been questioned inside the administration itself, a fact which was illustrated by the appointment of Isma‘il Sadik as Minister of Finance in 1868. His own peasant origins were thought to provide him with particular skill in extracting

money from the fellah population,? and in a year when the revenue Officially totalled only £7,000,000 to £8,000,000 he is said to have boasted of raising at least {2,000,000 more.‘

A further attempt at reform was made in 1876 with the appointment of inspectors whose duty it was to supervise the activities of the collectors. But this brought little change, as Fitzgerald discovered. The former were generally retired ofhcers, who rarely visited the villages in their area and even more rarely examined the accounts of the officials under them. As an example of their inability to exercise adequate supervision he quoted an instance where a sarraf of the district of Faraskur in Dagqahliya province was accused by the taxpayers of collecting £2,000 in excess of legal rates. His superior was ordered to make

an inquiry but six months later this had not even begun.° Perhaps an even better example of the difficulties of reform 1s illustrated by the fact that, when those on the Commission of Inquiry appointed in 1878 tried to find out on what principle taxes were being levied, they were unable to discover whether

the sum due each year was the total of all the figures inscribed in the various tax registers or an arbitrary amount 1 L’ Egypte et l’Europe, vol. i (Leiden, n.d.—preface written in 1881), p. 132.

5. Landau, J. M., Parliaments and Parties in Egypt (New York, 1954), pp. 12; 10-17. 3 Moberly Bell, 9 Apr. 1868, M.B.P. (Jan. 1865—June 1868), ff. 270-1. 4 McCoan, Egypt under Ismail, p. 151. 5 Rapport sur l’organisation de la comptabilité dans les provinces (Eg.), p. 46.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 147 decided upon in Cairo and divided up among the different provinces.!

The effects of rising taxation and an unreformed system of collection naturally fell most heavily on the fellaheen. In consequence, many were forced deeper and deeper into debt to the money-lenders.2 Others had to give up their land.3 Commenting in 1873 on the conditions which followed the introduction of the Mugabala law, the British Consul in Cairo wrote that many of the poorer classes of natives, calculating that they could not obtain from the produce of the land sufficient to pay the increased demands, offered their lands gratis to any person who would relieve

them of it and pay the newly imposed tax. Some wealthy persons accepted the land of their poorer neighbours on those terms, others paid nominal sums of £1, £2 or £3 an acre for it.4

Others had their land sequestered for non-payment of taxes or seized by the Khedive on one pretext or another.5 Meanwhile, many village shaykhs took advantage of the situation to build up sizeable estates at the peasants’ expense.® How much land passed out of fellah hands at this stage it is impossible to say with any accuracy. But if, as Baer maintains, it is possible to equate ‘ushuriya land with the large estates, its extension during Isma‘il’s reign, and the consequent diminution of kharajiya land, provides some sort of guide.7 Table 7 _ gives various estimates of the area of ‘ushuriya, showing that it almost doubled in the twelve years after 1863, just under two-

thirds of this increase appearing to come from fields previously classified as kharajiya and the remainder from hitherto uncultivated land. However, it should be observed that not all the large estates were, in fact, classified as ‘ushuriya, nor is it

Clear that all the purchasers of kharajiya land were able to change its classification. This must have been particularly true of those, like shaykhs and other village notables, who possessed ’ Egypt, Commission supérieure d’Enquéte, Rapport préliminaire adressé a S.A. le Khédive (Cairo, 1878), pp. 27-8.

2 Wallace, pp. 321-2. 3 Ibid., p. 322.

4 Report on the Trade and Commerce of Cairo for the Year 1872, p. 218.

5 By 1878 the royal estates contained 916,000 feddans: Baer, History of Land-

ownership, p. 41. 6 Wallace, pp. 197-8, 232.

7 Baer, History of Landownership, p. 21. For the way in which the Khedive was able to change the classification of his land see Wallace, p. 351.

148 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant only local influence.! Thus, the amount of land lost by the fellaheen during Isma‘il’s reign may have been considerably in excess of 300,000 feddans. The peasants who were deprived of their land either emigrated to the larger towns or swelled the numbers of landless workers, a class which, by the early 1870s,

may have included about a third of the rural population.? TABLE 20 Estimates of the Area of ‘Ushuriya and Kharajiya Land, 1863-80

°Ushuriya Kharajtya Total (feddans) (feddans) (feddans)

1863 . 636,177 3,759,125 443953304 (1) 1588 (Coptic) 1871~2 1,155,507 3,468,654 4,624,221 (2) 1591 (Coptic) 1874-5 —-1,291,166 = 3,513,941 4,805,107 (3)

1875 1,194,288 3,509,168 = 4,703,456 (1) 1877 1,281,925 3,460,685 4,742,610 (4) 1880 1,294,343 3:425,555 4,719,899 (1) SOURCES:

1. Artin, Landed Property, p. 219 (figures for ‘ushurtya land in 1880 include 743,725 feddans of state land). 2. Statistique de ’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 300.

3. ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’ (GB), p. 114. 4. Egypt, Ministére de l’Intérieur, Bureau de la Statistique, Essai de statistique générale de l’ Egypte, vol. i (Cairo, 1879), pp. 124-9.

As for the fellah who kept his land, he too can rarely have prospered unless he was able to obtain the protection of some

more powerful ally. The savings accumulated during the boom must have been rapidly exhausted or buried away so deeply that they were virtually unusable; the shortage of animals engendered by the murrain continued for a number of years; he was constantly being called for corvée duty; debts to village usurers mounted. Rural poverty was repeatedly referred 1 A report from Lord Cromer contains a table which shows that landholders classified as ‘functionaries and notables’ had sizeable holdings of kharajiya land in 1884. It is impossible to say how much this situation differed from that during the 1870s. Enclosure in Baring (Cromer), 8 Dec. 1884, P.P., 1884-5, vol. Ixxxviil, p. 712. 2 This latter calculation is based on the figures for the numbers of agricultural labourers relative to landholders in three Lower Egyptian provinces contained in Statistique de lV’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 269. In some villages the landless were in a majority. Wallace, p. 232. See also Couvidou, p. 212.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 149 to by European observers. ‘I hear sad accounts from the Saeed’, wrote Lady Duff Gordon in October 1866, “The new taxes and the new levies of soldiers are driving the people to despair, and

many are running away from their land, which will no longer feed them after paying all exactions, to join the Bedaween.”! Wilfred Blunt reported of a visit to Egypt ten years later: It was rare in those days to see a man in the fields with a turban

on his head, or more than a shirt on his back. . . . The principal towns on market days were full of women selling their clothes and

their silver ornaments to the Greek usurers, because the tax

collectors were in their village, whip in hand.’

Conditions of this kind could not fail to have serious repercussions. Large-scale recruitment of the fellaheen for corvée duty disrupted the ordinary work of sowing and raising crops. It also aggravated the general shortage of rural labour.3 Again, subjection to the repeated demands of tax-collector and usurer must inevitably have forced the majority of the peasants to

concentrate on producing as large a harvest as possible as quickly and easily as possible, while paying little attention to the quality of their crop or the exhaustion of the soil. It was for this reason that many chose to grow cotton every two years rather than every three or four.* It was for this reason, too, that there were repeated complaints about the condition not only

of cotton but of every other important item of agricultural produce. Reference has already been made to Ninet’s criticism

of Egyptian wheat. He also had harsh things to say about the : flax brought to market which, so he asserted, contained 20 to 30 per cent of mustard seed and other grains. Others mentioned the low quality of the rice, and the fact that a tenth of the weight of barley was made up of soil and similar foreign matter.’

And yet, in spite of all this evidence, it remains a fact that there seems to have been a considerable increase in the volume * Duff Gordon, Lady L., Letters from Egypt (London, 1902), p. 310. 2 Secret History of the British Occupation of Egypt (New York, 1922), pp. 8-9.

3 Between 1869 and 1871 no less than three schemes were suggested for establishing foreign agricultural communities to relieve this shortage, first with Italian, then with German, and finally with Chinese workers. A.E.P.I., 12/3, 12/4, and 12/5,

4 McCoan, Egypt As It Is, pp. 191-2. 5 See p. 125. 6 ‘La culture du coton en Egypte’, p. 577.

7 Report on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria for the Year 1879, p. 556.

150 The Establishment of Cotton's Dominant of agricultural production in the years which followed the end of the American Civil War. Between 1866-9 and 1875-9 cotton exports rose by over a quarter, and the export of sugar by at least 600 per cent.! Meanwhile, the size of the annual cereal harvest (wheat, beans, and barley) must certainly have been advancing as a result of the need to cope with the consumption

requirements of a population which may have risen by as much as 30 per cent between 1871 and 1882.2? How was this achieved? Four factors would seem to have been important, To begin with, the expansion of agricultural production must certainly have been assisted to some degree by the construction of new railways and canals. It goes without saying that any increase in the supply of water was of particular significance. It allowed hitherto waste areas to be brought into cultivation and existing fields to be used more intensively. It may also have permitted some peasants to abandon the ball: method of cultivating cotton for one which permitted both higher quality and higher yields. Nevertheless, although the creation of additional canals and the extension of the railway network undoubtedly played an important role, the advantages which they brought could easily have been nullified by the concurrent disruption of rural economic life had it not been for three other factors. The first of these was the growing importance of cotton as a source of income. This meant that there was an ever-widening circle of people, merchants, ginners, and money-lenders among them,

all of whom must have been concerned to promote its production by every means at their disposal. It was men from these

groups who, for instance, were responsible for exploiting the chance discovery of new strains by providing sufficient seed to allow their introduction on a commercial basis.3 Again, it does not seem too much to suggest that the usurers may have used

their influence over the tax-collectors, with whom they so 1 For cotton see Table 14; for sugar see sources given in Table 16. 2 The best available figures for the population of Egypt are: 1871—5,251,757 (Statistique de l Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 20-1) and 1882—6,831,131 (Egypt, Ministére des Finances, Département de la Statistique générale, Annuaire statistique de l’ Egypte,

1914 (Cairo, 1914), p. 21 (hereafter A.S. 1914)). However, serious doubts exist about the reliability of both sets. For a discussion of those concerned with the 1882

census, see p. 236. It should be noted that the rise in population was not accompanied by any increase in cereal imports. 3 For an account of the commercial exploitation of the discovery of Bahmiah see Moberly Bell, 7 Dec. 1876, M.B.P. (1876-81), ff. 63-6.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 151 often acted in concert, to prevent the utter destitution of their clients.’ So long as the latter were left free to grow an annual crop of cotton they could always be relied upon to make some contribution towards what they owed. Secondly, complaints of labour shortages notwithstanding, the fact that the popu-

lation increased by something like a million and a quarter during the 1870s must have had some quite considerable effect

on agricultural production. A third and final factor was the growing concentrating of land in the hands of the Khedive and other rich and powerful men. It is true that the owners of large estates were often criticized by Europeans for the backwardness

of the methods they employed? or, in the case of Isma‘il himself, for the fact that his lands were much too extensive for efficient management.3 It is also true, as Behmer pointed out,

that the number of absentee landlords was increasing, with a concomitant decline in standards: ... la plupart des propriétaires particuliers aisés préférent un petit emploi dans une administration quelconque plutét que de surveiller

eux-mémes [exploitation de leurs terres, ce qui leur imposerait d’une part quelques privations dans la vie sociale, mais ce qui leur

assurerait d’autre part un gain plus important que la paye qu’ils

recoivent.+ , Even so, the ownership of large estates continued to bring with

it a number of important advantages—notably freedom from — harassment, and access to water, cheap labour, and the capital necessary for the purchase of steam pumps and other mechanical devicess—which could not fail to have made the whole

process of cultivation very much more easy.® ' For a description of the co-operation which existed between usurer and taxcollector see ‘Un Ancien Juge Mixte’, 1, pp. 131-2. Also Wallace, pp. 284, 289, 469-70, and A. Chélu, Le Nil, le Soudan, l’ Egypte (Paris, 1891), p. 261. 2 See, for example, Behmer’s assertion that with better harvesting methods half the existing agricultural labour force could be released for other work: Observations sur Pagriculture (Eg.), pp. 6—7. 3 See, for example Schreiner, 13 Oct. 1866: A.A., 1866, Box 76. 4 Observations sur l agriculture (Eg.), pp. 7-8. 5’ According to government figures there were 476 steam pumps in Egypt in the early 1870s, all of them in the Delta: Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 272.

® It should be noted that this argument runs counter to Charles-Roux’s firm Statement (p. 106) that cotton-production did not benefit from the increase in the area held as large estates, owing to the fact that the peasants were less willing to work hard where they were not their own master. However, as he is trying to

152 The Establishment of Cotton's Dominant In this context it should also be pointed out that by the 1870s there was a small but growing number of proprietors who were no longer satisfied with traditional methods. Isma‘il’s impor-

tation of large quantities of machines for work on his own estates, the activities of European experts, and the decline in the quality of many of the most important crops, combined to produce a situation in which, for a minority, anxiety to learn about new techniques was increasing. This process led in 1880

ot the formation of the Société égyptienne d’Agriculture, aimed, as its statutes declared, at assisting the development and improvement of Egyptian agriculture by the introduction of new crops, by organizing agricultural exhibitions, and by publishing a periodical bulletin containing information about modern European practices.! The interest which its foundation evoked can be seen from the fact that its membership jumped from 76 to 150 in the first two months of its existence. Inevitably, most of its direction came from Europeans; in 1881 its eight-man committee contained only one with a non-European

name. However, as this same committee pointed out in its second report, some contact was made with the principal landed proprietors, many of whom had either joined the Society or written to it to ask it for advice.2 Once again, its activities

are strictly outside the period covered by this chapter, but some of them will be mentioned briefly, as an illustration of the type of approach to agricultural matters which was then considered important. In the two years of its existence the Society

carried out an investigation into the use of cotton-seed oil residue as fertilizer, including practical experiments on twelve feddans of land rented for this purpose; it initiated trials to see how much fertilizer should be used for each Egyptian crop; and it published articles on such topics as the correct way to grow jute, the most effective way of destroying the cotton-worm, and a new technique of threshing wheat developed on the State Domains.3 explain something which did not take place, namely the failure of production to expand after 1872, it 1s difficult to take his assertion seriously. 1 Société égyptienne d’Agriculture, Statuts (Cairo, n.d.), Art. 1. 2 Rapport du Comité pour l’éxercice 1881, B.S.E.A., no. 11 (31 Mar. 1881), p. 9.

3 B.S.E.A., no. 1 (31 Jan. 1880), pp. 15-16; no. 3 (30 Apr. 1880), pp. 53-73 no. 4 (31 May 1880), pp. 69-74; no. 7 (31 Aug. 1880), pp. 124-9: no. 11 (31 Mar. 1881), p. 17.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 153 3, ISMA‘IL AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY

Like his grandfather, Muhammad ‘Ali, with whom he so often seemed consciously to identify himself,! Isma‘il was not merely concerned with developments inside the agricultural sector but also with almost every aspect of Egyptian life. In a very short space of time, he attempted to lay the foundations of an independent, European-style state with its own modern

railways and port facilities, its own industry, and its own magnificent capital city full of the long avenues, the parks, and the large public buildings he had seen in Haussmann’s Paris. This is no place to attempt to judge the success or failure of his

undertakings, which anyway must be seen in political and cultural as much as economic terms. But what must be done 1s

to give a brief description of the permanent impact made by | some of Isma‘il’s schemes on the future development of the Egyptian economy. Apart from his efforts to stimulate the growth of agricultural

production, to which reference has already been made, one of

Isma‘il’s most ambitious undertakings was his attempt to create a modern sugar industry on his estates in Middle and Upper Egypt. Here, as in so much else that he did, he was continuing something that his grandfather had started, but on a very much larger scale. Whereas Muhammad ‘Ali built three factories, which by 1833 were managing to produce some

20,000 cantars of raw sugar a year,? Isma‘il’s schemes involved a complex of twenty-two factories with a combined capacity of some 3,250,000 cantars.3 Work was begun in the years immediately following the end of the American Civil War in an effort, it has been said, to provide some compensation for the losses which he had suffered from the fall in the price of cotton.+ Apart from the construction of seventeen new factories (to join the four which had been built by members of the royal

family between 1845 and 1859)5, and their equipment with 1 See, for example, his speech to the first meeting of the Assembly of Representatives, 25 Nov. 1866: Douin, Histoire, i. pp. 302-3. 2 Mazuel, J., Le Sucre en Egypte (Cairo, 1937), pp. 31-2. 3 Statistique de l Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 209. 4 Le Sucre en Egypte, pp. 34-5. > For a list of these factories see Le Nil, 22 July 1873. Mazuel gives the number of new factories as sixteen: Le Sucre en Egypte, p. 36.

154 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant machinery from Europe, it was also necessary to provide summer water for the land on which the sugar was to be grown by digging the Ibrahimiya Canal, to install a large number of pumps, and to lay out a system of agricultural railways to enable the cane to be brought in from the fields. Operations began in the late 1860s. But almost at once it was discovered that, as a number of contemporary observers had

predicted,! the whole scheme had been conceived on too ambitious a scale, that transport facilities, manpower resources, and, above all, organizational ability were insufficient to keep

the factories working at anything like full capacity.2 As a result, by 1878, only ten factories were at work,3 while figures for that year’s production show that some 762,680 cwt. of raw sugar had been produced as well as 156,472 cwt. of molasses,*

a little under a third of what had been originally planned. Nevertheless, according to Jean Mazuel, the historian of the Egyptian sugar industry, the Khedive and his successors were able to make a profit on their operations for the years 1875 to 1880, in spite of fierce competition from foreign sugar;5 while

J. G. McCoan commented on the excellent quality of the finished product, which he said was second only to that manufactured in the West Indies.6 ‘Two types of raw sugar were produced, so-called ‘white’ sugar, which was either consumed in Egypt or sent abroad for further processing (both plant and skill were lacking to refine more than a small fraction locally),’ and ‘red’ sugar, which was made into molasses and alcohol.®

Sugar factories aside, Isma‘il also operated a number of other industrial plants, the majority of which he had inherited

from his predecessors. These latter included two mills for weaving cotton cloth, a tarbush manufactury, a tannery, a 1 ‘Report upon the Commercial Relations of the U.S. with Foreign Countries for the Year Ending 30 Sept. 1873—‘“‘Egypt” ’, Executive Documents (US), First Session, 43rd Congress, 1873-4, pp. 1069-98. 2 See, for instance, ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’ (GB), p. 103. 3 ‘Report upon the Commercial Relations of the U.S. with Foreign Countries for the Year 1878—‘“‘Egypt”’, Executive Documents (US), Third Session, 45th Congress, 1878-9, pp. 1116-30. 4 Rabino, p. 429.

6 Feypt As It Is, p. 154. 7 Ibid. 5 Le Sucre en Egypte, pp. 37-8.

8 Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 210.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867~1879 155 bakery, and several armaments works.! Once again, as was the

case during Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign, a large proportion of their produce was for military use, and it 1s probable that in many cases their output was considerably increased to meet the needs of Isma‘il’s greatly expanded army and navy. In

addition, Isma‘il himself established a paper factory at

Bulaq, in an effort, it would seem, to provide some of the packing-paper for the sugar factories which the country had previously been forced to import from abroad.? Altogether, some 2,000 men were employed in all these various industrial establishments in the early 1870s, before a number of the plants were forced to close as a result of financial and other difficulties.3

Contemporary reports would suggest that Egyptian factory industry suffered from two major drawbacks at this time—the high cost of coal (the main source of energy) and the difficulty of obtaining skilled labour without having to import men from Europe at inflated rates of pay.+ Both these factors were cited by the American Consul-General as reasons why the manufacture of cotton cloth was almost wholly discontinued round about the year 1872.5 Again, in the case of its sugar and paper

factories, Egypt suffered severely from the competition of foreign firms, many of whom received a government subsidy.®

Isma‘il showed that he was not unaware of these problems, however. He reopened a school, which had been closed by Sa‘id,

to train Egyptian engineers;? he also sent out unsuccessful expeditions to the east and south of the country in search of coal.8 Other efforts to encourage the development of Egyptian industry included the establishment of a Ministry of Commerce, the adoption of the metric system for weights and measures, and the creation of a government statistical service.° t For a list of factories see Edmond, C. (pseud.), L’ Egypte a l’ Exposition Universelle de 1867 (Paris, 1867), p. 250, and Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 211-26. 2 Kkeypt As It Is, p. 304.

3 See Statistique de l’Egypie, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 211-26, for numbers of workmen

employed in the various factories. 4 Stanton, 12 Oct. 1872: F.O. 78/2231. 5 ‘Report upon the Commercial Relations of the U.S. with Foreign Countries for the Year 1876—‘‘Egypt” ’. 6 Edmond, p. 250; Mazuel, Le Sucre en Egypte, p. 38. 7 Heyworth-Dunne, p. 357. 8 ‘Report upon the Commercial Relations of the U.S. with foreign nations for the Year Ending 30 Sept. 1871—“‘Egypt”’ ’, Executive Documents (US), 2nd Session,

42nd Congress, 1871-2, pp. 1103-11. 9 Guindi and Tagher, pp. 95, 96, 180.

156 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant A second aspect of Isma‘il’s plans to turn Egypt into a modern, European-style state involved the creation of a new quarter of Cairo. To this purpose a system of avenues was laid out, connecting the park at Azbakia to the river, along which people were given plots of building-land on condition that they constructed houses worth at least {2,000.1 Meanwhile, the Khedive himself erected a series of public buildings—the Opera House, the Hippodrome, several theatres—as well as a string of palaces for members of his family. But buildings alone

were not the limit of his ambitions, Isma‘il was also anxious that the new quarter would become a place where leading Egyptians would learn what it was to live a European kind of life. Thus, the women of his harem were introduced to the idea of French dresses and European carriages; the purchase of European furniture was generally encouraged;? two girls’

schools were built to provide a modern education for the daughters of the most powerful families.3

Isma‘il’s efforts to encourage a taste for European life, reinforced as they were by the presence of Cairo’s foreign community which may have already numbered nearly 20,000 by 1872,4 was at once reflected in an increase in the import of such foreign commodities as timber (for building), marble and stone, and wines and liqueurs.5 Another important effect was the stimulus which must undoubtedly have been given to the local building industry. Unfortunately little can be learned about the extent of these operations, although the fact that so many public buildings were put up at this time, as well as a

number of private houses worth at least £2,000, would suggest that they must have been on an extensive scale. The scope of Isma‘il’s various projects, and the methods he employed to finance them, made it inevitable that he would have to rely heavily on foreign assistance. To begin with, there

was the money he needed to borrow from Europe. In the ten years between 1864 and 1873-4 public loans totalled £65,204,360, of which £44,121,055 was actually received.° 1 Clerget, M., Le Caire, vol. i (Cairo, 1934), p. 198. 2 “Un Ancien Juge Mixte’, i. pp. 143-4. 3 Artin, Y., L’Instruction publique en Egypte (Paris, 1889), pp. 134-5. 4 Statistique de ’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 25. 5 Statement, 1865-1875 (US). © Hamza, A.-M., The Public Debt of Egypt (Cairo, 1944), pp. 256-7.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 157 According to calculations made by Cave, interest on this sum

came to nearly £4,750,000 in 1876, or 45 per cent of that year’s total receipts! But dependence on Europe was not simply a case of borrowing money. Isma‘il himself recruited

large numbers of European experts, builders, mechanics, government servants, and others. He also placed contracts for the import of machinery for his factories and furniture for his palaces with European firms, many of whom were formed specially for this purpose. Meanwhile, the floatation of government loans, the allocation of bond issues, and the provision

of short-term credit provided lucrative, though sometimes dangerous, work for the increasing numbers of foreign banks. The result was further to stimulate that influx of foreigners into Egypt which had begun in the 1850s. According to. official figures, the numbers of foreign residents had reached nearly 80,000 by 1872,3 and g1,000 ten years later. Again, there was a considerable extension in the number of European commercial enterprises. Apart from those connected with cotton, these

naturally tended to concentrate on lines directly connected with Isma‘il’s efforts to develop the country’s resources— banking, the finance of foreign trade, construction, and so on. By 1877, for example, there were eight banks providing telegraphic exchange on London and Paris.5 Some were branches of major European banks, others had been founded by foreign residents of Alexandria using, on occasions, quite considerable uantities of local money.® Given the profits which could be obtained from these and other enterprises, it is not surprising

q y Pp

1 ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt’ (GB), pp. 111, 113. In fact the proportion was almost certainly higher than this due to official overestimate of the revenue it was possible to raise. 2 There were, for instance, 100 Europeans in the police force by the end of the 1860s: Stanton, 7 Oct. 1869: F.O. 78/2093. 3 Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 20-1. But this may have been an under-

estimate. Francois-Leverney (p. 10) places the figure at 150,000; although he admits (p. 11) that the foreign consulates in Cairo and Alexandria had only 75,000 foreigners registered on their books at this time. 4 Recensement général de |’ Egypte (1882) (Eg.), vol. i (Cairo, 1884), pp. xiv—xv.

> Issawi, ‘Egypt Since 1800—A Study in Lop-sided Development’, p. 10. ° See, for instance, Le Nil, 11 June 1872, for an account of the foundation of La

Banque Grecque d’Alexandrie, more than half the capital of which (or over £1,000,000) was subscribed by friends of the founders, all Greek merchants resident in Alexandria. According to another source there were seven locally created banks in Alexandria in 1874 with a joint capital of £6,000,000: Anon., The Finances of Egypt, p. 17.

158 The Establishment of Cotton’s Dominant that so few Europeans attempted to start any sort of industrial activity at this time, apart from cotton-ginning and pressing. The only notable exception to this rule was the tobacco factories established by Greek entrepreneurs who had been forced to abandon their business in Istanbul as a result of the transfer

of the Turkish tobacco monopoly to a private company in 1875. It was in that year, for instance, that Nester Gianaclis founded what was later to become Egypt’s largest firm of cigarette-manufacturers.! The immigrants found the atmosphere in Egypt particularly well suited to cigarette-rolling, and the industry prospered. These enterprises aside, Europeanowned factories were limited to a few plants making oil from

linseed and cotton, some flour mills, and an engineering and cotton-machinery company.? The overwhelming proportion of European commercial

activity was confined to Alexandria, a rapidly expanding town which, if its suburbs are included, was the home of well over half the foreigners resident in Egypt.3 ‘There, it could be carried on almost entirely outside Egyptian control. As a result

of the fact that the Government was forced to rely on the seventeen different consulates to police their own nationals and

to punish them when they broke the law, not only were official regulations ignored with impunity but it also proved impossible to levy taxes on foreign residents or foreign firms without their consent.4 According to the ‘Ancien Juge Mixte’, the only foreigners who paid the land-tax were those who wished

to be on good terms with the administration.5 It was abuses of this kind which led to the circulation of Nubar Pasha’s famous memorandum of August 1867 on the reform of Egyptian legal procedures, the first step in an eight-year campaign carried on by the Egyptian Government to regain some of its lost authority

over foreign residents, which led eventually to the establishment of the Mixed Courts to administer a new code of criminal and civil law. In the event, however, the primary aim of this

measure, the assertion of Egyptian independence against 1 Wright, p. 487. 2 Francois-Leverney, pp. 20~—1, 170-3. 3 Annuaire Statistique, 1873 (Eg.), pp. 20-1. For a description of the changes which had taken place in the twenty years before 1874 see Taylor, p. 14. 4 See, for example, Report of the International Commission upon Consular Furisdiction,

P.P. 1870, vol. lvi, pp. 637-50. 5 “Un Ancien Juge Mixte’, p. 128-9.

Position in the Rural Economy, 1867-1879 159 Ottoman and European governments alike, was of less impor-

tance than the fact that the new system allowed foreign business activity to be carried on in a much more orderly and regular way. Again, by establishing a French type of mortgage law, it paved the way for European investment in companies connected with some aspect of the exploitation of Egyptian land, something which was to have the most important consequences in the years which followed.! This last point is an important one. As far as Isma‘il’s own schemes were concerned, the motive was generally more political than economic, something which goes part of the way to account for the fact that they were so often over-ambitious and wasteful of borrowed money. And yet, in spite of all this, their effect on the future development of the economy was profound. Although the Khedive was anxious to develop every aspect of the country’s economic life himself, what in fact happened was that nearly all

his schemes served to strengthen just one part of it, that is what can now, fairly, be called the export sector. This consisted of the area of the Delta where cotton was grown, and the two

great towns, Alexandria and Cairo, which provided a European style of life for the landowners, foreign merchants, ginners,

and others who made their profits from it. It was those who lived in this sector whose interests had become paramount by the late 1870s. It was they who managed to ensure that almost every one of Isma‘il’s major initiatives contributed to their own enrichment, they whose point of view that Egypt was purely an agricultural country finally triumphed over that of Isma‘il himself, who had hoped to encourage a more diversi-

fied form of economic activity.

The further implications of this situation will form one of the major themes of Part 2 of this work. However, before

attempting to analyse the events of 1880-1914, it 1s first necessary to fill in one important gap in the history of Egypt’s economic development presented so far, the impact on the country’s foreign trade of the rapid growth in cotton exports. t At least two European land companies were founded in the three years between the establishment of the Mixed Courts and Isma‘il’s abdication in 1879—a Dutch

Company which obtained a concession to drain Lake Maryut and the ill-fated oe» gig hkhdar Co.: Cobb, p. 357; Moberly Bell, 13 Dec. 1880, M.B.P. (1876-81), 370-01.

VI COTTON EXPORTS AND EGYPTIAN FOREIGN TRADE 1820-1879 Statistical note

N a discussion of Egyptian trade for the years 1820 to 1879

| the writer 1s severely handicapped by the unreliable nature of the figures available. Few statistics from Egyptian sources

can be accepted without question: all raise problems, and no attempt will be made to subject them to detailed analysis. For this reason a third section has been added in which British trade figures will be used. These first began to appear annually in 1853, and have a greater claim to accuracy and consistency. They will be used as the basis for consideration of the important question of movements in Egypt’s terms of trade. They can also be used as some sort of check on Egyptian statistics. I. EGYPTIAN EXPORTS OF COTTON AND COTTON SEED

1820-1879 The volume and direction of cotton exports

The main movements in the volume of Egyptian cotton exports have already been described in previous chapters. Very generally it may be said that there were four periods of major

increase. These were 1822-4, 1850-2, 1861-5, and the early 1870s. Each was followed by a number of years in which exports levelled off or declined (see Table 21). In the early years of production the bulk of Egyptian exports of long-staple cotton were divided between the ports of Liverpool, Marseilles, and Trieste (see Table 21). Initially, Britain was the major recipient, as the first efforts to find a market for

Mako/Jumel coincided with the commodity boom of 1824, during which there was a large British demand for raw materials

Cotton Exports and Egyptian Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 161

of all kinds and prices were unusually high.! Then, in 1825 and 1826, French imports surpassed those of Liverpool and Trieste as Muhammad ‘Ali began to ship the bulk of the cotton harvest to Marseilles on his own account. But this brief period came to an end when French manufacturers, seeing the market TABLE QI Volume and Direction of Egyptian Cotton Exports (Annual Averages)

England France Austria Total cantars cantars cantars cantars

1822-4 65,160 1825-9 177,294

1830-4 1395475 1835-9 61,311 56,600 78,290 229,047

1840-4 66,459 42,534 845377 193,653 1845-9 144,942 49,073 67,625 236,392

1850-4 2745464 90,114 126,297 473,737 1855-9 302,124 102,994 108,699 518,632

1860—4 648,04.421,706,480 943,829 1865-9 1,269,673 1870~-4 1,562,059 2,229,800 1,892,302 1875-9 1,450,438 SOURCES:

1822-59: Fowler, pp. 6-11. 1860—79: (England): United Kingdom. Annual Statements of Trade. (Total): Tables 7 and 14. Nore: a. British imports from Egypt (cwts).

glutted, attempted to force down prices, causing the Pasha to divert an increasing proportion of future crops to Trieste.” Much of this latter cotton, however, was sent overland to the

mills on the Franco-German border. Trieste remained the Major export outlet for Mako during the 1830s and early 1840s. England’s share then began to increase, until by about 1847—8 there began that British dominance of the market for Egyptian cotton which was to last for the rest of the century. The reasons for this development are unclear, but must have 1 Tooke, T., A History of Prices, vol. ii (London, 1838), p. 155 n. 2 Julliany, iii. p. 240.

821643 M

162 Cotton Exports and Egyptian been connected with the great extension of mill capacity in Lancashire in the early 1850s, when weekly cotton consumption rose by nearly a third between 1850 and 1852.1 By 1859 England took 65 per cent of the Egyptian crop; eleven years later, in 1869, this proportion had increased to over 75 per

cent. Price

The first recorded sale of Egyptian cotton on the Liverpool market was in May 1823 when a consignment was auctioned for 11d./lb.—-24d./Ib. more than good-quality American Upland.

Experts who examined it found it ‘long and tolerably fine in staple’ but rather dull in colour and not well cleaned.3 It seems rapidly to have gained a share of the small market for fine cotton, and for this reason it was able to maintain its premium of some 2d. to 3d./lb. over all but the best American varieties until 1860. Nevertheless, its properties were not so unique as to allow it to avoid American price leadership, and throughout

the period it was subject to the predominant, though not exclusive, influence of the price of the very much larger American crop. Figures given in Table 22 indicate that, with certain rare exceptions, the Liverpool price of Egyptian cotton moved in harmony with that of Middling (an average American grade). Further confirmation of this movement is provided by

monthly figures where they exist. In 1855-6, for instance, the price of Egyptian followed almost every fluctuation in that of the two major American varieties (see Fig. 1). The same was true in 1863-6 and in 1871.4 The exact mechanism by which this American price leadership was exerted cannot be accounted for with any confidence. Nevertheless, two very tentative hypotheses may be suggested.

1, In the years before 1860, the special market for longstaple cotton was smaller than for the average Egyptian

.

crop. Thus, exports to England over and above the amount

needed to fill this limited demand could only be sold at

™ Tooke, T. (with W. Newmarch), A History of Prices, vol. vy (London, 1857);

J 2 Fowler, p. 11; Charles-Roux, p. 332. 3 Ellison, p. 88. 4 For 1863-6 see p. 91; for 1871 see Report on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria During the Year 1871, p. 383.

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 163 TABLE 22 Liverpool Price of Egyptian and American Cotton, 1820—79°

American American American Middling Egyptian Middling Egyptian Middling Egyptian d./Ib. d./\b. d./\b. d./\b. d./\b. d./Ib. 1820. II¢1845 1844 44 4%53-10 5-8 1867 10% 1610> +5 1821 gt 1868 10} 1822 8} 1846 4% 74-84 1869 12} 124°

1823 1847 12%,> 1824 8}8} o}-124 184862 4} 1870 1871 8%9} 8 HP 1825 11% 10}~24 1849 5% 1872 10% 10 %>

1826 «62 64-111851 185054 7 1873 98 gh 1827 63 62-84 1874 8p 1828 6% 63-9 1852 5% 1875 78 845 1829 56:5$-8} 1853 1854 5% 1876 8664 6+ . 1830 6 6}3~10 5% 1877 1831 6 7-94 1855 5§ 1878 64 1832 6§ 7—-QOt 1833 8S 1857 7% 1856 6 1879 6 fk 1834 8§ 1858 6% 1835 10} 1859 6} 1836 93 1860 6} 1837. 7 9-13 1861 8% 1838 7 133-164 1862 17}

1839) 7% 1I~12} 1863 23} 20-30

1840 6 g}—12 1864 273 224-314 1841 64 62-10 1865 19 13-26}

1842 5% 64-9 #£«®1866 15$ 21,6

184348 6-8

SOURCES:

American: Todd, J. A., The World’s Cotton Crops (London, 1915), pp. 429, 431. Egyptian (1824-32): Baines, E., A History of the Cotton Manufacture in Great Britain (London, 1835), p. 314. (1837-46): Burn, R., Statistics of the Cotton Trade (London, 1847), p. 22.

pool, 1868), p. 207. -

(1863-5): Williams, M., Seven Years’ History of the Cotton Trade in Europe (Liver-

(1866—75): ‘Report upon the Commercial Relations of the U.S. with Foreign Countries for the Year 1876’—“‘Egypt’’.’

Notes: a. It is impossible to discover how these averages were arrived at. They could have been calculated by a wide variety of methods and may represent an average of weekly prices or of prices on the last day of each month or of monthly prices, etc. b. These prices refer to averages for the nearest cotton year, e.g. 1866 is equivalent to 10 Sept. 1865 to 9 Sept. 1866.

; 164 Cotton Exports and Egyptian

| | | \ i 7 |/ Ny \ }! /;‘J if} \ |'\!

pence /Ib.

!

}

// |I

Pf; A / ss |Ili H o ‘ / i ]| i i\ \H H fers, a / H eens” \ ~~}

6;

if} ‘ee \NL p-i i i\7mei gh peed ' i ; : V4 ' ted i'‘ /p!ffer, ;

/ -—— Egyptian‘Fair’

Le | ~---- Bowed or Upland‘Fair’ " | ——— New Orleans Fair’

5J} FMAMJJASOND|J ar ae a STO dd FMAMJob J ASOND 1855 1856 |

‘Fic. 1.’ Liverpool prices of American and Egyptian cotton at end of each month, 1855-1856

SourRcE: Ure, A., The Cotton Manufacture of Great Britain, vol. ii (London 1861), p. 387.

the price of their short-staple, American, rivals. This situation was described by Gliddon in 1841. He then

estimated the size of the special market at 50,000 bales.! 2. After 1860, even though the special market remained, the

bulk of the Egyptian crop was used for purposes for

which the better American varieties would have served

just as well; and spinners were prepared to substitute American for Egyptian whenever the price of the latter

1 Gliddon p. 37. At this time a bale was equal to just over two cantars.

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 165 moved more than marginally out of line with the accepted

premium. In either case, price would have been determined by marginal use. If these suggestions are true, Egypt could have little control of the price of its own cotton during the period, except perhaps in those years (like 1846) when the crop was too small to meet the needs of its special market and its premium over American

rose accordingly. This was certainly the prevalent view in Egypt itself, as an article in the Alexandria newspaper Le Nil for 14 October 1873 makes clear. Speaking of the prospects for

the coming crop it regretted the fact that: ‘Malheureusement nous ne’en sommes pas encore a dicter les prix .. . Les cotons égyptiens subissent influence des variations d’Amérique, qui se produisent ici par ricochet, en frappent sur l Angleterre.’ Proper statistical proof of such assertions cannot be made, however, due to the unreliable nature of the available figures. Following that of American, the price of Egyptian moved downwards between 1820 and 1850, a period in which world : cotton-production was expanding faster than demand. This was particularly the case in the 1840s, when there was a marked increase in supply owing to the opening up of new cotton lands along the Mississippi. Price revived in the 1850s with the rapid

rise in the number of spindles,' and then climbed sharply during the American Civil War, only to decline once more during the long trade depression which began in the early 1870s. Within these long-term trends there were also shorter movements in which cotton prices, like those of most raw materials, followed the ups and downs of the trade cycle. The price of Egyptian cotton at Alexandria followed that at Liverpool more or less faithfully. This was particularly the case after the construction of the telegraph between Egypt and Europe in 1861, after which week-to-week fluctuations in the British market were almost immediately reproduced in Egypt. Grades

As various different varieties of Jumel appeared in Egypt the need for some system of grading became more apparent. Ure ' ‘The number of British spindles increased by 44 per cent in 1850-60: Hughes, J. R. T., Fluctuations in Trade, Industry, and Finance, 1850-6o (Oxford, 1960), p. 75.

166 Cotton Exports and Egyptian mentions four grades in 1856, ranging from Ordinary to Good,

with a price spread of rd./lb. between them.! Later, the emergence of further varieties meant that the system had to be extended, and by the end of the 1870s Ashmouni (known in Liverpool as ‘Brown Egyptian’) was divided into eight grades, while Abiad (‘White Egyptian’) contained five more.? Such

grades were not based on staple-length but on cleanliness, colour, and fineness of lint. There was as yet no one method of classification which was accepted in both Alexandria and Liverpool. After 1854 the average price given for Egyptian cotton was based on that of ‘Good Fair’. Value

Figures for the value of Egyptian cotton exports to 1879 are given in Table 23.3 They show the impact of the low prices in the TABLE 23 Value of Egyptian Cotton Exports, 1835-79 (Annual Averages)

£E

1835-9 774:954

1840-4 393450 1845-9 427,347 1850-4 917,763

1855-9 1,133,307

1861--4 6,110,646

1865-9 9,073,655 1870-3 7,656,302

1875-9 8,421,633 SOURCES:

1835-59: Fowler, pp. 8-11. 1861-6: Table 7. 1867-9: de Regny, pp. 59-60. 1870-3: Statement, 1865-1875 (US).

1875-9: Table 15. Note: a. Original figures augmented by one-ninth to offset decrease in value by customs.

1 Ure, il. p. 367. 2 See, for example, Cotton, vol. i, no. 1 (27 Jan. 1877), p. 14. 3 For some of the problems connected with the official figures for the values of cotton exports see Appendix 1.

Foreign Trade, 1620-1879 167 1840s, and then of the rise in values after 1850, when price and harvest size increased together. The influence of the American Civil War boom can be clearly seen. Thereafter, the revival in

output after 1869-70 was nearly sufficient to counteract the long downward trend in prices from 1865 onwards. Cotton seed

Exports of cotton seed began in quantity in the mid 1850s. A few years later, during the boom, well over 90 per cent of the crop was being sent abroad! (see Table 24). The proportion TABLE 24 Volume, Value, and Price of Cotton-Seed Exports, 1861-79 (Annual Averages) Price

Volume Value Pt./ardabb

ardabbs LE (computed) 1861-4 600,340 333,937 55° 1870-3 1,228,971 939,759 76

1865-9 909,749 585,550 64 | 1875-9 1,610,520 1,468,208" 89 SOURCES:

Notes: . Volume: Tables 9 and 14.

Value (1861-9): Carpiet Vivante, 1 and 2, and Douin, Histoire, 11. pp. 121, 124, 137. (1870-3): Statement, 1865~1875 (US).

(1875-9): Table 15.

a. 1875 only. b. Original figures augmented by one-ninth after 1873. c. Excludes 1862.

remained at about this figure until 1879. Unlike that of cotton, the price of cotton seed did not decline after 1865 but continued to rise, so that by 1875-9 it was more than double what it had been in 1861. As a result there was no diminution in the value of exports in the 1870s. 1 This assertion is based on the assumption made earlier (p. 94) that there were 3% ardabbs of cotton seed for every 5 cantars of lint.

168 Cotton Exports and Egyptian 2, FOREIGN TRADE, 1820-1879 The balance of trade

Figures for the value of Egyptian trade between 1841 and 1879 are given in Table 25. Once again, it must be observed that they are very unreliable and should be treated only as the TABLE 25 Egyptian Foreign Trade, 1841-79 (Annual Averages)?

Imports Exports LE LE 1841-4 1,838,150 1,670,820 1845-9 1,631,441 1,836,969 1850-4 1,849,621 2,926,769

1855-9 = 2,580,164 3,683,179 1860—4 3,520,422 8,623,632 1865-9 5,203,768 11,712,871 1870-3 —- 6,249,978 ~— 11,134,124

1875-9 4,685,297 =: 13,595,818 SOURCES:

Imports (1841-72): Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 166. (1873): Statement 1865-1875 (US). (1875-9): Le Commerce extérieur de l’Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xii—xiii. Exports (1841-60): Statistique de l’ Egypte 1873 (Eg.), p. 166.

(1861-6): Carpi et Vivante, 1 and 2. (1867—9): De Regny, pp. 50-1. (1870-3): Statement, 1865-1875 (US). (1875-9): Same as imports.

NOoTEs: |

a. Figures are for the port of Alexandria until 1875, when they are for the whole of Egypt. b. Original figures augmented by one-ninth.

most general guide to movements in Egyptian commerce. In particular, there is good reason to suppose that the series given seriously undervalues both imports and exports. In the case of the former, government purchases or those by the royal family rarely passed through the Customs House,! while there 1 See, for example, Stanley’s Report on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria During

the Year 1871 (p. 384), in which he asserts that, while he knew that the Khedive had imported machinery worth £500,000 for his sugar plantations that year, a figure of

only £85,000 had appeared in the official customs statistics. More generally, Stanley estimated that imports for 1871 were worth closer to £7,000,000 than the ‘official’ £5,000,000.

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 169 was considerable evasion of the duty by European residents.! Again, the system of establishing the price of goods entering and leaving the country seems often to have led to a considerable reduction in their worth.? Furthermore, trade with Turkey was generally excluded from Egyptian figures before 1880, as

was the commerce which passed through ports other than Alexandria before 1874.2 For these and other reasons there were

occasions in which so-called ‘official’ figures for Egyptian exports to all countries were well below those for British imports from Egypt.3 Even so, it may be suggested that through-

out the period the figures underestimate the true value of exports less than they do of imports, an assumption which, if true, would mean that the favourable balance of trade which the country seemed to enjoy for almost every year between 1850 and 1880 was, in reality, smaller than it appears on paper. Exports, 1820-1879

In 1823, according to John Bowring, Egypt exported goods worth £1,455,200. Of these just over £1,100,000-worth were sent to Europe.* Thereafter, for the next thirty years, the value of Egyptian goods sold abroad varied between £1,000,000 and £2,000,000. Cotton was usually responsible for a quarter to a third of the total, although this proportion might rise to as high as a half in years of high prices and good harvests such as 1836, or sink to as low as a tenth in others, for example 1848 (see Table 26). The other major items of export were wheat and beans. With the return of more peaceful conditions in the 1840s, 750,000 to 1,000,000 ardabbs of such cereals were sent

abroad each year, worth anywhere between £500,000 and £,1,000,000. Other products exported in some quantity were rice, gums (from the Sudan), and linen cloth. ' See the expression quoted by Sacré and Outrebon (p. 231) which was current among Europeans in Alexandria in the mid 1860s: ‘Avez-vous fait une bonne douane?’, meaning ‘Have you made a convenient arrangement with the Customs to pay at reduced rates?’.

2 For a discussion of these and other problems connected with Egyptian trade : figures see Appendix 2. 3 For example, compare the figures for 1865-9 provided by the source given in vale - I 33 ° with those for Egyptian exports given in Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), ° * ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (GB), p. 62. Bowring’s figures have been converted from Spanish dollars at the rate 5 Spanish dollars= £1.

170 Cotton Exports and Egyptian TABLE 26 Major Egyptian Exports from Alexandria in Various Years, 1830-60

1831 LE 1836 LE 1848 LE 1859 LE Cotton 429,464. 808,824 167,961 1,113,419 Wheat 282,257 389,724 Beans 54,113 295,249 222,348

Barley 47,800 51,390 Rice 66,169 124,842 111,856

Corn 62,712 103,630 66,876 96, 788

Linen Cloth 45,305 54,645 3,656

Total exports 1,178,613 1,400,665 1,553,055 2,704,821 SOURCES: —

1831: Jomard, E. F., Coup d’oeil impartial sur état présent de ’ Egypte (Paris, 1836),

p. 16. Jomard’s figures have been converted from francs at the rate of 1F = Pt, 2°86. 1836: Colin, ‘Lettres sur l’Egypt—Commerce’, p. 71. Converted from francs at the rate of 1F = Pt. 3°85. 1848: Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849: U.S. Egypt, ii. 1859: Fowler, p. 12. Nore: a. All cereals.

Exports doubled in value during the 1850s. This was due almost entirely to two factors, the increase in the size of the cotton crop, aided by the revival of prices at the end of the decade, and the expanding market for Egyptian cereals in Europe. Wheat exports averaged well over 1,000,000 ardabbs

a year throughout the period. And in 1855-6, during the Crimean War boom, when prices were at their highest, they accounted for over 50 per cent of export earnings. These years also saw the beginning of what was to become a major export, cotton seed. The demand occasioned by the American Civil War led to a sharp rise in the volume of exports of Egyptian cotton, while their value increased from £E1,400,000 in 1861 to £E15,400,000

in 1865. Total exports advanced from £E3,700,000 to £,E16,400,000 during the same period. At the same time there was a fourfold increase in the value of cotton seed sent abroad.

If this is included with cotton, their joint share of all exports moved from 41 per cent at the beginning of the war to

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 171 g5 per cent at the end. The early 1860s also saw an increase in the export of cereals, their value rising from £500,000 in 1859 to £ E1,500,000 in 1862. However, it then declined to only

£42,000 in 1865. Although the share of export earnings provided by cotton seed diminished a little after 1865, it still remained around

75 per cent, and from then on variations in its price and harvest size were the major factors determining the value of total exports. Cereal exports, on the other hand, were of considerably less relative importance than before the war. In absolute terms their worth varied from just over £E300,000 in 1866 and 1870 to £E2,000,000 in 1877. The most valuable

new export of the period was refined and unrefined sugar. Small amounts had been sent abroad in the 1850s, but it was not until Isma‘il began to invest heavily in its production after 1866 that it began to assume any significance. By the early 1870s the value of the sugar exported was as great as that of wheat or beans (see Table 27).

‘TABLE 27 Exports of Cereals and Sugar, 1861-79 (Annual Averages)*

1861-4 1865-9 1870-3 1875-9° LE LE £E £E

Wheat 571,160 524,807 486,446 941,721 Beans 291,530 380,860 415,064 762,259

Barley 74573356,317> 38,876 41,659 9,055 551853 Maize 43,462 21,048 Rice 76,468 36,186 28,851 148,349 Total cereals 1,057,353 1,037,046 981,296 1,929,230

Sugar 14,590 82,130 501,416 7532973 SOURCES:

1861-9 (except rice 1867—9): Carpi et Vivante, 1 and 2, and Douin, Histoire, ii. Pp. 120, 123, 137; (rice 1867-9): Statement, 1865-1875 (US).

1870-3: Statement, 1865-1875 (US).

1875-9: Le Commerce extérieur de Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xvi-xix.

Notes: a. Exports from Alexandria until 1874. Afterwards, from all ports. b. Excludes 1869. c. Original figures augmented by one-ninth.

172 Cotton Exports and Egyptian Imports, 1820-1879

Egyptian imports after 1820 fell mainly into two groups, manufactured goods, of which a large proportion was made up

of cotton cloth, and raw materials which the country did not possess, such as wood, iron, and coal (see Table 28). Wood was of particular importance in Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign, when the

Egyptian fleet was being rebuilt at Alexandria. Later, with the coming of the railways, iron and coal became more prominent.! TABLE 28 Major Egyptian Imports at Alexandria in Various Years, 1830-60

1831 LE 1836 LE 1848 £E 1859 £E Cotton manufactures 285,088 422,412 797,049

Coal 48,597 Iron and 34,909 steel 96,98247,209 99,273 45,318 39,884

Copper 29,433 146,994

Timber (for building) 291,4813 240,052 70,495 Total Imports 1,370,646 1,319,012 1,480,334 2,468,813 Sources: See Table 26. Norte: a. Includes wood for burning.

Figures for the value of imported goods exist only for isolated years before 1841. Bowring gives a total of £650,000 for 1823

and just over £1,000,000 for 1824.2 During the 1830s imports remained between £1,000,000 and £1,500,000. Thereafter, no very significant upward trend can be observed until the 1850s, when the advance in exports and Sa‘id’s efforts to develop the economy led to a marked increase in purchases from abroad. Egyptian imports received a second greater stimulus from the American Civil War boom. The demand for foreign manu-

factured goods and of certain much-needed raw materials showed a marked advance (see Table 29). There was also a Much of the coal and iron was imported on government account, however, and does not appear to be in the statistics. 2 ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (GB), pp. 62-3. Bowring’s figures were originally in Spanish dollars. They have been converted at the rate 5 Spanish dollars = £1.

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 173 TABLE 29 Major Egyptian Imports, 1863-79 (Annual Averages)?

1863-4 1865-9 1870-3 1875-9° ) LE LE LE LE Textile manufactures 1,718,674 1,602,934 1,943,906 1,842,848

Timber (for building) 191,461 235,613 418,497 112,200

Iron and steel 67,403 107,026 125,534 105,367

Copper 118,657 90,950 96,473 52,335 Coal 127,808 176,397 369,283 676,303

Machinery 150,770 1355732 245,452 53,435

Tobaccos and Cigars 146,613 116,767 107,702 65,380

Fruits 88,409 274,914 127,548 252,001 173,316 78,255 34,187 Oils 156,149 Wines and liqueurs 158,439 260,162 Z22,220 117,978

Marble and stone 81,000 123,207 169,655 ~ 27,588 Silks and raw silk 177,706 245,967 213,665 124,714

Indigo 23,836 15,578 9,391 165,924

Other 1,493,398 1,690,972 1,896,881 2,207,220 Total imports 4,508,862 5,203,767 6,249,977 5,663,734 SOURCES :

1863-72: Statistique de l’Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), Table 103, pp. 304-5. : 1873: Statement, 1865-1875 (US). 1875-9: Le Commerce extérieur de l’ Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xvi-xix.

Notes: a. Imports to Alexandria only until 1874; afterwards to all ports. Imports from Turkey excluded before 1879. Definition of categories may vary from year to year. b. Textiles exclude ‘silks’, bonnets, carpets, and cloth. c. Original figures augmented by one-ninth.

sharp rise in the import of items required by the growing European community and Europeanized Egyptians, such as coffee, cutlery, clothes, furniture, soap, and wines and liqueurs.

These trends were maintained in the years after the war, as exports remained at a high level and Isma‘il continued with his plans to develop the country’s resources. In addition, one new group of imports began to be of some significance. This consisted of products which were also produced in Egypt but not in sufficient quantity nor of a high enough quality for the needs of the foreign residents, for instance, white flour, refined

Sugar, potatoes, and other vegetables and fruits. Imports of these four items were valued at over £E225,000 in 1879.

174 Cotton Exports and Egyptian 3. EGYPTIAN TRADE WITH GREAT BRITAIN, I 820-18 79 1820-1853

British exports to Egypt showed a gradual increase between 1827 and the mid 1840s (see Table 30). This was largely the

result of a steady rise in the export of cotton manufactured goods, which provided well over half the trade. Thereafter, TABLE 30

ICotton 2 Raw 3 4 s)

Egyptian Trade with Great Britain, 1827-52 (Annual Averages)?

%44%4 British exports to Egypt Egyptian exports to Britain

manufactures Total Cotton Wheat Total

1827-9 38,146130,138 49,410 1830-4 81,968

1835-9 156,236 214,520 61,311 1840-4 =: 76,586 237,516 66,459

1845-9 307,113 550,400 114,942 143,622° 688,731

1850-2 499,867 675,759" 473,128 347,905% —-1,470,000 SOURCES:

Column 1. Mann, Table 25. Column 2. Porter, G. R., Progress of the Nation (London, 1847), p. 364; Report by Mr. Consul Stanley on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria During the Year 1872, P.P., 1873, vol. lxvii, p. 65; Commercial Report by Mr. Consul Green on the Trade of Alexandria During the Year 1855, P.P., 1856, vol. Ivii, p. 137.

Column 3. Fowler, pp. 8-11. Column 4. Report on the Trade and Commerce of Alexandria During the Year 1872, p. 66; Commercial Report on the Trade of Alexandria During the Year 1855, p. 138.

Column 5. Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849, Jones, 12 May 1853: U.S. Egyft, ii. NoTEs:

a. All figures refer to trade through the port of Alexandria. b. Egyptian imports from Britain. c. 1848, 1849 only. d. 1850, 1852 only.

there was a rapid advance, Egyptian imports from Britain more than doubling between 1840-4 and 1845-9. The reason for this must be seen partly in the way Egypt was opening up to foreign commerce following the abandonment of Muhammad

‘Ali’s monopoly system. But two other factors were also of great importance. The first was the very large increase in Egyptian exports of cereals and cotton to Britain at the end of

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 175 the 1840s. This increase not only raised incomes in Egypt; it must also have encouraged British merchants to seek to pay for the goods they imported by exporting more manufactured

products in return. For, as R. C. O. Matthews points out, geographical distance made the shipment of bullion an expensive and unattractive method of settling accounts between London and countries outside Europe.' Secondly, the 1840s saw a major expansion in British exports in general, and

an energetic search for new markets, leading, among other things, to a concerted effort to exploit the commercial possi-

bilities of the Eastern Mediterranean.? The increase in Anglo-Egyptian trade in the mid 1840s led rapidly to the position in which Britain became Egypt’s main trading partner. In 1831, according to figures given by Jomard,

Britain took only 10 per cent of the country’s exports and provided only 10 per cent of its imports.3 By 1839 both these proportions had risen to a third. Subsequently, they increased still further until, in 1848, 45 per cent of Egypt’s exports were sent to England while 43 per cent of its imports came from

that source. The next most important trading partner was Turkey, which, in the same year, provided 16 per cent of its imports and took the same proportion of its exports.5

Table 31 shows the main items in Anglo-Egyptian trade in 1848. By then Britain had become the main supplier of manufactured goods, coal, and metals, as it was to remain for the rest of the century. At the same time it was the most important market for Egyptian cotton and cereals. 1854-1879

The value of British imports from Egypt between 1854 and 1879 was almost entirely controlled by the imports of raw

cotton, which rose from an annual average of just over £1,000,000 for the years 1855-9 to over £9,000,000 for 1865-9, before falling to £5,600,000 in the last five years of the period ' A Study in Trade-Cycle History (Cambridge, 1954), pp. 76-7.

2 Exports of all British goods doubled during the 1850s, Schlote, W., British Overseas Trade, trans. W. O. Henderson and W. H. Challoner (Oxford, 1952), Appendix 9, pp. 133-6. 3 Jomard, pp. 17-18. * Lavison, 16 Feb. 1841: R. Cattaui, iii. p. 543. 5 Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849: U.S. Egypt, ii.

176 Cotton Exports and Egyptian TABLE 3I Anglo-Egyptian Trade in 1848 (Alexandria Only) _ Egyptian imports from Britain % of total imports

L to all sources Manufactures 3933573 88

Indigo 48,153 84

Coal 43,271 Q2 Iron, assorted 36,831 81 Copper 14,730 50

| Total imports 640,596 43 | Egyptian exports to Britain % of total exports

L to all sources

Cotton 119,245 71

Beans 226,881 76 Wheat 128,562 35 Flax 47,949 68 Barley 21,740 45 Total exports 715,885 45 Source: Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849: U.S. Egypt, il.

(see Table 32). Cotton seed emerged from the war as the next

most important export and continued to increase in value throughout the period. Cereals, on the other hand, remained more or less constant in worth until the end of the 1870s, Taken

together, these four commodities, cotton, cotton seed, wheat, and beans, consistently provided well over three-quarters o! Britain’s imports from Egypt. British exports to Egypt showed

the same sort of pattern. Here again a few items, notably cotton manufactured goods, coal, and machinery, supplied the bulk of the total.

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 177 TABLE 32 Anglo-Egyptian Trade, 1854-79 (Annual Averages)

British Imports from Egypt |

&£4££

Cotton Cotton seed Wheat Beans Total imports*

1854 608,154 656,294 371,679 2,451,338

1855-9 1,069,852 781,291 326,413 3,146,709 1860-4 5,978,659 384,458> 697,111 425,750 8,542,924 1865-9 9,035,916 810,337 656,753 510,948 12,127,951

1870-4 7,313,600 = 1,347,618 519,504 536,778 11,585,449 1875-9 5,567,007 — 1,649,245 884,210 631,200 9,693,049

££££

British Exports to Egypt Cotton Manufactures*® Coal4 Machinery Total exports

1854 627,285 29,114 25,440 1,253,353 1855-91,385,490 722,773 172,865 45,997 81,900 1860-4 288,452 1,820,564 3,524,508

1865-9 4,055,619 239,789 272,456 7,156,871 1870-4 3,494,833 | 427,358 340,032 6,557,115 1875-9 1,254,456 304,994 99,230 25437,455 Source: United Kingdom Annual Statements of Trade. NOTES:

a. Figures which appear in the United Kingdom Annual Statement of Trade less ‘raw silk’, which is included among the imports from Egypt even though it is described as coming from India, China, and Japan. b. 1861-4 only. Not separately designated before 1861. c. Cotton-manufactured goods described as ‘entered by the yard’. d. Described as ‘coal, cinders, and culm’ until 1866; thereafter as ‘coal, cinders, and fuel’.

Terms of trade

There are no reliable Egyptian statistics for the price of Egypt’s imports and exports before 1879. Nevertheless, it is possible to build up a series of figures from other sources on which to base a description of movements in the country’s terms of trade. The price of Egypt’s four major exports can

be calculated from the information in the British Annual Statements of Trade. All commodities were sufficiently homogeneous to allow the assumption that their price, when exported to England, was no different from that of their export

821648 N

178 Cotton Exports and Egyptian in general. As for imports, the price of Egypt’s main purchase from Britain is provided by Imlah’s figures for the value of all British cotton manufactures, while the price of coal can also be obtained from the Annual Statements of Trade. These two

items made up between a third and a half of all Egyptian imports during the period. Movements in the price of Egyptian cotton have already

been described. Table 33 shows, once again, how it rose TABLE 33 Price of Major Egyptian Imports and Exports, 1854-79 (Annual Averages)

1880 = I00 British Imports from Egypt British Exports to Egypt Cotton Cotton seed Wheat Beans Coal Cotton manufactures?

1855-9Qt99 8886 94go104 107 1860-4 106> 189° 14! 1865-9 195 117 103 107 110 152

1870-4 129 102119 180 107 125 1875-9 105131 It 104 97 98 SOURCES:

All except cotton manufactures: Computed from figures contained in United

Kingdom Annual Statements of Trade. ,

NoreEs: :

Cotton manufactures: Imlah, A. H., Economic Elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass. 1958), Appendix Table 2.

a. Exports to all countries. b. 1861-4 only. c. 1862-4 only.

slowly through the 1850s, climbed sharply during the American Civil War, and then declined again, its fall being compensated

to some extent by the continued increase in the value of cotton seed, wheat, and beans after 1865. It was not until the middle of the 1870s that the price of all Egypt’s major imports diminished at the same time. Table 33 also shows how the price of British cotton manufactures was closely related to that of the imported raw material. It followed the same pattern as the latter, although the movement was less marked.

Foreign Trade, 1820-1879 179 On the basis of this brief analysis it would seem possible to suggest tentatively that the terms of trade were moving slowly in Egypt’s favour through the 1850s, and then more rapidly so during the American Civil War when the advantages of high cotton prices clearly outweighed the corresponding rise

in the price of coal and cotton goods. Thereafter, however, the terms of trade became less favourable and turned against Egypt in the 1870s. Looking at the period as a whole the evidence would suggest that Egypt’s position showed a small improvement during the twenty-five years 1854 to 1879. That this was due almost entirely to cotton 1s yet another illustration of the way this one crop had now come to play a role of central importance in the Egyptian economy.

PART II

COTTON AND THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY 1880-1914

VII Oo THE PRODUCTION AND EXPORT OF

COTTON :

I, THE AREA UNDER COTTON-CULTIVATION

Statistical note | :

TATISTICS showing the area sown with the major Egyptian

S crops first began to be collected annually in 1893~4. The figures used were based on returns sent in by the village sarrafs. According to regulations issued in 1894, the latter were

to obtain from each person who came to pay the May instal-

ment of the land-tax information about the area he had cultivated with each crop since the beginning of the agricultural year and about that which he intended to cultivate in the remaining three months. No actual measurement was made by the sarraf himself, but the area given had to agree with the total amount registered under each proprietor’s name.! This method was subject to numerous criticisms at the time, but in a check made in Daqahliya in 1906 it was discovered that in so far as cotton was concerned the error in the figures averaged no more than 4°6 per cent.? A similar level of accuracy was later confirmed by further examination. A second, more important, cause of unreliability was the fact that, until 1907, the statistics for the areas owned by each cultivator were based on the old land-tax registers, many of which were shown to need considerable revision when a new cadastral survey was begun in 1808.

Prior to 1895 the only figures which exist for the area under cotton refer to a number of isolated years (see Table 34).

1908), pp. 168-9. ,

pp. 167-8. . | | Pp. 174-5. , , | ™ Lyons, H. G., ‘Some Agricultural Statistics of Egypt’, C.S.7. ii, no. 20 (May

2H. G. M., ‘Collection of Crop Statistics’, Survey Notes (Cairo), no. 5 (Feb. 1907),

3 Craig, J. I., ‘Notes on Cotton Statistics in Egypt’, £.C., no. 6 (Mar. 1911),

184 The Production and Export of Cotton TABLE 34 Estimates of the Area under Cotton, 1882-3 to 1893-4

Lower Egypt Upper Egypt Total

feddans feddans feddans

1882-3 693,000 1883-4 778,000 1884-5 856,000 13,000 869,000

1885-6 826,114 48,351 874,465 1886-7 7975337 68,190 865,526 1887-8 954,606 99,682 1,021,250 (sic) 1893-4 912,201 535344 965,545 SOURCES:

1882-3 to 1884-5: Ellison, p. 337. 1885-6: Vincent, E., ‘Memorandum Respecting the Cotton Statistics of Egypt’

(GB) in Drummond Wolff, 25 Oct. 1886, P.P. 1887, vol. xcii, pp. 286. According to Vincent the margin of error for these figures did not exceed -+-7 per cent. 1886-7, 1887-8: Gali, K., Essai sur l’agriculture de l’Egypte (Paris, 1889), p. 263. 1893-4: Egypt, Ministry of Finances, Statistical Dept., Statistical Yearbook for 1909 (Cairo, 1909), pp. 268-9 (hereafter A.S. 1909).

1880-1894

During the 1880s and early 1890s the area devoted to cotton showed almost no advance. This was due, in the first

instance, to the fact that it took a number of years for the countryside to recover from the confused conditions which had accompanied the ‘Urabi rebellion, when canals were blocked,

ginning factories pillaged, and personal security made so uncertain for Europeans that many merchants were unwilling to venture into the interior. As a result, the area placed under cotton shrank to just under 700,000 feddans in the following

season, and by 1887 it was still only 865,000 feddans, no larger than it had been in 1874. Increasing confidence and the beginnings of an enlarged Delta water-supply then caused it to expand to 1,020,000 feddans in 1888. Of these, 955,000 were in Lower Egypt, a little over a third of the cultivated area. Further proof of the assumption that such a proportion implies that cotton was grown in almost every district of the Delta comes from the fact that, in the middle of the decade, only 113 of the

The Production and Export of Cotton 185 2,366 villages in the six provinces produced no cotton at all. Cultivation was most intense in certain areas of Daqahliya, where, in 1886, as much as 41 per cent of the land was sown with cotton.? In Upper Egypt production was also rising, owing

in large measure to a considerable expansion in the Fayyum. After 1888 there was no further increase in the cotton area for another six years. The reason for this is almost certainly the sudden sharp fall in the price of cotton at the beginning

of the 1890s, when the annual average declined from 138 dollars a cantar in 1889-90 to a low of 64 dollars in December

1894. Thus, in spite of the large amount of extra summer water made available in the Delta by the completion of the Barrage and its ancillary canals, and a marked rise in yield,

other crops. ,

cultivators had little incentive to seek to produce more. Some proprietors may even have found it profitable to turn back to

1895-1913

In Lower Egypt the upturn in cotton production began in 1895; and in the next eighteen years the area devoted to its cultivation increased by 427,000 feddans.3 This increase was the result partly of its extension to land where it had not previously been grown, partly of the more intensive use of existing land. Of the two, the latter was of particular importance between 1899 and 1907 when, according to calculations made by Craig, the cultivators of over 600,000 feddans changed their system of crop rotations to include cotton every two rather than every three years, thus raising the annual cotton area by 100,000 feddans.+ This change was very much a question of local prac-

tice, whole districts seeming to make a permanent alteration in their methods once the superior monetary advantages of biennial cultivation became more widely known. Hence, in 1 Boinet, A., ‘Statistique agricole de l’Egypte’ in Drummond Wolff, 25 Oct. 1886, P.P. 1886, vol. xcii, p. 287. 2 Vincent, ‘Memorandum Respecting the Cotton Statistics’ (GB), p. 286. 3 All figures for crop areas after 1894~—5 are taken from the following sources: Egypt, Ministére des Finances, Direction de la Statistique, Annuaire statistique de

Egypte, rgro (Cairo, 1910), pp. 236~41 (hereafter A.S. rgr0), and A.S. 1914, Pp. 322~—43. Figures for the cultivated area in each province are also taken from these sources.

4 Craig, p. 177.

186 The Production and Export of Cotton Daqahliya, where only three-eighths of the land was subject to a two-year cotton rotation in 1903, most of the remainder was converted within the next five years, much of it in 1904 and 1905.! By 1908 over 50 per cent of the Delta was under TABLE 35 Area under Cotton, 1894-5 to 1912-13

Lower Egypt Upper Egypt Total feddans feddans feddans 1894-5 927,436 70,299 997:735 1895-6 967,634 83,115 1,050,749

1896-7 1,029,141 99,010 1,128,151 1897-8 1,028,643 92,619 1,121,262 1898-9 1,064,949 88,358 1,153,307

1899-1900 ~=—1, 143,042 87,277 1,230,319

1QO0—I 1,144,566 105,318 1,249,884 1QOI—2 1,169,106 106,571 1,275,677

1902-3 1,171,133 161,377 1,332,510 1903-4 1,193,298 243,411 1,436,709 1904-5 1,255,900 310,702 1,566,602 1905-6 1,260,107 246,184 1,506,291 1906—7 1,289,268 313,956 1,603,224 1907-8 1,298,901 341,514 1,640,415 1908-9 1,326,588 270,467 1,597,055 1909-10 1,325,834. 316,776 1,642,610 IQIO—II 1,347,530 363,705 1,711,241 IQII-I2 1,346,254 375,501 1,721,815 I9I2-13 1,339,609 383,485 1,723,094 | Sources: A.S. 1910, pp. 240-1; A.S. 1974, pp. 322-3.

a biennial system as against only 17 per cent in 1894; and this included the major part of the land in the four main cottongrowing provinces, Buhaira, Sharqiya, Daqahliya, and Gharbiya. Minufiya and Qalubiya, on the other hand, largely kept the three-year rotation.? The extension of cotton to new lands took place mainly at an earlier date. No general explanation for this movement can be 1 Egypt, Ministry of Finance, Survey Dept., Collection of Statistics of the Areas Planted in Cotton in 1909, by E. M. Dowson and J. I. Craig (Cairo, 1910), pp. 47-8. 2 Thbid., p. 45.

The Production and Export of Cotton 187 offered; prices were depressed until 1899, and improving yields led to only a small increase in income per feddan before

this date. The reason must certainly be sought in more local causes.

1. [he biggest expansion in cotton area took place in the two provinces, Buhaira and Gharbiya, where there was also, concurrently, the largest increase in the cultivated area, owing to the reclamation of land made possible by better facilities for irrigation after the completion of the Delta Barrage. 2. In 1900 the shortage of summer water following a very low Nile flood led the Irrigation Department to prohibit the sowing of rice in many districts.! This ban caused the rice area to decline by over 100,000 feddans, and it seems safe to assume that many cultivators in Buhaira, Sharqiya, Daqahliya, and Gharbiya took this opportunity to switch to cotton, a crop which had now become more profitable and for which water would always be available.

A second, shorter, period of the extension of cotton to new land took place from 1903 to 1905. Once again the main increase took place in Buhaira and Gharbiya, and coincided with a further expansion in their cultivated area, made possible this time by the extra water from the Aswan Dam. In Upper Egypt the cotton area advanced by 328,000 feddans between 1895 and 1913, the greater part of the rise occurring

during the years 1903 to 1905. This was largely due to the increase in summer water following the completion of the

Aswan Dam. But a subsidiary factor was the decline in the relative profitability of sugar, which caused the owners of some 50,000 feddans to change to cotton. Thereafter there was a more gradual increase in the cotton area until 1910, when, once again, there were another two years of rapid advance. The influence of price on the area sown with cotton

Although there were occasions on which the area sown with

cotton in a particular year seems to have responded to a Change in its price, there is little evidence to support the ' Belgium, Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Recueil consulaire, vol. 113 (1901), P. 325.

188 The Production and Export of Cotton assertion made by Dowson and Craig that, as a general rule,

individual proprietors decided how much land they were going to employ in its cultivation on the basis of the prices ruling in the December prior to planting. During the period 1895-1908 (with the exception of 1898) the expansion in the

cotton area in Lower Egypt continued from year to year regardless of fluctuations in price. And it was not until 1909,

when cultivation became more or less stable, that price considerations seem to have begun to play any sort of role, and then only with a small minority of cultivators. The reasons for

this situation are important. Firstly, there was no alternative crop which offered more than half the gross returns provided by cotton, and no other crop was the object of such extensive

and efficient arrangements for marketing and_finance.? Secondly, the vast majority of proprietors were tied by custom to a fixed form of crop rotation which admitted of little variation. This was as true for those who had made the once-for-all change from a triennial to a biennial system as it was for those who had not. Finally, after the sharp rise in rents which began

just before the turn of the century, it may have been the case that a tenant was forced to grow cotton simply in order to pay his landlord what he owed. Cultivators would appear to have been more responsive to price in Upper Egypt, where a fixed crop rotation was less rigidly adhered to,3 and in both 1906 and 1909 a rise in the December price was followed by a major increase in the cotton area. On the other hand, it should be noted that between 1903 and 1905, and again between 1910 and 1912, cotton-production expanded very rapidly regardless of price fluctuations. The type of cotton grown

During the 1880s the type of cotton most commonly planted

was Ashmouni. In 1886 it occupied three-quarters of the cotton land in the Delta and half that in Upper Egypt. In addition, some Bahmiah continued to be sown as well as small 1 Collection of the Statistics of the Areas Planted in Cotton in 1909 (Eg.), p. 33.

2 According to M. A. Rifaat, during the 1930s it was impossible to get credit for any crop but cotton: The Monetary System of Egypt (London, 1935), p. 41. 3 Collection of Statistics of the Areas Planted in Cotton in rg09 (Eg.), p. 34.

4 It is probably no coincidence that, on the latter occasion, there had been a arge increase in the area planted with wheat the previous winter.

The Production and Export of Cotton 189 amounts of the white cottons, Abiad and Gallini; but in all three cases the quality was far from satisfactory.! Reports of Ashmouni’s deterioration also were received from European spinners during the middle of the decade, and for the two years 1886 and 1887 the Government was active in selecting and then selling a small quantity of good seed in an effort to effect an improvement.? However, the problem was solved by the intro-

duction of a new type, Mit Afifi, selected accidentally from Ashmouni about 1882.3 It began to be introduced commercially after 1887, and gained rapid acceptance on account of

its great yield, its higher ginning out-turn, and its earlier maturity, which made it less liable to cotton-worm attacks in September.* This was the second of three occasions during the century when Egyptian agriculture was saved from the full consequence of the decline in quality of the major cotton type by the chance discovery of a successor—the two other instances being the introduction of Ashmouni itself in the 1860s, and that of Sakel just before 1914. Ashmouni did not disappear, however,

but became the staple product of Upper Egypt, where it quickly regained many of its pristine attributes. By 1905, the first year for which detailed official figures are

available, Mit Afifi was being planted over 90 per cent of the cotton area in Lower Egypt.5 But it too was beginning to show marked signs of deterioration and pure seed was becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Some cultivators responded by turning to Abbasi and Joannovitch, both very long-staple varieties which had first been introduced at the turn

of the century. In 1908 they occupied just under 20 per cent of the land. However, in spite of their high value neither type possessed the qualities necessary for general cultivation, and Mit Afifi regained some favour in 1909 and 1910 before it was increasingly replaced by two new varieties, Nubari and Sakel. ‘ Vincent, ‘Memorandum Respecting the Cotton Statistics of Egypt’ (GB), p. 286.

* Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Meeting of the Board of Directors, 24 Nov. 1886, and Ordinary Monthly Board Meeting, 30 Nov. 1887, M 8/2/10, Proceedings, 1885-1890.

3 Keyptian Agricultural Products (Eg.), p. 46. * Ibid.; Recueil consulaire, vol. 78 (1893), p. 91.

5 A.S. 1914, pp. 352-5. All figures for the areas under different types of cotton are taken from this course. ® Foaden, G. P., and Fletcher, F., Textbook of Egyptian Agriculture, vol. ii (Cairo, 1910), p. 367.

190 The Production and Export of Cotton The introduction of the latter was of particular importance, and although it took a little time to gain widespread acceptance it had almost completely replaced Mit Afifi by 1916. Its special properties were its longer staple, earlier maturity, and the fact that it could be grown on slightly salted ground where

other types failed.' In Upper Egypt, on the other hand, Ashmouni remained virtually the only cotton grown throughout the period. 2, YIELD, VOLUME, AND VALUE Yield

During the 1880s cotton yields showed little advance over those of the previous decade, remaining between three and three and a half cantars per feddan. Thereafter, however, the widespread introduction of Mit Afifi, combined with the extra summer water from the Delta Barrage, led to a marked rise and by 1894 Egyptian fields were producing an average of 5:21 cantars per feddan.? The dramatic nature of the increase can best be seen from the statistics provided by the Commissioners of the State Domains, on whose estates yields climbed from 3-06 cantars per feddan in 1889 to 3-97 cantars in 18909,

4:19 cantars in 1891, and a high of 5-3 cantars in 1892.3 ‘This improvement was not confined to the Delta alone. By 1895-9 Ashmouni had become so well acclimatized in Upper Egypt that it was yielding 4-5 cantars per feddan. Yields reached their peak in the late 1890s and then began

to decline, the national average being only 4-67 cantars a feddan in the period 1900-4 and 4:03 a feddan in 1905-9, as against 5-67 a feddan in 1895-9 (see Table 36). This downward trend in the production of what was Egypt’s most valuable

crop was first brought to public notice in Lord Cromer’s annual report for 1905.4 Thereafter, it became a major topic of 1 Eoyptian Agricultural Products (Eg.), pp. 49-50.

2 For source of figure of yield, see Table 37. According to Charles Roux, Mit Afifi initially yielded twice as much lint as Ashmouni: (La Production du coton, p- 194). It is impossible to substantiate this statement, however, as the introduction of Mit Afifi coincided so closely with the advent of the extra summer water that no distinction can be drawn between the influence of these two factors on the rise in yield. 3 AS. 1914, Pp. 447.

4 P.P., 1906, vol, cxxxvii, pp. 506-8,

The Production and Export of Cotton 191 discussion, as well as the subject of much scientific investigation.

Out of the many reasons then put forward to account for the decline five are of particular importance. TABLE 36 Average Annual Yield of Egyptian Cotton (cantars|feddan) |

Lower Upper State Egypt Egypt Egypt Domains

1880-4 3°43° 3°43° 2°72 2°73 1885-9 1890-4 5°21° 4°51 1895-9 5°56" 4°61° 5°47 5°14

1900-4 4°69 4°48 4°67 4°58

1905-9 4°45 3°81 4°03 3°40 IQIO-13,4°5° 4°5° 4°44 3°97 SOURCES:

Upper, Lower Egypt (1896-1909): Craig, p. 170. (1911-13): Egypt, Ministry of Agriculture, The Pink Boll Worm in Egypt in 1916-1917, by Ballou, H. A. (Cairo, 1920), Table XX, p. 59. Egypt (1880-94): Yields calculated from areas to be found in Table 35 and harvest size given in Table 37. (1895-1912): A.S. 1914, p. 356. (1913): Allenby, Reports by H.M.’s High Commissioner on the Finances, Administration and Condition of Egypt and the Sudan for the Period 1914-1919, P.P., 1920, vol. hi, p. 778. State Domains: A.S. 1914, p. 447. NorEs:

a. 1896-9 only. b. 1911-13 only. c. 1883, 1884 only.

d. 1885-8 only. .

e. 1894 only.

1. The explanation most favoured by scientists interested in the problem was the rise in the level of the underground water-

table in the Delta after the completion of the Aswan Dam, produced, on the one hand, by the over-watering of the summer crops and by seepage from the high-level canals, on the other,

by an inadequate drainage system. This rise was inhibited by the low Niles of the first years of the century and only became Noticeable as a result of the concurrence of a high late flood in 1908 and an early flood in 1909. Damage was done, so it was

192 The Production and Export of Cotton said, in two separate ways. Firstly, as a result of the general rise in the water-table through the years the roots had less soil through which to extend. Secondly, they were partially asphyxiated by the underground wave accompanying the annual flood which, for a brief period, raised the water-table still further. Another consequence of the same situation was the

fact that in many districts the soil became waterlogged and

salinated.! 2. A second factor which was frequently mentioned was the more intensive cultivation of the land, particularly the change

from a triennial to a biennial cotton rotation. At first it was thought that its main effect was to exhaust the soil. But a thorough examination of this point by the Government Cotton Commission failed to find any evidence to support such a theory”; and it was left to the Cotton Research Board, created after the First World War, to explain that a much more serious effect of the greater intensity of cultivation was the diminution of the summer fallow period as a result of the fact that there was now enough water to plant maize before rather than after the flood. Experiments conducted by the Board after 1918 would seem to suggest that a long summer fallow period was of great importance in restoring fertility as it allowed the soil to become heated to a degree sufficient to kill much of the protozoa which

limited the activities of the nitrifying bacteria. This, in turn,

promoted conditions for rapid nitrification and thus for vigorous plant growth.3

3. A third factor was the increased activity of two cotton pests, the boll-worm, which was noticed in Egypt as early as 1 See, for example: Balls, W. L., Egypt of the Egyptians (London, 1915), p. 153;

‘cotton investigations in 1908’, C.S.7. iii, no. 29 (Feb. 1909), pp. 33-6, and The Cotton Plant in Egypt (London, 1912), pp., 176-7; Todd, J. A., The Worla’s Cotton Crops (London, 1915), pp. 255-64. 2 Egypt, Ministére de l’Intérieur, Rapport général de la Commission du Coton, 1910

(Cairo, 1910), p. 20. Further evidence is provided by the fact that the decline in yield on the State Domains, where a three-year cotton rotation was practised, was, if anything, greater than that for the country as a whole: see Table 36. On the other hand, there is no doubt that the change in the system of rotation did have a longterm effect on the yields of almost every Egyptian crop. For a discussion of this point, see Rapport de la Commission du Coton (Eg.), p. 8. 3 Egypt, Ministry of Agriculture, Cotton Research Board, Second Annual Report rg2t (Cairo, 1922), p. 4, and Technical Scientific Service, Soil Temperatures During the Sharaqi Period and their Agricultural Significance, by E. McKenzie Taylor and

A. Chamley Burns (Cairo, 1924), pp. 1-34.

The Production and Export of Cotton 193 1860, and the cotton-worm, which first began to inflict major damage on the crop in the late 1870s. The latter was responsible for much destruction in the 1880s and 1890s, but it was not until the turn of the century, when the earlier planting of cotton and the extension of the area devoted to Nilz maize and to birstm multiplied the number of host plants on which it was

able to feed, that this worm became a perennial menace. Serious attacks occurred every year after 1904, and in spite of the Government’s efforts begun in 1905 to organize compulsory leaf-picking on a country-wide scale, losses averaged about

£E1,000,000 annually.! This figure represented the total devastation of some 100,000 feddans. Boll-worm attacks also increased during the period, augmented by a new pest, the pink boll-worm, traces of which were first observed in 1910.2 If contemporary estimates are correct, in a bad year like 1905,

the activities of these various insects must have led to the

destruction of 600,000 to 800,000 cantars, sufficient to reduce the average yield for the whole country from 4°25 cantars per feddan to 3:8 cantars.3 At first, Upper Egypt was spared such attacks, but there too worm damage became a serious prob-

lem at the turn of the century. :

4. A fourth factor sometimes suggested as a cause of the

decline in yield was the deterioration of Mit Afifi itself. Gomplaints that this was happening first began to be heard in about 1900. These multiplied in intensity, until by 1909-10 spinners were almost unanimous in their opinion that it had suffered a serious diminution in strength and regularity, while ginners were equally sure that there had been a marked fall in ginning outturn.5 Similar arguments were put forward to suggest that the deterioration in quality was also partially responsible for the

decline in yield. In the meantime attention was directed at the condition which had produced this deterioration. It was pointed out that the emergence of seven or eight more or less ' Foaden and Fletcher, ii, p. 696. In 1909 the Khedivial Agricultural Society estimated the loss from the cotton-worm alone at from £E1,500,000 to 2,000,000, E.T.F. ii, no. 42 (22 Jan. 1909), p. 125. * The Pink Boll Worm in Egypt, 1916-1917 (Eg.), p. 9. 3 Calculation based on estimates in Foaden and Fletcher, ii, pp. 696, 710. * Portal, 18 Aug. 1887, P.P., 1888, vol. cx, p. 162. 5 Todd, J. A., “The Market for Egyptian Cotton in 1909-1910’, E.C., no. 5 (Jan.

821648 O

IgII), p. 5.

194 The Production and Export of Cotton distinct types of Egyptian cotton, many of which were often to be found growing in adjoining fields, had led to hybridization. Again, it was shown that further mixing occurred in the ginning factories, where little effort was made to ensure that seeds from the different types were kept apart.! 5. Finally, some writers suggested that for a number of reasons cotton was being cultivated with less care. An article in the Agricultural Journal of Egypt mentioned that so little cotton had been planted in Upper Egypt before 1903 that proprietors had had no chance to learn the correct techniques from their neighbours or from the larger estates where Ashmouni might have been more efficiently produced.? Again, Craig maintained that the cotton area had expanded so rapidly everywhere that there had been a significant decline in the manpower and animal power available for each feddan.3

Others pointed to the fact that the change to a biennial rotation meant that the ground was less thoroughly prepared and that, in some areas, cotton was grown only as a means of obtaining scarce summer water from the Irrigation Department.‘ The widespread public debate over the causes of the decline

in yield, and their examination by two commissions, one appointed by the Khedivial Agricultural Society in 1908, one

by the Government in 1909, led to a number of measures intended to improve the situation. These included, among other things, the establishment of a Department of Agriculture with special responsibility for supplying quantities of pure seed and

for research into improved methods of cultivation, efforts to ensure that the cultivators used less water, a law prohibiting the transport of unginned cotton between Upper and Lower Egypt to prevent the practice of fraudulently adulterating Afifi seed with that of Ashmouni, and a new and more rigorous series of campaigns against the cotton-worm starting in 1909. As for the failure of the system of drainage to cope with the extra supplies of water provided by both Barrage and Aswan 1 Todd, The World’s Cotton Crops (1915), p. 277; Balls, The Cotton Plant in Egp'

p. 178; Dudgeon, G. C., ‘The Department of Agriculture and an Indication of Some of the Agricultural Problems of Egypt’, The Agricultural Journal of Egypt, vol. i, pt. 1 (1911), p. 3. 2 Fahmy, I., Cotton Cultivation in Upper Egypt, ibid., vol. 1, pt. 1 (1911), p. 29. 3 Craig, pp. 180~1. 4 Cotton Research Board, Second Annual Report, rg21 (Eg.), pp. 3-4.

The Production and Export of Cotton 195 Dam, a scheme was inaugurated to make up for lost time by creating a comprehensive network of drains in the low-lying areas to the north of Buhaira and Gharbiya where the effects of waterlogging of the soil and salination were most apparent, the aim of which was to lower the water-table to a depth of one and a half to two metres below the surface.! In the meantime, however, yields began to revive, the national average being 4°61 cantars per feddan in 1910, 4°34 cantars in IQII, and 4°37 cantars in 1912.?

It is impossible to pass judgement on the various causes which have been suggested for the decline, or on the efficacy of the measures taken to try to reverse the trend. ‘The war and the changed conditions which followed virtually brought research into the matter to an end, so that little information exists on such vital questions as changes in the level of the water-

table; and the debate between advocates of rival theories has never been brought to any satisfactory conclusion. The best that can be said is that it seems wrong to imagine that any one factor was of overwhelming importance. There is no doubt that over-watering and inadequate drainage played a vital role in Lower Egypt; on the other hand, yields also declined in Upper Egypt, where conditions in this respect were quite different. In certain years one particular cause can be isolated as being of special significance—for example, the worm attacks in 1905 or the special flood conditions in 1909. But this does not mean that they operated with equal force on other occasions, or that they alone were of sufficient general importance to be cited as the major factors in the decline.

One last point should be noted. Viewed in a longer perspective the fall in cotton yields was less dramatic than it seemed to people at the time. Its nature was exaggerated for three reasons. In the first place, the extent of the decline was measured against the yields of the period 1895-9. But there is some reason to suppose that these were abnormally high owing to certain special causes. Secondly, the use of a single figure of nearly 14 cantars per feddan to highlight the decline in the average yield throughout the whole of Egypt between 1895-9 and 1905-9 obscured the fact that yields in the separate parts ' Kitchener, Annual Report for 1911, P.P., 1912-13, vol. cxxi, p. 658. 2 ALS. 1974, p. 356.

196 The Production and Export of Cotton fell by only 1-1 cantars in the Delta and four-fifths of a cantar in Upper Egypt (see Table 36). Finally, the statistics were in some ways distorted by the particularly disastrous harvest of 1909. If this is excluded the national average for the years 1906 to 1913 was 4°42 cantars.' Volume and value

Figures for the volume and value of cotton production between 1880 and 1913 are given in Table 37. It will be seen that harvest size remained more or less constant during the

1880s, but then doubled during the next decade owing to the rise in yield. Thereafter, the increase was slower, the influence of the expansion of the area sown with cotton being almost offset by the decline in production per feddan. Only in the years after 1910 was any considerable advance made over the harvests of the late 1890s. Figures for the output of cotton seed are also given. As a rule this was affected by the same factors which influenced the size of the cotton crop. Figures for the value of each year’s harvest present more difficulty. No satisfactory official series exists, and the statistics given are based on the multiplication of the volume of each harvest by the average price for the following cotton season. This is to assume that all the cotton sown in a particular spring was sold in the twelve months after the following 1 September. The price used is the official one for export raised by 10 per

cent to counteract the reduction made in it by the Customs Administration before August 1911. Figures for the value of cotton-seed production have been arrived at by the same method. Cotton harvests increased regularly in worth during the 1880s and 1890s, the rise in yields coming just in time to balance the fall in prices after 1889. Thereafter, the advance was greater, values increasing by 300 per cent between 1808 and 1913 as prices moved steadily upwards.

| 3. THE EXPORT OF COTTON The volume and value of exports

Figures for the export of cotton and cotton seed will be found

in Table 38. In the case of values, the official statistics have, 1 Cotton Research Board, Second Annual Report, rg21 (Eg.), p. 2.

cn

The Production and Export of Cotton 197 TABLE 37

Volume, Value, and Price of Egyptian Cotton and Cotton-Seed Crops, 1880-1913

er

I 2 1x2 3 4 3X4

Cotton Cotton Cotton seed

volume Price® Value Volume Price® Value

ooos ooos 000s 0008

cantars £E/cantar £E ardabbs Pt.fardabb = =£E

1879-80 1880—13,199 2,7763°229 3°07610,330 8,539

1881-2 2,912 3°139 9,141 1882-3 2,284 3°271 7,471 1883-4 2,694 3°007 8,101 1884-5 3,616 2 792 10,096 1885-6 1886-7 2,792 2,872 2°602 2°785 7,265 7,999 2,238 2,355 70°3 63°2 1,573 1,484 1887-8 2,996 2°736 8,197 2,305 70°3 _ 1,620 1888—9 2,723 2°979 2°95! 8,036 1889-90 3,238 9,646 2,286 2,481 77°4 65°6 1,769 1,628 1890-1 4,159 2°563 10,660 3,065 59'2 1,814 1891-2 4,765 2°O14 9,597 2,432 67°8 1,649 1892-3 5,221 2°069 10,802 3,557 70°6 2,511

1893-4 5,033 11882 889 8,693 9,507 3,393 63 1 1,476 2,141 1894-5 4,619 3,082 479 1895-6 5,276 2°229 11,760 3,514 46°3 1,627 1896-7 5,879 2124 12,487 4,034 44°2 2,081 1897-8 4,261 54°6 47°1 2,107 2,007 1898-9 6,544 5,588 1°597 1°757 10,451 | 9.818 3,859 1899-1900 6,510 2°410 15,689 4,090 63:1 2,581 1900-1 IQOI-2 5435 6,370Q°4i7 2-181 13,136 13,983 3,664 45344 67°7 70°7 2,481 3,071 1902-3 5,839 3°035 17,721 3,887 62:8 2,441 1903-4 1904-5 6,509 6,313 3°520 2°708 22,912 17,096 4,221 4,397 57°9 56¢1 2,445 2,467 1905-6 5,960 3°361 20,032 4,319 63°1 2,725 1906-7 6,949 3°750 26,059 4,848 73°8 3,578 1907-8 75235 3°201 23,159 5,101 75°7 3,861 1908-9 6,751 2°986 20,158 4,712 78°5 3,699 1909-10 5,000 4813 24,065 3,504 QI'5 3,206

i

IQIO-II 7,505 3°QI0 29,344 55347 85°1 4,550 IQII-12 7,386 3°771 27,853 5,261 92°5 4,866 1912-13 7,499 3°563 26,719 5,316 QI°5 4,864

SOURCES:

Column 1. 1879-80 to 1884-5: The British Chamber of Commerce of Egypt, Annual Report for rgoo (Alexandria, 1901), p. 71885-6 to 1912-13: A.S. 1914, P- 357+ Columns 2, 4: A.S. 1974, pp. 398-9.

Column 3: Ibid., p. 357Note: a. All the prices have been raised by one-ninth until 1911-12.

once again, been raised by a ninth to account for the reductions made by the Customs Administration. However, it should also be noted that, as Crouchley points out, there is every reason

to suppose that their value was higher still, On the basis of

198 The Production and Export of Cotton TABLE 38

Export of Egyptian Cotton and Cotton Seed by Weight and Value, 1880-1913 (Annual Averages)?

Volume Value Cotton Cotton seed Cotton Cotton seed

cantars ardabbs LE LE

OOOS OOOS OOOS OOOS

1880-4 3,039 2,791 2,164 1,998 8,387 8,766 1,507 1,475 1885-9 1890-4 4,510 2,891 9,512 1,810 1895-9 52765 3,324 10,759 —-1,579 1900-4 5,941 3,103 15,817 1,962 1905-9 1910-136,677 6,9823,629 3,75!21,889 27,8542,523 3496 SOURCES:

1880-4: Le Commerce extérieur de l’Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xvili-xix. 1885-1913: A.S. 1914, pp. 304-7.

Norte: a. All values for years up to and including 1911 have been raised by oneninth.

comparison between English imports of cotton from Egypt and Egyptian exports of cotton to England he suggested that, between 1906 and igto, the official figures understated the worth of the latter by 8-3 per cent. This he explained by his discovery that Egyptian cotton exports were in fact of a higher grade than the Customs allowed for.! The direction of cotton exports

Between 1880 and 1913 England continued to take half the exports of Egyptian cotton (see Table 39). In absolute terms

there was a gradual advance in its import until 1909, after which there was a slight decrease as a result of the reduction in the number of Lancashire spindles using long-staple cotton.

The main change in direction during the period was the decline in exports to Russia and Italy and the increase in those 1 Crouchley, A. E., ‘The Visible Balance of Trade since 1884’, E.C., nos. 155-6

(Mar.—Apr. 1935), pp. 497-507. For further discussion of this point, see Appendix 1.

The Production and Export of Cotton 199 to Germany and America. As a rule Lancashire mills accepted only the higher grades of Egyptian cotton, the lower grades being sent to a number of continental manufacturers.! TABLE 39 Proportion of Cotton Exports (by weight) to Various Countries, 18g0~1913 (Annual Averages)

Yo Yo 70 Zo %

1890-4 1895-9 I OO—4. 1905-9 IQIO—-13

England 54°0 49°! 49°4 50°7 46-7

Russia 19°0 15°9 10°2 6-9 7°6 France 6-2 7°9 8-3 8-6 8-8

Austria-Hungary 6:2 4°5) 4°5 5:0 7 52

Italy 5°9 3°7 4°6 3°6 3°4 Germany 2°5 4°4 7°97 8-5 8-9

United States 18 - 56 50 7°8 10°3

Switzerland I'l 4°4. 4°6 4:2 3°9 SourcE: A.S. rgr4, p. 308.

The market for Egyptian cotton

Although the expansion of the market for Egyptian cotton during the American Civil War led to a wide recognition of its special properties, it was not until twenty to thirty years later that improvements in spinning techniques made possible the production of fine yarns and fabrics on a large scale and a well defined sector of the Lancashire trade devoted exclusively to the use of long-staple cotton began to emerge.? According to an

article written in 1896, products for which Egyptian was then considered to be particularly suitable included sewing thread, medium-fine yarns, fine underwear and hosiery, and fabrics requiring a smooth and highly lustred surface and finish.3 A few years later a new market was provided by the revival of the mercerizing process which, initially, gave satisfactory results only when applied to cotton from Egypt.* Taken together these 1 Todd, “The Market for Egyptian Cotton’, p. 11. 2 Todd, The World’s Cotton Crops, 2nd edn. (London, 1923), p. 237. 3 Cotton—The Official Journal of the Manchester Cotton Assoctation, vol. 1, no. 37 (11 Jan. 1896).

* Todd, ‘The Market for Egyptian Cotton’, pp. 1-2.

200 The Production and Export of Cotton innovations allowed the production of goods of such high quality that they quickly began to replace other more expensive fabrics like silk and linen. They were accompanied by

a rapid growth in the number of factories engaged in fine spinning. In 1904, for example, nineteen such mills, containing 1,600,000 spindles, were in the course of construction in the

Oldham area alone, and the city’s Chamber of Commerce reported that most of the mills founded in the previous two or

| three years had been established for the same purpose.! A

| similar development, although on a smaller scale, occurred in America, where Egyptian cotton was first imported in the late 1890s, and also in Germany. The impact of this increased demand for Egyptian cotton more than doubled its premium over the price of American

at the turn of the century. By 1907 it had reached 62 per cent, a proportion which some spinners were not prepared to tolerate for long, even though they knew that any change in the type of cotton used required particularly difficult adjustments to their machinery.? A search began for a substitute, which led several to experiment with a number of the superior

American varieties. At this time it was almost universally believed that American Uplands could not be spun into higher

counts than 4os, at least for twist and warp yarns where strength was essential.3 But by combing and carding the yarn, a process previously reserved for Egyptian, weft yarns as high as 1208 were produced. Meanwhile, various successful efforts were made to mercerize American cottons.4

Lower premiums in 1907-8 and 1908-9 reduced the incentive for further experiment, but in 1909-10, when the price of Egyptian reached a new high of 13-12d./Ib., attempts to find a replacement were revived on a large scale. Further stimulus 1 Oldham Incorporated Chamber of Commerce, 22nd Annual Report (1904), i. 2 “According to a statement made in 1912 by W. Howarth, a leading cottonspinner, when a mill was fitted up for spinning cotton of one staple length ‘it [was] fixed definitely for at least twenty years’. Quoted in S. Lackany, ‘Cotton: Estima-

tion of the Crop and Measurement of its Elasticity’, £.C., nos. 93-4 (Apr.-May 1926), p. 278. 3 The ‘count’ of yarns means the number of hanks of 840 yards in length which

weigh 1 lb. The higher the count, the finer the yarn. 4 Todd, J. A., “The Demand for Egyptian Cotton’, £.C., no. 2 (Mar. 1910), pp. 280-1.

The Production and Export of Cotton 201 was provided by the continued deterioration of Mit Afifi, which compelled most spinners either to use a higher grade or to add increasing amounts of such superior types as Nubari and Joannovitch merely to obtain the same results.! They suffered additional loss from the increasing proportion of short-staple fibres to be found in each bale. These had to be laboriously

removed. There was thus a considerable rise in the cost of production which they were unable to pass on by raising the price of their yarn.! The substitution of American for Egyptian cotton naturally

proceeded most rapidly among the lower grades of goods (counts of 40 and below). But even in the case of finer products,

where they proved deficient in strength for the warp of longitudinal threads, American could be used for the weft.? Again, a number of other technical problems connected with their usage went far towards being solved; a method for providing a satisfactory finish for American grey cloth was worked out, American cottons were found to mercerize nearly as well as Egyptian ones, while the recently discovered process of Schrien-

erizing opened up new lines for cotton in general and fine American in particular.3 Many Lancashire spinners who had always used Egyptian tried American cottons instead and were astonished at the result, while manufacturers and buyers were

gradually persuaded to abandon their traditional attachment to Egyptian materials and to purchase fine yarns and fabrics made from American instead. In both cases the lower price was a considerable inducement.‘

The extent of the substitution of one country’s cotton for another is not known. What can be asserted, however, is that, although such substitution created considerable alarm in Cairo

and Alexandria at the time, it seems to have been only a temporary phenomenon. As Todd pointed out in an article in IQ1I, most spinners could be relied on to return to Egyptian when the price fell once more,’ and this is in fact what seems to have happened. In an inquiry made by the International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ 1 Todd, “The Market for Egyptian Cotton’, p. 5. 2 Ibid., p. 3. 3 Todd, The World’s Cotton Crops (1915), Pp. 223.

4 Todd, “The Market for Egyptian Cotton’, pp. 4, 6. 5 Ibid., p. 4.

202 The Production and Export of Cotton Associations on behalf of the Egyptian Department of Agriculture in 1913, only two out of the thirty-two mill-owners who

answered the questionnaire stated that they had abandoned Mit Afifi for good.! The determination of the price of Egyptian cotton

As a general rule it may be stated that movements in the price of Egyptian cotton were determined by fluctuations in the price of American.? This can be seen with particular clarity from the annual average prices of the two cottons between 1890

and 1913. In twenty-one out of these twenty-four years the price of Egyptian moved in the same direction as that of American. Further evidence is provided in a government publication

of 1914. Using the spot prices of Egyptian and American cotton at Liverpool on successive Fridays in the years 1900-13, the author found the coefficient of correlation between the two series to be 0-7825.3 Two reasons for this close relationship have already been suggested in Chapter VI. In the first place, there

. is the fact that the United States produced such an overwhelmingly large proportion of the world supply. Secondly, although Egyptian cotton was a recognizably different commodity, spinners were unwilling to pay an over-large premium for it and attempted to substitute the longer-staple American cottons if prices got too far out of line. Nevertheless, it is not true to say that Egypt was wholly without influence in the matter of the price of its cottons. This point will be examined from three aspects. The first of these is the special market for Egyptian cotton created as a result of technical developments in the fine spinning trade in the 1890s. ‘The rapid expansion in the demand for Egyptian cotton was immediately reflected in the premium obtained over the average American price (see Table 40). During the 1880s and 1890s this oscillated between 10 and 28 per cent. 1 Int. Fed. Result of a Special Enquiry Regarding Egyptian Cotton (Manchester, 30 Sept. 1913). 2 Todd, The World’s Cotton Crops (1915), p. 299. 3 Egypt, Ministry of Finance, Department of General Statistics and Ministry of Agriculture, Monthly Return Showing the State and Prospects of the Egyptian Cotton Crop,

no. 11 (July 1914), p. 8. See also, Egypt, Ministry of Finance, Cotton Bureau, Technical Bulletin no. 1, A Statistical Study of Some of the Factors Affecting the Price of

Egyptian Cotton, by M. A. Zahra and M. El Darwish (Cairo, 1930).

aR

The Production and Export of Cotton 203 TABLE 40

Price of Egyptian and American Cotton at Liverpool, 1880-1912/13

American Egyptian Egyptian premium

d./\b d./\b % 1880 6°94 1881 6°44 1882 6°42 8°5 32 1883 5°75 8-0 25 40 1884 6:0 75 1885 5°846:44 6-026 14. 1886 512 © 1887 55 7-0 27 1888 5°56 6°75 21 1889 5°94. 7°441825 } 1889-90 6-19 7°37

Middling G. F. Brown? over American

1890-1 5:0 6°31 26 1891-2 At12 5:06 22

1892-3 4°61 5:12 10 1893-4 4°19 4°94 17 1894-5 3°44 5°31 55 1895-6 4°38 6:06 38 1896-7 4°22 5°31 26 1897-8 3°47 4°44 25 1898-9 3°28 5:0 52 1899-1900 4°87 6°81 40 1900-1 5:16 6-87 33 IQOI—2 4°78 6°31 32 1902-3 5°44 8°44 55 1903-4 6-94. 8-56 23 1904-5 4°93 7°37 49 1905-6 9°25 55 1906—75°94 6:38 10°37 62

1907-8 6-19 8-81 43 ; 1908-9 5°5 8-44 53 1909-10 7°86 13°12 67 IQIO—II 7°84, 10°75 35 IQII—12 6:09 9°56 57 1912-13 6-79 9°79 45 IQI3—-14 7°27 9°45 30

SOURCES:

1880 to 1898-9: Todd, The World’s Cotton Crops (1915), Pp. 432-3. 1899-1900 to 1913-14: A Statistical Study of Some of the Factors Affecting the Price of

Egyptian Cotton (Eg.), Table A, p. 10.

Note: a. F. G. F. Brown after 1889-90.

204 The Production and Export of Cotton But in 1895 it jumped to 55 per cent, and thereafter averaged well over 40 per cent. Secondly, on the supply side, the height of the premium would seem also to have been affected on occasions by the size of the Egyptian crop. This cannot be demonstrated as it is almost impossible to assess the relative importance of demand and supply conditions, but it seems probable that the extra-high premiums of 1908-9 and 1909-

10 were at least partially influenced by the decline in the size of the Egyptian crop in those years. A third factor in Egypt’s capacity to influence the price of its own cotton involved the transfer of local estimatés of the probable size of each crop, reflected in the Alexandria futures market, to the Liverpool Cotton Exchange. This can be seen by looking at any number of particular years. In 1900, for example, the year opened with Egyptian prices advancing rapidly owing to the pessimistic crop forecasts induced by the unprecedented low level of the Nile.t American prices were also rising, but not so sharply. Then, as it became clear that the Irrigation Department was going to be able to provide sufficient water and that the harvest would be a good one, prices began to decline. Once again this accompanied a similar, though less marked, movement of American. Crop estimates were revised a second time in September when the weakness of many of the plants became apparent, and in anticipation of a small yield, prices advanced by 1id./lb. in the first two weeks of that month. This movement was maintained by speculators until February 1901, when it was discovered that cultivators were holding back larger stocks than usual. American prices, after helping to sustain the price

rise, had already fallen much more rapidly. From this brief description it may be concluded that on certain occasions the Alexandria market had considerable influence on the Liverpool market, being able to amplify existing trends or even, as from October 1900 to January 1901, to cause Egyptian prices to run counter to those of American. Cotton seed

The value and volume of exports of Egyptian cotton seed are

also given in Table 38. During most of the period England 1 Information on the price movements in 1900 comes from British Chamber 0 Commerce, Annual Report for 1go0, p. 4.

The Production and Export of Cotton 205 imported 90 per cent of this seed. But after 1905 there was a large increase in the proportion sent to Germany, until, by

1912, this new market took over a third of the total.! In England Egyptian seed occupied an intermediate position, being much preferred to Indian, its main rival, but less highly regarded than that from America, Its oil was limited mainly to use in the manufacture of soap, and it was not until 1909 that a world shortage of edible oils and fats caused many manufacturers to pay particular attention to improving its quality. The success of these efforts led to its employment by some of the makers of margarine and lard who previously had used only animal fat and American sweet oil.? Prices tended to follow those of cotton, although with occasional deviations. The latter were particularly important after 1909, when demand. became more intense. About 8 to 10 per cent of each year’s cotton-seed harvest was retained in Egypt for sowing. In addition, an increasing

proportion was crushed in local oil factories, where consumption rose from an annual average of 23,000 ardabbs between 1885-6 and 1889-90 to 824,000 ardabbs in the years 1910-11 and 1912-13.3 4. THE COTTON YEAR IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY The cultivation of cotton

Until the beginning of the twentieth century it was common

for larger proprietors to allow cotton land to remain fallow after the previous summer’s crop had been harvested, and by 1910 this was still the practice on some of the big estates:+ But,

in general, the increasing practice of renting land meant that it was no longer possible to allow fields to remain idle for such a length of time, and it was more usual to grow maize between 1 AS. 1914, p. 308.

Todd, J. A., “The Uses of Egyptian Cotton Seed’, E.C., no. 6 (Mar. 1grr), Pp. 217; The World’s Cotton Crops (1915), pp. 357-9. 3 ALS. 1914, P. 357.

* Information about the cultivation and harvesting of cotton contained in this and the following paragraphs comes largely from Foaden and Fletcher, ii, pp. 359— 64; Schanz, M., Cotton in Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Manchester, 1913), pp. 63-6; and Int. Fed., La Culture du coton en Egypte, by A. Schmidt (Manchester, 1912), pp. 14-22.

206 The Production and Export of Cotton July and November. Well-to-do cultivators then ploughed the land and left it empty until the spring. The poorer peasants, on the other hand, followed the maize with bzrsim, from which one or two cuttings were taken before it was ploughed in. This provided a considerable extra revenue but left the soil in a less good condition. Ideally, cotton land was ploughed four times in opposite directions and then left exposed to the air before ridging. As a rule, the deeper and more thorough the working, the better

was the crop. Steam ploughs were often used on the large estates, but the smaller cultivator continued to employ the traditional Egyptian plough drawn by two oxen. The ridges along which the cotton was sown were made by the same implement and then finished off by hand with a hoe. On the bigger estates sowing began in late March or at the

beginning of April. This practice was encouraged by the Department of Agriculture as early cotton branched better from the bottom of the plant and matured sooner, so that there was less danger from the boll-worm attacks, which were at their

most intense in September. On the other hand, it involved

the use of more seed and necessitated a great amount of resowing. The smaller cultivators began to sow several weeks Jater, in an effort to get as many cuttings of dirsim as possible. The seeds were generally sown dry, about ten to twenty to a hole, and then immediately watered. Where any failed to come up they were replaced by new ones which had been soaked in water to accelerate germination. When the young plants were fairly well established the field was hoed by hand to clear the weeds and break up the clods of earth. The next operation was thinning, in which only the two strongest shoots were allowed to remain in each hole. This was followed by a second watering, and then a third towards the end of May. The land was irrigated every fourteen days throughout June, July, and August.

In Upper Egypt harvesting began in late August or early September; in Lower Egypt, in the middle of September. There were generally three pickings, the first of which was the

most important and produced the best quality cotton. The work was generally carried out by children and old people, who could manage about 30 lb. a day. After all the bolls were removed, the cotton stalks were pulled up for fuel. This

The Production and Export of Cotton 207 uprooting was made compulsory by a government decree of December 1909 which ordered that all the old plants be removed before 31 December each year, so as to cut down the number of host plants on which the boll-worm could feed throughout the winter. The sale, ginning, and export of cotton

A great variety of different methods of sale were practised in the early twentieth century. No attempt will be made to describe them all. On the large estates it was common for the exporter to buy direct from the owner.! All the main Alexandria

houses employed agents in the interior for this purpose to whom they paid brokerage of 2 to 3 per cent. The cotton was then ginned, either in the exporter’s own factory or elsewhere, and sold direct to the spinners. According to Schanz over a third of the crop was disposed of in this way.!

As part of the arrangement it was an almost invariable practice to make a contract in advance of the harvest, in which the cultivator agreed to deliver a fixed quantity of cotton. In

return, he often received an advance to cover the cost of cultivation. It was usual to obtain {Eo-5 to £1 a cantar.? The Alexandria house of Planta’s advanced this money at 8 per cent, but the majority charged a higher rate.3 ‘The price to be paid for the cotton was either fixed in the contract or left open.* In the latter case, it was arranged that the seller was able to deliver his crop on any day within a period pre-

viously decided on, the price being that of the Alexandria futures contract for the particular day.’ This practice is said to have arisen in response to assertions that when all the cotton

was being sold at the same time, just after the harvest, the buyers were able to depress the price by selling future contracts on the exchange as cover for their purchases.® 1 Schanz, pp. 83-4. 2 Bally Fréres, Le Coton égyptien et la bourse des marchandises ad Alexandrie (Alex-

andria, 1912), p. 63. 3 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 275. According to Mr. R. B. Carver the interest charged on loans advanced by Carver Brothers was a matter for bargain between the parties concerned. * Société Sultanienne d’Agriculture, Almanach, 1336H (1918) (Cairo, 1918),

Pp. 325-6. Ss Schanz, p. 85.

© Carver, H. B., ‘The system of Cotton Purchase in the Interior’, in Int. Fed.,

Official Report of the International Cotton Congress, 1927 (Manchester, n.d.), p. 138.

208 The Production and Export of Cotton As an alternative to the above procedure, a ginning factory might buy cotton on its own account, gin it, and then sell it in Alexandria. In this case contracts were also generally made before the harvest, and included an advance of money.! Alternatively, in a few cases, a large proprietor might obtain a loan from a bank and sell his cotton himself, either on the spot or from the bank’s warehouse, where it was deposited as security. The latter method had the advantage of allowing him to choose a time when the price seemed best.? The bulk of the crop belonging to the smaller cultivators

was bought up by commission agents, mostly Greeks and native Egyptians, who either disposed of it to a local ginner or had it ginned themselves and then sold it in Alexandria. They too gave loans, although these inevitably carried a high rate of interest. In many cases it was they who also supplied the fellaheen with seed. Some of them bought cotton in advance, but

the majority purchased it on the spot in the various district centres to which it was brought by the cultivators.3 As it existed in the early 1900s, this system offered ample

scope for manipulating the price of cotton. The smaller merchants were able to keep the cultivators under their control

by means of advances which could never quite be repaid, a position of power which was further reinforced by the fact that

they often had a monopoly of seed supply. Again, they were able to make excessive reductions for brokerage and for grading

the crop, as well as to trade on the fact that the fellaheen generally had great difficulty in following rapid fluctuations in

the Alexandria price of cotton.* It was in order to break the hold of such dealers that Kitchener introduced the system ot government halagas (open markets) which will be described in the following chapter. Cotton coming from the fields was carried to the ginning factories in large sacks. ‘There it received a superficial examina-

tion as to type, for it was general practice to gin only one variety at a time. It was then carried into the gin room by a porter and fed into the machines by hand. After ginning, the 1 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 274.

2 Bally Fréres, p. 64. 3 Schanz, pp. 83-5.

4 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, pp. 276~7; Kitchener, Annual Report for 1912, P.P., 1913, vol. Ixxxi, p. 233; Nahas, J. F., Situation économique et sociale du fellah égyptien (Paris, 1901), pp. 116-18.

The Production and Export of Cotton 209 lint was shaken in the air to get rid of some of the accumulated

dust, pressed into bales of 700-800 Ib. by hydraulic press, and sent on to Alexandria. Ginners charged seven to eight piastres a cantar for their services, the cost to them of ginning and pressing being something like five to seven piastres.!

Cotton began arriving in Alexandria from the ginning factories at the end of September. As a rule between 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 cantars were forwarded in the next three months.? The greater proportion of the crop was sent by rail, which was quicker, although more expensive, than by boat. Generally, the

cost of transport was born by the ginner. The pace at which the cotton reached Alexandria does not seem to have been much influenced by the prices ruling in November and Decem-

ber. ‘There were occasional exceptions, however, and in 1902—3 and 1906—7 proprietors may have hurried their cotton

to market faster than usual in order to take advantage of the high prices early in the season.

The bulk of the cotton crop passed through the cotton exchange at Miniat al-Basal, where each exporter possessed a small office. Consignments were offered for sale by means of samples. These were examined by experts employed by the would-be purchasers, after which a price was provisionally

established. The expert then went to the warehouse where the cotton was stored and examined further samples which he chose from the bales at random. After this a final price was fixed. Once the market was closed for the day, the purchaser returned to take possession. He had all the bales opened, the dirt removed, and the cotton sent off for re-pressing. It was then shipped to Europe.3 In the absence of a system of grades which was accepted in both Alexandria and Liverpool, most of the cotton was exported by ‘type’, or special blend, which remained more or less permanent and which was well known to the spinners.+ For this reason links between merchants and mill-owners tended to become more and more close, the latter preferring to conduct their business with one particular firm on whom they could t Int. Fed., La Culture du coton en Egypte, pp. 35-7.

* Figures for the size of monthly arrivals 1898/9-1912/13 can be found in A.S. 1914, p. 358. 3 Int. Fed., La Culture du coton en Egypte, pp. 41-2.

821643 P

* Todd, J. A., The Marketing of Cotton (London, 1934), p. 163.

210 The Production and Export of Cotton rely to send them cotton possessing the same sort of attributes year after year.!

In conclusion, some further light may be thrown on the system of cotton exports by giving a brief description of the methods employed by two very dissimilar Alexandria firms, Carver Brothers and R. and O. Lindemann, in the years just before the First World War.2 To take Carvers first. Each year the firm would receive orders from spinners in England for cotton of a particular ‘mark’ of a particular type (each type being divided into anything from one to ten ‘marks’), and at once orders were transmitted to its agents in the rural districts to find cotton of just such a classification. When making up an order a buyer would be guided by his experience of the quality of the crop produced annually by a number of cultivators in his area, both great and small; and it might often be the case that he had to make a large number of individual purchases before he had accumulated sufficient to make up the order. Orders might also be made up with cotton bought at Alexandria.

As a rule almost all the business was conducted in this way, only a very small proportion of the firm’s total exports (perhaps

2 to 3 per cent) being made up of cotton for which there had been no specific request. Links with the Lancashire trade were, of necessity, very close, for everything depended on the spinners’ confidence in Carver’s ability to provide them with what they wanted. But more than this, as a result of its reorganization as a private limited company shortly after 1900, the firm was expanded to allow the participation as majority shareholders of the recently formed Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ Association, and J. and P. Coats, makers of highquality sewing-thread, both of which were anxious to ensure their supply of the best types of Egyptian cotton by establishing more direct contact with Egypt and its cultivators. Lindemann’s employed a very different style of operations. Firstly, it was prepared to purchase a great deal of cotton in 1 Livanos, C. N., John Sakellaridis and Egyptian Cotton (Alexandria, 1939);

° —I.

Or an indebted to Mr. R. B. Carver for information about his family’s firm. The source for the material about Lindemann’s comes from a report prepared in Egypt in 1917 on the activities of German firms: War Trade Dept. of Egypt, Report on the Policy Adopted in Restraint and Liquidation of Enemy Trade, a copy of which can be found in F.O. 368/1720.

The Production and Export of Cotton QUI excess of the amount ordered by its clients. Secondly, it enjoyed better credit facilities than any other important firm. Not only was it able to obtain advances from banks in Europe and Egypt against its cotton, but it also had an arrangement with the Deutsche Orient Bank of Alexandria by which it could borrow money either without security or against shares held in

various Egyptian companies. Its last pre-war owner, Hugo Lindemann, was clearly a very ambitious man and used these facilities to try to secure a larger and larger share of the market.

To this end he generally gave higher premiums than his competitors. As a result, he was able to secure an increasing amount of business in the villages, as well as, in 1912-13, to replace his chief rivals, Garvers and Choremi Benachi, as the purchaser of the cotton grown on many of the most important estates including that of the Khedive himself.

VIII DEVELOPMENT IN THE COTTON SECTOR OF THE ECONOMY 1880-1913 I. THE CHANGING ROLE OF GOVERNMENT Improvements in the system of irrigation and transport

HE basis for the great advance in cotton-production after | 1890 was provided by a series of government reforms and improvements, the majority of which were initiated by the British officials following the occupation of Egypt in 1882. One field which received much attention was that of irrigation.

Efforts proceeded in three different directions. In the first place, the existing systems were put in order. This action involved not only the proper cleaning of the canals, the repair of dykes and regulatory mechanisms, and the construction of drains, but also the reorganization of the administration and the promulgation of a series of rules governing the relations between cultivators and engineers. Secondly, the corvée was abolished between 1885 and 1889 and the work of dredging old canals and digging new ones given to private contractors.' The result was a considerable release of men for agricultural labour. Thirdly, the supply of summer water available to the cultivators in Lower Egypt was greatly enlarged by the repair of the Barrage and its connection with the system of irrigation east and west of the Central Delta by means of the re-exca-

vation of the Buhaira canal and the repair of the Sharqiya

(renamed Taufigiya) canal, which had been abandoned almost as soon as it had been begun over forty years earlier. When the whole project was completed in 1891, the engineers were able to distribute the available water equally through ™ One of the firms engaged in this work, the Behera Co., received considerable benefit from the purchase of some of the dredging equipment previously used by the Suez Canal Co. (I am indebted to Mr. T. A. F. Dixon for this information.)

Development in the Cotton Sector of the Economy, 1880-1913 213

Lower Egypt by regulating its passage along the main feeder canals.!

The reforms led to a considerable increase in agricultural productivity in Lower Egypt. They also reduced the danger to the cotton crop from a low summer Nile. Nevertheless, even before the restoration of the Barrage was complete, it was clear

that Egypt’s irrigation needs demanded a more comprehensive scheme of water-storage if every part of the cultivable land was to realize its full potential by growing crops all the year round. It was felt that this would involve the construction

of at least one major dam. After a number of preliminary studies Sir William Willcocks was given the task of inspecting

possible sites in Upper Egypt, and it was on the basis of his report, published in 1894, that it was eventually decided to build the new work at Aswan.2 When completed in 1902 the dam was capable of holding up 1,000 million cubic metres of water, the release of which, between April and July, added considerably to the country’s summer supply. The second part of Willcocks’s scheme, the building of a barrage at Asyut, was also finished in 1902. ‘This allowed some of the extra water from Aswan to be diverted along the Ibrahimiya canal into Middle Egypt, where it enabled the conversion of extensive areas from

basin to perennial irrigation. The Aswan Dam was further heightened between 1907 and 1912.

Another field in which important improvements were undertaken was that of transport. As it existed in 1880 there was a relatively well-developed system of communications

between the larger towns by rail, river, and navigable canal. But movement between village and village, or village and town, often depended on narrow, winding paths, -which made the transport of heavy goods difficult. A first attempt to improve this situation was made in 1890 with the decision

to create a series of agricultural roads in Shargiya and Daqahliya, to be paid for out of local taxation. This measure was extended to Buhaira in 1891, and later throughout the rest of Lower Egypt.+ Between 1890 and 1899 over ‘ Brown, pp. 47-63. * Report on Perennial Irrigation and Flood Protection for Egypt (Cairo, 1894).

3 Decree of 6 Ragab, 1307 (25 Feb. 1890), Gelat, P., Répertoire de la législation et de l’administration égyptiennes, 1888-1892 (Alexandria, 1893), pp. 403-4.

* Decree of 29 Gamad-Akhar, 1308 (g Feb. 1891), Gelat, p. 408.

214 Development in the Cotton Sector 2,000 kilometres of such roads were built, mostly along the banks of canals.? The success of this programme encouraged the Government

to consider the introduction of light agricultural railways and in June 1895 a concession was given to a Belgian company, the Compagnie générale des Chemins de fer economiques, for the establishment of a line between Mansura and Mataria, in the north of Daqahliya province. The company obtained what were virtually monopoly rights in the area, and also a government guarantee of net receipts up to £E6,100 a year. In return, the Government was to receive a share of any profits above £,K225 a kilometre. The concession was then transferred to an Egyptian company, the Société anonyme des Chemins de fer de la Basse Egypte, founded in Cairo in 1896. Work on the line was begun in the same year and completed in 1897.2 In the meantime two more concessions had been granted on similar terms, one to Messrs. John Birch of England for a railway network in Gharbiya and Buhaira and one to a syndicate of Egyptian firms for Shargiya, Qalubiya, and Daqahliya. Two companies were then formed to exploit these concessions. But almost at once they decided to amalgamate, and by 1901 all

their shares had been bought by a new, joint concern, the Egyptian Delta Light Railways Company. Finally, in 1897, a group of Copts obtained the right to build a line in the Fayyum.4

Sections of the line belonging to the Egyptian Delta Light Railways Company were opened in 1899, and by 1902~3 it had 806 kilometres in operation connecting many of the villages of the main cotton districts north of Tanta and east of the Damietta

branch of the Nile with stations on the state railways.5 The nature of the service supplied to cultivators and merchants can be seen from the fact that, in this same year, the company carried 111,049 tons of cotton or nearly 40 per cent of the season’s crop, as well as 360,481 tons of other merchandise, including cotton seed, cereals, coal, and manure.® The other light-railway systems were not so extensive. In 1902 the S.A. * Government of Egypt, Statistical Returns, 1880-1899 (Cairo, 1900), p. 103.

2 Wiener, pp. 493-4; Wright, p. 183.

35 A.S.Wright, p. 183. 4 Wiener, pp. 541-2. 1914, p. 178. This excludes the Helwan line.

6 Ibid., pp. 180-1.

of the Economy, 1680-1913 215 des Chemins de fer de la Basse Egypte owned 109 kilometres of track and the Fayoum Light Railways Ltd. 168 kilometres.!

Other major means of communication also received the Government’s attention. Of particular importance was the abolition of the Nile tolls in 1901. This produced an immediate rise in river traffic, forcing the railways to reduce their freight rates in order to be able to compete for the carriage of goods.

Meanwhile, navigation along the canals was made easier by dredging and by the construction of locks. The effect of improvements in the system of irrigation and

transport cannot be overstated. The extra water from the Barrage and the Aswan Dam increased cotton yields, allowed its cultivation to be extended to new lands, and reduced the cost of cultivation, while the creation of the agricultural roads and railways opened up fresh areas for production and provided a cheap, easy method of carrying the crop to the main Delta collection points. Government intervention in the cotton sector of the economy

The very success of these various government measures made further intervention in the cotton sector unavoidable. This was

much against the inclination of many of the British administrators, particularly Lord Cromer who was not anxious to involve the state more closely in the actual process of production. But by the 1880s, the crop was much too important to the Egyptian economy for any deterioration in output or quality to be easily ignored. In the early period of the Occupation the Government was forced into action in two separate directions. In the first place, it had to take fresh steps to cope with the growing menace of the cotton-worm, After particularly bad attacks in the early 1880s the Government constituted commissions to study the question in 1883, and invited the members to tour the Delta provinces in an effort to get the cultivators to take voluntary action.3 Then, in 1888 and 1889, circulars were sent to all mudirs requiring them to explain to ‘umdas (village headmen) and fellaheen how best to cope with ' Ibid., pp. 193, 201. 2 Recueil consulaire, vol. 126 (1904), p. 261.

3 Ismalun, A., ‘Communication sur le ravageur du cotonnier’, Bulletin du Comité agricole, no. 1 (Apr. 1884), pp. 8-9; ‘Chronique’, L’Egypte, nos. xxii-xxiii (1 Sept. 1895), p. 758.

216 Development in the Cotton Sector the worm and to encourage them to take the appropriate steps.! Again, in 1894, after another bad attack, the Government commissioned yet another investigation into methods of controlling the pest.2 There was still no desire to intervene more positively and make leaf-picking compulsory. But such action

became necessary as a result of the mounting damage to the crop in the early 1900s. Encouraged by its success in fighting a plague of locusts in 1904 the Government decided to use the same type of organization to combat the cotton-worm. In April 1905 a Khedival decree was issued compelling all cultivators to report the appearance of the worm to local authorities and then to take immediate steps to pick off and destroy all the leaves on which eggs had been laid. Those who ignored these instructions were to be punished, while their fields were to be cleaned for them by government officials at a charge of twenty piastres a feddan. The decree also provided that all boys who were accustomed to agricultural work could be requisitioned if necessary for leaf-picking, in areas where there was a shortage of labour.3 Supervision was left to local officials in the first year. But in 1906 special British inspectors were sent into provinces to see that the orders were correctly executed.4 The success which seemed to attend these efforts meant that

the regulations were less strictly applied in 1907 and 1908. But the reappearance of the worm in great numbers in the latter year led, in 1909, to more comprehensive central control.

Seventy-seven inspectors were engaged, 111,000 children mobilized for work in the fields, while 11,000 cultivators were

punished for infringing the regulations about reporting the appearance of the pest.5 Similar methods were employed every

season until the war. Recourse was also made to legislation. Laws of 1909, 1912, and 1914 decreed that by a certain date in December all cotton and other host plants had to be pulled out or cut below ground level, so as to deprive the new batches of worms of food during the winter months. For the same reason

all the bolls remaining on the cotton stalks or lying on the ground after the harvest was over were to be destroyed.° 1 Gelat, pp. 275-6. 2 ‘Athenaeum’, L’ Egypte, nos. xx-xxi (1 Aug. 1895), p. 657; Cromer, 2 Oct. 1895:

F.O. 141/311. 3 Schanz, p. 72. 4 Ibid. 5 [bid.

6 For this and other legislation concerning the agricultural sector, see Légis-

lation agricole et vétérinaire (Eg.) (Cairo, 1920).

of the Economy, 1880-1913 217 Meanwhile, an intensive campaign of public instruction was carried out in order to convince the peasants of the advantage of corporate action. The Government was also forced to become increasingly active in providing the cultivators with pure seed, in an effort to maintain the quality of the cotton crop. Several means were tried. In 1886, for example, an attempt was made

with the co-operation of the leading ginneries ‘to sell good sowing seed, at a price somewhat below the price of ordinary seed’, with the Government agreeing to make good half the loss involved.! ‘This experiment was tried for two years but was not

repeated in 1888.2 The next experiment was in operation for several years from 1894, when specially selected seed was sold by the Government to the cultivators at a cheap price repayable in instalments.3 Further direct intervention was. avoided by the formation of the Khedivial Agricultural Society in 1808. The Society then took over the selection and distribution of seed, the Government merely advancing the money necessary to make the preliminary purchase and allowing the sums due from the fellaheen to be collected along with the land-tax.4 The efficacy of this arrangement may be doubted, however. On the one hand, there were complaints of the quality of the seed provided; on the other, the resources of the Society were never

sufficient to distribute more than a very small fraction of Egypt’s requirements. In 1902-3, for example, the 28,500 ardabbs of seed sold’ were only enough to sow 114,000 feddans, or under

10 per cent of the total cotton area. With the formation of the Department of Agriculture in 1911

the function of providing pure seed was resumed by the Government. Then, not only did the quality improve but, in 1913-14, the quantity distributed to the cultivators amounted to over a quarter of the country’s requirements.® The seed was obtained by arrangement with the more careful ginners, and came originally from cotton grown on the State Domains.’ ™ Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Meeting of the Board of Directors, 24

Nov. 1886, M 8/2/10, Proceedings, 1885-1890. 2 Chélu, p. 235. 3 Cromer, Annual Report for 1895, P.P., 1896, vol. xcvii, pp. 998.

4 Carey (Acting-Secretary, Khedival Agricultural Society), 24 May 1904, in

1914-19, p. 791. | Cromer, 25, May 1904: F.O. 78/5370. 5 Ibid.

© 118,099 ardabbs of seed were supplied in 1913-14: Allenby, Annual Report for

7 Dudgeon, G. C., ‘Improvement in Quality and Yield of Cotton’, in Int. Fed., ,

Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation . . . to Egypt (Manchester, 1913), pp. 29-30.

218 Development in the Cotton Sector A further stage in the Government’s acceptance of responsibility for measures to protect the quality and quantity of the Egyptian cotton crop was reached in December 1909 with the formation of a government commission to study the causes of the decline in yield. Its report recommended a considerable increase in activity by the state over a wide area. This included the improvement of the drainage system in many parts of the country, an attempt to get cultivators to return to a triennial

rotation, an intensification of the annual campaign against the cotton-worm, and further experiments in such matters as the rise in the water table, the correct use of manure, and the production of new varieties of cotton. It also suggested the creation of a Department of Agriculture to co-ordinate all efforts aimed at halting a further diminution in yjield.! These recommendations were all implemented in the few years before the First World War. As already described in Chapter VII, a Department of Agriculture was established, extensive drainage schemes were inaugurated in the North

Delta by Kitchener in 1912, and research into means of improving the various strains of Egyptian cotton was intensified.

A final example of government intervention in the cotton sector of the economy occurred in 1912 with Kitchener’s institution of a system of halagas, in an effort to protect the smaller cultivators against the activities of unscrupulous dealers. These consisted of an enclosed space of about an acre in which there was an official weighing-machine, notice of the daily opening price of ginned cotton at Alexandria, and, later, a storehouse from which cheap seed and chemical fertilizer were distributed. Those with cotton to sell could use these facilities on payment of Pt. 0-05 a cantar. Ninety-two such halaqas were opened during the first year. Initially they encountered fierce opposition from the smaller merchants, many of whom refused either to enter them or to purchase cotton which had passed

through them. Nevertheless, by December rgr12 they had been used by 185,000 proprietors, bringing 593,000 cantars of cotton.? ' See Rapport général de la Commission du Coton, rg1o (Eg.), pp. 31-6, fora summary of the Commission’s recommendations. 2 Kitchener, Annual Report for 1912, pp. 233-4.

of the Economy, 1880-1913 219 2. PRIVATE INVESTMENT IN THE COTTON SECTOR The expansion of ginning and pressing capacity

The great increase in the size of the cotton harvests in the early 1890s was accompanied by considerable investment in the construction of new ginning factories and the purchase of new machinery. At the beginning of the twentieth century there were 105 such establishments in operation with 3,521 gins and

a capacity of just under 7,000,000 cantars. Of these, 87 with 2,971 gins were in Lower Egypt. About a third of the machines were then owned by Alexandrian export houses, another third by men with European names—the majority of whom were Greek—and the remainder by local Egyptians or Syrians.’ The rush to open factories in the 1890s resulted in considerable over-capacity, and the intense competition which followed led

many of the smaller units to reduce their prices below an economic level.2 In an effort to rationalize the situation, a number of the leading Alexandrian merchants who owned ginneries formed a trust, a process which was developed still further in 1905 when they amalgamated their factories into a new company, the Associated Cotton Ginners of Egypt Ltd. This had an initial capital of £E360,000 and controlled 1,200 gins, or just over a third of the total.3 Other attempts to rationalize the industry also seem to have met with some success, and by 1913 the number of factories had risen only to 127, of which

III were actually in operation in that year. The size of the individual units had increased, however, and each establishment then contained 50 gins as against 34 ten years earlier.* The expansion of ginning capacity was accompanied, to some

degree, by an increase in productivity. The first McGarthy gins introduced during and after the American Civil War could

produce only 45-50 lb. of clean cotton an hour.’ Thereafter, according to Chélu, writing in 1891, these old machines had ’ For a list of those who owned gins, see Charles Roux, La Production du coton, PP. 395-9.

2 El-Gritly, A. A. I. (al-Giritli), “The Structure of Industry in Modern Egypt’, E.C. nos. 241-2 (Nov.—Dec. 1947), p. 503. 3 Int. Fed., La Culture du coton en Egypte, p. 34; Schanz, p. 84. The firms who surrendered their gins to the new company agreed neither to construct nor to work

any others: A.E.M., 8 Jan. 1909, ii, no. 40, p. 93.

* Schanz, p. 84. 5 Chélu, pp. 238-9.

220 Development in the Cotton Sector been modified in such a way as to allow output to increase to 85-90 lb. an hour.! Later, new gins were imported which could manage 120 lb. an hour.? Largely as a result of these improve-

, ments costs fell sharply. Whereas the expense of ginning one cantar in the factories operated by the State Domains was Pt. 17:6 in 1878-9, by 1895-6 it had been reduced to an average of only Pt. 4-7-6-9.3 Nevertheless, by European standards, the

Egyptian ginneries were not well run, and a number of contemporary writers commented on their inefficiency and waste of labour. One was Arno Schmidt, the secretary of the International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations. His observations are of particular importance because he was able to compare practices in Egypt

with those in America and elsewhere. As he pointed out, cotton was carried from the warehouse to the gins and then to the presses by hand instead of, as in American factories, by

suction-pump. Again, only one establishment possessed a system whereby the gins were fed automatically. More manpower was wasted in pressing. In the vast majority of cases compression was effected by six or so men trampling down the

cotton into boxes rather than by machines. Schmidt also discovered that ginners were going to considerable trouble to water the lint after it had been ginned, even though no one could give him any good reason for the practice.‘ Factory-owners used a number of arguments to defend their methods. One was that the use of suction-pumps would harm the cotton, another that the prevalence of manual operations was justified by the low level of wages. But as Schmidt himself asserted, such arguments really seem to have rested on the

principle that things were being done in a particular way because that was how they had always been done. This conservatism was bolstered further by large profits. According to Schmidt the big factories could always fix their prices in such a way as to assure a high return. In its journey from field to mill a bale of cotton was pressed twice, first by the ginning factory for transport to Alexandria, then in Alexandria itself, after sale, for shipment abroad. This ™ Chélu, p. 239. 2 Balls, Egypt of the Egyptians, pp. 195-6. 3 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 294.

4 Int. Fed., La Culture du coton en Egypte, pp. 34-5. 5 Ibid., pp. 38-9.

of the Economy, 1880-1913 221 second process was almost entirely in the hands of the large exporters, and it was they who provided the capital necessary to expand capacity at the turn of the century. In 1889 a number of houses combined to found the Société générale de Pressage et de Dép6ts to take over the plant belonging to the Alexandria Cotton Pressing Co.! Thereafter, two more large concerns were founded, also by cotton merchants, the Société anonyme égyptienne des Presses libres égyptiennes in 1892 and the S.a. égyptienne des Presses allemandes in 1906.2 Together the three of them pressed all the cotton leaving Alexandria. Each possessed steam presses of the latest model and was able to produce bales which were much more tightly packed than those in America, thereby materially reducing freight costs. According to Schanz the same ship was able to carry 50 per cent more Egyptian than American cotton. As in the case of the ginning factories there was also an increase in efficiency. Whereas the average weight of a bale was 666 Ib. in 1880, a bale of the same size weighed 760 Ib. in 1910-11.3 Lhe cotton-exporters

In the season 1911~12 nearly half the Egyptian cotton crop was exported by four large foreign houses, Ghoremi, Benachi & Co., Carver Brothers & Co. Ltd., R. and O. Lindemann, and Peel & Co. Ltd.+ Of these, Ghoremi, Benachi’s was the oldest, having been founded in its original form in 1864.5 But all dated from before the British Occupation. Almost all the remainder of the crop was sent abroad by a further thirty-one firms, many of which were also founded before 1882.6 It would thus be true to say that a very large proportion of the business of cotton export was in the hands of relatively old firms, and that.it was their own internal expansion, not the establishment of new houses, which allowed the great increase in the trade in the 18gos. ' The Alexandria Cotton Pressing Co. had been founded by the house of Choremi, Mellor & Co. some time before 1876: Wright, p. 289.

2 Schanz, p. QI. 3 Ibid., p. 92.

4 Int. Fed., Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation... to Egypt, p. 185.

5 This firm was founded as Choremi, Mellor and Co. in 1864. It changed its name in 1876: Wright, p. 289. ° Int. Fed., Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation . .. to Egypt, p. 185. For a complete list of the cotton exporters in 1911-12 see Appendix 4.

222 Development in the Cotton Sector However, the cotton merchants did not merely confine them-

selves to the purchase and export of cotton. They also used their accumulated profits to create new facilities for ginning and pressing. It was Lindemann’s, for example, which in 1906

joined with another house, H. Bindernagel, to form the Société anonyme égyptienne des Presses allemandes.! Another important role they played was in financing the crop. All the

large firms had agents in the interior who were prepared to advance money to the owner of any medium- or large-sized property who wished to grow cotton.? In the case of Carver Brothers, for instance, the money for such loans was borrowed initially from a bank near the firm’s offices in Lancashire, on the security of cotton. This, in turn, would allow sovereigns to be drawn from an Alexandria bank in exchange for a cheque.

Loans were then made to cultivators on the strength of their reputation and the temporary surrender of the title to their land. In some cases the owner of a plot of as little as five feddans

might receive an advance, but this would depend on his being well known to the local agent.3 There were also occasions on which the big cotton-exporters sponsored the introduction of new types. The only way John Sakellarides, the discoverer of Sakel, could overcome the conservatism of manufacturers and ginners was to launch his cotton on the market by means of an arrangement with Choremi, Benachi and Co., who undertook to dispose of it through their many Lancashire connections. They also persuaded a number of cultivators to try the new type by distributing its seed among their Delta clients.+ It was

only after Sakel had been introduced in this way that its properties began to be widely appreciated. The establishment of cotton mills

Two companies were formed in 1899 to establish cotton mills

in Egypt, the Egyptian Cotton Mulls Co. and the AngloEgyptian Spinning and Weaving Co. The former built a factory at Cairo containing 20,000 spindles which began operations in 1901.5 However, it was only rarely able to make 1 Wright, p. 289. 2 In Egyptian terms a medium-size property may be classed as one consisting of from 5 to 50 feddans and a large one as one in excess of 50 feddans. See p. 2393 I am indebted for this information to Mr. R. B. Carver.

4 Livanos, p. 71. 5 Schanz, p. 99.

of the Economy, 1880-1913 223 a profit, its shareholders did not receive a single dividend, and six years later it was forced to liquidate. In their annual reports and at meetings with shareholders the directors put forward a number of reasons to account for this lack of success. One was the problem of training local labour.! Again, there was a constant shortage of working capital which forced the company to maintain an expensive overdraft and to have to raise fresh funds by means of two issues of debentures, the interest on which placed new burdens on its limited financial resources.? There was also considerable difficulty in finding a local retail outlet for the goods produced.3 Finally, there was the question of the countervailing duty of 8 per cent imposed by the Gov-

ernment on all its output, in order to prevent the company from deriving any benefit from the similar duty placed on imported foreign cottons. There is at least some evidence for the assertion by the contemporary French writer, F. Charles

Roux, that this charge made an important contribution to the Cotton Mills Co.’s failure. At any rate, once the Government had turned down a petition from its shareholders in February 1907 that the duty be removed, the company maintained that it had no alternative but to suspend operations.5

The Anglo-Egyptian Spinning and Weaving Co. was little more successful. It too was never able to pay a dividend, and by 1908, when its total losses had reached £E20,000,° its £1 shares were worth only five shillings.7 The same year it proved

impossible to meet an instalment of the excise duty owing to the Government and, like the Cotton Mills Co., it too petitioned

for the duty’s removal. On this occasion, Gorst, the new British Agent, agreed that the duty should be waived for five years.8 But by this time Egyptian business activity was almost at a standstill following the financial crisis of 1907 and the

situation had gone too far for improvement. In 1912 the ‘ Ordinary General Meeting, 23 Dec. 1902, The Times, 24 Dec. 1902. * PRO, BT (Board of Trade) 31/16264/2641. 3 Seventh Annual Report, Egyptian Gazette, 9 Jan. 1907. + La Production du coton, p. 296. 5 Koyptian Gazette, 8 Feb. 1907.

° Enclosure I in Gorst, 19 Mar. 1909: F.O. 371/661. The loss of £E20,000 should be compared with the amount of excise duty paid—£E13,000. 7 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 296.

8 Gorst, 19 Mar. 1909: F.O. 371/661.

224 Development in the Cotton Sector company was refloated, with reduced capital, by a German group, and renamed the Filature nationale d’Egypte.' The mill owned by the Anglo-Egyptian was built at Alexandria. By 1906 it contained 22,000 spindles and 400 looms, and produced cloth worth about £E50,000 a year; 700 workers,

many of them foreign, were employed. Like the Egyptian Cotton Mills, the Anglo-Egyptian used only low-quality Egyptian cotton.? This was because the local market was for coarse cloth, not for the more expensive fabrics. A similar style of operations was continued by the Filature nationale. It used cotton from Upper Egypt or from India, and spun only low counts, that is 16s to 20s with occasional 30s. About 20 per cent of the yarn was purchased by Egyptian hand-loom weavers;

while the remainder was made into plain shirtings and either sold locally or exported to Turkey,3 where they were able to take advantage of a tariff which gave a preference to Egyptian goods.4 Cotton-seed presses

Although the first factories for crushing Egyptian cotton seed were built during the American Civil War, local production remained limited, and in the 1880s only 1 per cent of the total crop was being used for this purpose.5 Later, however, a number of new factories were erected, so that by 1906 there were seven oil mills in operation, as well as twenty other smaller

soap and oil plants with sixteen presses or less; and consumption had risen to over 800,000 ardabbs annually or about a quarter of the crop, a proportion which remained more or less constant until 1914.7 About 80 per cent of the oil produced was either used as food or exported to neighbouring countries in the Ottoman Empire, where it enjoyed a protected market. Most of the remainder was utilized by the Egyptian soap industry. The husks, shells, and other residue were made into cattle cake, almost all of which was exported. In 1913 the value of Egyptian cotton-seed-oil exports was £E38,o00 and

that of cattle cake £296,000. 1 Schanz, p. 99. 2 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 296. 3 Schanz, pp. 99-100. 4 Rapport de la Commission du commerce et de Vindustrie (Eg.) (Cairo, 1918), p. 145-

5 AS. 1914, Pp. 357- 6 Schanz, pp. 94-5. 7 AS. 1914, Pp. 357+ 8 AS. 1914, pp. 304-5.

of the Economy, 1880-1913 225 3. CHANGES IN THE SYSTEM OF EXPORTING COTTON The Alexandria General Produce Association

The first years of the British Occupation saw important changes in the arrangements for exporting cotton. Although Alexandria had had the first cotton futures market 1n the world,

organized under the auspices of the Société anonyme de la Bourse, established in 1861, the vast expansion of sales during the American Civil War was not accompanied by any further effort to provide rules for the conduct of the trade. And until the 1880s, the two essentials of a large-scale commodity market

were missing: a method of grading so that goods could be recognized and described with certainty without actually being inspected, and a means of arbitrating disputes. The first steps to improve this situation were taken in February 1883 when a meeting of merchants and brokers decided to form an Association Cotonniére d’Alexandrie to draw up the necessary

regulations. Two years later its name was changed to the Alexandria General Produce Association.! The Association established standard grades, it laid down the premium to be paid for cotton above and below those grades, and it decided differences concerning future contracts.? It also acted as the governing body of a second institution, the Société égyptienne de la Bourse commerciale de Minet-el-Bassel, the company established in 1884 which owned the building in which all spot sales of cotton took place.3 Such business had previously been carried on in the Miniat al-Bassal area of Alexandria, but the construction of the Bourse, by providing offices and sample rooms for those interested in the export of cotton, allowed 1t all to take place under one roof.3 Future sales took place in a second Bourse, operated by the Société anonyme de la Bourse khédiviale d’Alexandrie.* The currency reform of 1885

Another change which occurred at the same time greatly facilitated the process by which cotton was exported. This was , Alleman, F., ‘Aims and Objects of the Alexandria General Produce Association’, in Int. Fed., Official Report of the International Cotton Congress held in Egypt, 1927, - 127,

° 2 Ibid. Schanz, pe 105. 3 Schanz, p. 103.

821643 Q

4 Abd El-Motaal, M. Z., Les Bourses en Egypte (Paris, 1930), pp. 101-4.

226 Development in the Cotton Sector the currency reform of 1885. Before this date the Egyptian monetary system had suffered from two serious drawbacks. In the first place, the supply of money was made up of coins from a number of foreign countries, generally circulating at a tariff which varied not only from month to month but also from one

part of the country to another. Secondly, there was a chronic shortage of small coins once the copper ones, minted after Muhammad ‘Ali’s currency reform, had become so depreciated

that the Government refused to accept them in payment of taxes. A commission was appointed to study this situation before 1882, but its work was then interrupted and it was not formally reappointed until August 1884. Its report was issued

thirteen months later. The commission recommended that there should be a new Egyptian coinage based on a gold coin

worth 100 piastres. However, three other coins were also to be allowed to circulate, the French Napoleon, the English pound sterling, and the Turkish pound, all of which were undervalued in terms of the new Egyptian pound, presumably to cover the cost of reminting them. For some reason, not given, the English pound was the least undervalued of the three. Smaller coinage was to be provided by silver issued up to a limit of forty piastres per head of population (to prevent the gold being driven out),

and by piastres and half piastres of copper, also in limited quantities.!

These recommendations were incorporated in Khedivial decrees of November 1885 and March 1887.2 However, in

practice, only £50,000 worth of Egyptian pounds were minted between 1885 and 1891, and none thereafter. According to J. A. Todd this was because they had become very

unpopular owing to the number of false Egyptian coins in circulation, which caused them to be viewed with suspicion.3 As a result, the English pound, the least undervalued of the foreign coins and thus the weakest, drove out the other two and became

almost the sole gold unit. From the point of view of the cotton

trade this situation had two important advantages. In the first place, it provided an absolutely stable currency in which to settle accounts. his was of particular consequence in a country

Pp. 113-27. 2 Rifaat, pp. 46-7.

1 Egypt, Commission monétaire, La Réforme monétaire en Egypte (Cairo, 1886),

3 Political Economy (Glasgow and Edinburgh, 1910), pp. 195-6.

of the Economy, 1880-1913 227 where almost all commercial transactions were conducted in cash. Secondly, it meant that there was an elastic supply of currency, for extra coins could be imported at short notice if the size of the cotton harvest demanded it. Egypt’s supply of gold sovereigns was built up by the difference between the amount imported annually and that exported. Between 1885 and 1913 it would seem, from the customs figures,

that this difference came to £F44,955,558.! There is, however, some reason tosuppose that it was actually somewhat less, owing to the fact that, although the import of gold was checked very thoroughly to prevent the entry of coins which were not legal tender, exports were examined in only a most perfunctory way.? This supply was seldom sufficient to provide for all the needs of the cotton sector, and each autumn the banks imported a large sum of extra gold, the total amount being determined by their estimate of the size of the crop. These coins were then lent to their customers or passed on to the merchants, who, in turn, used them to pay the cultivators. The flow of gold from Alex-

andria into the interior began to be reversed each spring as debts were settled, advances repaid, and imports purchased. Much of it was re-exported to Europe when there were no further opportunities for its investment in Egypt itself. This annual movement had an important effect on the rate of

exchange. In the autumn the rate fell, as the gold imported from England was paid for with bills on London. But it rose again each spring, when there was a large demand for such bills, these being the easiest means of paying for imports and of transmitting the interest owing to foreign holders of shares in Egyptian companies.3 4. INCOME FROM COTTON The distribution of cotton income

It will have become clear from a description of the process by which cotton was cultivated, ginned, and then exported that, to a very large extent, the profits derived from this process ' A.S. 1914, p. 521. ? Crouchley, “The Visible Balance of Trade since 1884’, p. 508. 3 France, Ministére du Commerce et de |’Industrie, Rapports commerciaux des agents diplomatiques et consulaires de France, no. 965, Situation économique de U’ Egypte.

Importation-Exportation (Paris, 1911), pp. 73-5-

228 Development in the Cotton Sector were divided between the cultivator, the owners of the gins, the

agents in the interior who acted on behalf of the Alexandria exporting firms, and the exporting firms themselves. Were it possible it would be of great interest to trace the changes which may have taken place in the income streams flowing to each of these four groups, but the lack of reliable information does not permitit. Instead, the best that can be done is, firstly, toexamine the distribution of cotton income towards the end of the period under discussion, and then, secondly, to look at the movement in the receipts of one particular group about which something can be discovered, the cultivators.

Table 414 gives the gross profits per cantar accruing to the

brokers, and the net profits per cantar to the ginners and exporters, during the season 1912-13. In addition, such costs as transport to the gins (but not on to Alexandria), ginning, and insurance are included, so as to give some idea as to the pro-

portion of total receipts which went to those who processed and moved the cotton. The data come largely from two reports on the cultivation of cotton in Egypt published in 1913, the only exception being the figures for the net profits obtained by the exporters. These last are contained in an estimate made by an Alexandria merchant in 1916 of the sort of return which could be hoped for by a medium-size firm dealing with some 40,000 to 50,000 bales a year. In neither case can the statistics given be regarded as more than a very general sort of guide to the true position. The figures given in Table 414 would seem to suggest that the costs and profit margins involved in moving a cantar of cotton from the fields to Alexandria in 1912~—13 lay somewhere

in the region of Pt. 30-55 (to which must be added the cost of transport from ginning factory to Miniat al-Bassal, which may

have averaged another Pt. 8). This represents a range of somewhere between 10 and 25 per cent of the average export price for that season, £E3-656 a cantar.! On the assump-

tion that these were the major costs involved, almost all the remainder must have gone to those cultivators who were able to deal directly with an Alexandria firm or its agent. However, we have it on good authority that only a third of the crop was disposed of in this way, and that most of the other two-thirds 1 AS. 1974, p. 356.

of the Economy, 1880-1913 229 was bought up by small commission agents who charged 25 to 30 per cent for their services.! If this was so, the poorer cultivators can only have obtained somewhere around 55 to 65 per cent of the export price. TABLES 41A AND 4IB Distribution of Profits from the 1912-13 Cotton Crop TABLE 41A

Costs and profits per cantar Pt./cantar

water |3 rail 5-7

Brokers’ commission in interior (2 to 3 per cent) 6+5~—9°84 Transport to ginning factory: Ginning and hydraulic pressing

(includes profit of up to Pt. 5) 7-10 .

(Transport to Alexandria) Alexandria:

insurance (0°5 to 3 per cent) 1°83—-11

brokerage (0:25 to o’5 per cent) 0°92—-1°83 steam-pressing 3°25 Exporters’ profit (10 to 155. a bale) 7-11 Price of cantar of cotton at Alexandria 365°6 TABLE 41B

Share of total income 1912-13 LE Cultivators:

1/3 crop sold direct to exporters 7,924,716

2/3 crop sold to local commission agents 11,887,074

Brokers in interior (163,215 to 246,078)

Local commission agents (3,962,358 to 4,755,834) Ginners (up to 376,650) Exporters (527,310 to 828,630)

Total 27,532,000 SOURCES:

Schanz, pp. 83-5, 88, 91, 102; Int. Fed., La Culture du coton en Egypte, p. 40, and Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation... To Egypt, p. 184; Twelves, 8 June 1916 in McMahon, 25 June 1916: F.O. 368/1506. NOTES:

a. Based on export price less all costs and profits prior to initial sale. b. According to Schanz (p. 88) the actual cost of ginning and hydraulic pressing was Pt. 5-7 a cantar, for which the owner charged Pt. 7-8 or even Pt. 10 in an area where he had a monopoly of the business. c. The calculation of the cultivators’ and commission agents’ shares was based on the assumption that the figures for costs and profits in Table 41a averaged Pt. 41-69 (midway between the highest and lowest combinations), to which an extra Pt. 8 was added to cover the cost of transport to Alexandria. 1 Schanz, pp. 83-5.

230 Development in the Cotton Sector A second way of looking at the question of the distribution of cotton income is to calculate the total amount of money

| which might have been earned by each group in this same season. hese calculations are given in Table 413. They would seem to indicate that about two-thirds went to the cultivators while the remainder was shared between the local commission agents, brokers, ginners, and exporters.! Movements in the income obtained by cultivators from cotton

Statistics for yield and price are sufficiently reliable for the period 1894 to 1913 to allow the construction of a series showing

gross income per feddan from cotton. Prior to 1894 various scattered figures have been used to extend the coverage back to

1880. As a check this can be compared with the information

for the estates belonging to the State Domains, although allowance must be made for the fact that the latter is based on the actual price at which the cotton was sold to the merchants,

whereas the former, for want of anything better, has been calculated from the Alexandria export price. From Table 42 it will be seen that the gross income per feddan advanced hardly

at all during the first fifteen years of the period, and then doubled during the next fifteen. As for net profits, contemporary estimates would seem to

suggest that these were a third to a half of gross incomes, where no rent was paid. In 1884 J. Gibson, the Director of the

Survey Department, gave an example of an estate of 100 feddans on which one feddan of cotton cost £E5-84 to produce. The crop was then sold, with seed, for £E8-40.2 And, on a large

property mentioned in a report forwarded by Sir Henry Drummond Wolff two years later, gross receipts from cotton were £E.7-7 a feddan and net profits £E3.3 In both instances, expenses included payment of the land-tax at a high Kharaj rate, so that returns for those who owned ‘ushuriya land would 1 In reality, of course, the proportion obtained by agents, brokers, ginners, and exporters was certainly very much larger than this on account of the fact that the majority of them advanced money to cotton-cultivators. The interest on these loans should be added to their profits. 2 ‘State of Expenses and Receipts of Exploiting 100 feddans in Lower Egypt for One Year’, in Egerton, 8 June 1884, P.P., 1884, vol. Ixxxix, p. 535. 3 ‘Tableau des frais nécessaires, et des produits de la cultivation d’une “Badia” de 300 feddans Karadji’, in Drummond Wolff, 19 Jan. 1886, P.P., 1886, vol. Ixxiv, Pp. 305.

of the Economy, 1860-1913 231 have been correspondingly higher. Later, as the reforms in the irrigation system became more effective, costs may have fallen in a number of areas. In the first example the expense of water-

ing a feddan was given as £E2-45 ({E2 for the purchase of TABLE 42

I234

Average Gross Income per Feddan from Cotton and Cotton Seed 18801913 (Annual Averages)

Egypt? State Domains Cotton Cotton seed Cotton Cotton seed‘ LE LE LE LE 1880-4 8-8 7°3 1°6 1885-9 8-5° 6:6 15 1890-4 8-84 8:6 I°5

1895-9 11‘O 1°8 9°9 1°9 IQO0—4. 12°83 2°O 12°7 2°2 1905-9 14°7 QrI 12°2 2:0 IQIO-13 16-6° 2°78 15'5 2°6 SOURCES:

Column 1. 1880-94: calculated from figures for cotton area and the value of the cotton harvest contained in Tables 35 and 37. 1895-1913: A.S. 1974, p. 356. The prices used are those of the Alexandria General Produce Association, and are a little higher than those provided by the Customs Administration. (See Appendix 1.) Column a. Ibid. Columns 3, 4. Ibid., p. 447. NOTES:

a. These are export prices. For the return actually obtained by the cultivators it is necessary to deduct transport costs, broker’s profits, etc.

b. 1883, 1884 only. .

c. 1885-8 only. d. 1894 only. €. 1910-12 only. f. Includes the value of cotton straw.

water and £Eo-45 for labour), while in the second it was £E1-20. Thereafter, the rise in the level of the summer canals made many pumps redundant,! and it is probably significant

that in a table of agricultural costs given by Chélu for the season 1888—9 watering expenses were only Pt. 174.2 ' Cromer, 22 Nov, 1887, C.C.; F.O. 633/5. 2 Chélu, pp. 250-4.

232 Development in the Cotton Sector The profit figures just cited refer only to large estates and in both cases wages came to about a third of total costs. But a fellah farming only a few feddans with the assistance of his family was spared such expenses, and, provided that he was able to obtain the average yield for his cotton, his net returns would have been correspondingly higher. Confirmation of this assertion comes from an estimate made by R. Suarés, the Chairman of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien, in 1883. Whereas, accord-

ing to his calculations, cotton could be cultivated on a large property for an outlay of £E4-2 a feddan, it cost a peasant, working his own land, only £ K2°9.!

Costs of producing cotton seem to have remained fairly constant for the remainder of the period. In 1897 Foaden put them at £E4:77 a feddan, while fifteen years later Cressaty gave a national average of £E4°5 (excluding taxes) and Schanz one of £E5°5 (including taxes of £E1-5).? In all three cases no mention is made of rents. Allowance must certainly be made for

the fact that, in a country where methods of cultivation and thus costs varied so greatly,3 such figures can only represent the

most general sort of approximation. Nevertheless, they are probably sufficiently reliable to allow it to be suggested that, for

those who cultivated their own property, net profits from cotton may have increased by anything up to 200 per cent between the 1880s and 1910-13. Fluctuations in individual incomes from cotton

Apart from looking at basic trends in the gross and net returns from cotton, it is also important to consider year-to-year

fluctuations in the value of the crop. Both prices and yields varied widely from one season to the next, often causing a cultivator’s income to rise and fall by a considerable amount. Movements in the average income obtained from a feddan o* cotton in Egypt are plotted in Fig. 2. They show that in some t ‘De l’agriculture en Egypte telle qu’elle est pratiquée de nos jours’, in Dufferin, 28 Apr. 1883, P.P., 1883, vol. Ixxxi, pp. 243-50. 2 U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Office of Experimental Stations, Bulletin No. 42, Cotion Culture in Egypt, by Foaden, G. P. (Washington 1897), p. 27: Cressaty, Comte, L’ Epypte d’aujourd’ hui (Paris, 1912), p. 166; Schanz, p. 78.

3 For example, W. Willcocks and J. I. Craig give widely varying estimates of the costs of producing cotton in three different areas of Lower Egypt, Egyptian Irrigation (3rd edn.), vol. it (London, 1913), pp. 782-3.

of the Economy, 1660-1913 233 years receipts could vary by as much as 20 to 30 per cent. ‘They also show that these variations could have been greater if it had

not been for the fact that movements in price and yield took place in opposite directions in seven of the seventeen years for LE

—--— Income per feddan(LE)

10 ~----Price per feddan (LE) A ———_ Yield per feddan(Cantars) \

/ I /\ an / \ a } NN I5 RPNY jfon,;\|\1,\|||| \ ;j \\

;\

5} 6 I4

\/v 43 veo*eaeoo~ 5

A 0 / \ J NI /\ 7N / , / \ , oN f Nw \/ \ 10 \ / \

\V/

Cantars

2 ine eer ae “Cee o

0

1895 1900 1905 V 1910

Fic. 2. Fluctuations in the average income from a feddan of cotton in Egypt, 1895-1912 Source: A.S. 1974, pp. 356, 387.

which data are available. Two qualifications have to be made,

however. Firstly, the magnitude of the annual changes in income is reduced if the underlying upward trend in returns is taken into account. Secondly, when considering a cultivator’s annual income, attention must also be paid to the returns from the other crops in his rotation. Unfortunately no national figures

exist for such important products as wheat and beans. But

234 Development in Cotton Sector of Economy, 1880-1913

from the information from the State Domains which has been plotted in Fig. 3, it can be seen how fluctuations in income from cotton were to some extent offset in a number of seasons by

contrary movements in the sums derived from the three principal cereals.

Nevertheless 1t goes without saying that fluctuations in

income played a very important role in rural life. They affected the level of consumption as well as the credit requirements for the following season. They may also have been one

of the reasons why the peasants continued to hoard a sizeable proportion of each year’s receipts: this clearly provided them with some sort of protection against future fluctuations, It 1s equally possible that the trend towards payments of rent in cash may have been accelerated by the landowner’s discovery that such rents were a more steady and reliable form of income

than the returns they could obtain by growing cotton themselves. [hese and other considerations will form part of the subject-matter of the following chapter, which is concerned with developments in the agricultural sector as a whole.

£E j a 15 A | | | | i) | Cotton —-—-—.— ii| | ; fo]

Wheat ——-— — — | -\ l | j Barley ———_—_—_ i | | | | \; Beans ~-------- | ,

ee\ -) On |eis yA-

IV] \j NEN] 1; afi Ng |

A f v# Lj

: ' A AN; f “ \JPo /||: \ / J / \4 oo4 dl / / [~N i / I\(fx? sh/ Ts, vn a Wns /

5 “\

10k , Vv \ N \ \ 7 | \ / \ Uf \ y i

\\\ /oN. i“ a\ on Worn, eee, rs! ba Dy, “* “wo > - ‘S 7s / : V,

1880 1890 1900 I910O

Fic. 3. Income obtained from a feddan of wheat, beans, barley, and cotton

on the State Domains, 1880-~1913! : Source: A.S. 1974, pp. 4497-50.

* Cotton includes income from seed and straw; cereals include income from

Straw.

IX THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY 1880-1914 AGRICULTURE OTTON-CULTIVATION must now be placed in its agri-

cultural context. As in the previous two chapters the

subject will be dealt with schematically. The first section of the present chapter will discuss the rise in population, the pattern of landownership, and, a related topic, the increase

in land values and rents after 1890. Then, having established the conditions in which cultivations took place, Section 2 will

be devoted to a study of what crops were produced, while Section 3 will be concerned with the advance in agricultural

income and its distribution among the rural population. Finally, in an effort to discover something of the work on one particular estate, the chapter will conclude with an account of the situation on the Manzalawi lands between 1907 and 1910. I. CHANGES IN POPULATION AND THE OWNERSHIP OF LAND

Population and land

The first Egyptian census was taken in May 1882 and showed

the population to be 6,831,131.! However, it is impossible to suppose that any great accuracy could have been achieved in the unsettled conditions which preceded the British Occupation, and W. Cleland maintains that the true figure must have been nearer 7,500,000.2 Seventeen years later, at the time of the 1 The figures for the censuses of 1882, 1897, 1907, and 1917 can be found in A.S. 1914, pp. 21-42, and Egypt, Ministry of Finance, Annuaire statistique 19381939 (Cairo, 1940), p. 10 (hereafter A.S. 1938-1939). 2 Cleland estimates the population 1882 at 7,440,000. He reaches this total on

the basis of extrapolating backwards from the 1897 census figure at a rate of 1-95 Per cent a year. The Population Problem in Egypt (Lancaster, Pa., 1936), pp. 0-9-

The Growth of the Economy 1880-1914, Agriculture 237

second census in 1897, the number of Egyptians had reached 9,734,405. Thereafter, the population increased at an average

of 1°52 per cent a year to 11,287,359 in 1907 and then by 1°33 per cent a year to 12,750,918 in 1917. A division of these

totals to show the numbers living in urban and rural areas is given in Table 43. In 1897 8,337,935 people (85-7 per cent of

TABLE 43 , Population and Cultivated Land, 1882-1917

Total Rural Rural Cultivated Rural population/

population population families area (feddans) cultivated feddan 1882 7,44.0,0008 6,376,0804 1,062,080f 4,956, 7448 I 24 1897 9,734,405? 8,337,935° 1,389,656 = 5,047,698 1-66 1907 11,287,359 9,736,463° 1,622,744 5,402,7162 1°43 1917 12,750,918°¢ 10,866,498 1,811,083! 5,232,2714 2°04 SOURCES:

a. Cleland, Population Problem, p. 9. b. A.S. 1974, p. 21. c. Cleland, Population Problem, p. 7.

d. Computed on the assumption that the rural population was 85-7 per cent of the total population (see p. 238, note 1).

e. Computed from the figures for Egypt’s urban population contained in Cleland, Population Problem, p. 63.

f. Computed on the assumption of a family size of six. This assumption was made in 1920 by Sir O. Thomas in his report Agricultural and Economic Position of Egypt (26 Apr. 1920), p. 21 (a copy of which can be found in Milner Papers, Box 164). g. Figures for the year 1886 in ‘Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Countries during the Years 1885, 1886—Egypt’, Executive Documents (US), 2nd Session, 49th Congress, p. 1503. h. A.S. 1914, pp. 322-3. 1. Figure for 1915-16: Baer, History of Landownership, pp. 91-2.

the population) lived outside the major towns.! Twenty years later their numbers had risen to 10,866,498, an increase of

30 per cent. A figure has also been computed for the rural 1 T have taken Cleland’s definition of the urban population as that living in the five governorates (Cairo, Alexandria, Canal Zone, Suez, Damietta) and the 14 Provincial capitals: Population Problem, p. 63. This clearly excludes a number of people living in other, sizeable, towns. In 1907 the number of towns with a population of over 10,000 was 87. A.S. 1974, p. 30. It should also be noted that a number of contemporaries were very critical about the accuracy of the 1907 census as it referred to the populations of Cairo and Alexandria. According to calculations

made by A. Eid the population of the former should have been 800,000 (rather than 570,000) and of the latter 416,000 (rather than 315,000), La Fortune immobiliére de l’ Egypte et sa dette hypothécaire (Paris, 1907), pp. 55-61.

238 The Growth of the Economy population in 1882. This is based on the assumption that there was no change in the proportion of urban to rural inhabitants during the 1880s and 18g90s.!

The increase in the rural population far exceeded the available land. Table 43 gives a very general idea of this trend by measuring it in terms of the rise in the number of persons per cultivated feddan. However, this over-all picture is subject to three major qualifications. The first concerns the statistics for the cultivated area itself. These cannot be accepted without serious reservations, for there was no proper survey of Egyptian land before the period 1898-1907. Prior to this the figures used were based on measurements taken during Sa‘id’s reign which over-estimated the size of many holdings. By the 1880s they also included large areas of ground taken for railways, canals, and other public works.2 The density of population was thus rather greater for the years up to, and including, 1907 than the calculations in the Table would suggest. Secondly, the population was not spread evenly over the country, and the

amount of available land varied accordingly. In 1907, for example, there were 2°84 people per cultivated feddan in Upper Egypt compared with only 1-71 in the Delta. Again, there were wide variations between areas, provinces like Minufiya and Qalubiya being twice as densely populated as others like Buhaira.3 Finally, the use of general figures for the numbers of persons per cultivated feddan tends to oversimplify the situation by ignoring the fact that the ownership of land was extremely unequal. This last qualification will now be dealt with at greater length. Landownership, 1880-1894

The first official statistics relating to the division of privately owned land into properties of various sizes were not issued until 1894. But some idea of the areas held by various social groups 1 There is no evidence for this assumption except that, according to the census figures, the proportion remained almost unchanged for the twenty years after 1897. It was 13-9 per cent in 1907 and 14°8 per cent in 1917. 2 Egypt, Ministry of Finance, Survey Dept., The Cadastral Survey of Egypt, 18921907, by H. G. Lyons (Cairo, 1908), p. 139. The extent to which the area of culttvated land was over-estimated was offset, to some extent, by the fact that a certain

amount of government land not included in the survey under Sa‘id, had been brought into cultivation; Ibid., pp. 107-8. 3 Computed from figures in A.S. 1914, pp. 28, 322-3.

1880-1914, Agriculture 239 before that date can be obtained from figures contained in a report from Lord Cromer indicating the amount of land-tax

to be levied in 1884 from three categories of proprietors, ‘Europeans’, ‘Notables and Officials’, and ‘Villagers’. Calculations based on this information show that those in the first category then owned roughly 220,000 feddans, those in the second 1,200,000 feddans, and those in the third 2,500,000.? The remaining 900,000 feddans of taxable land were adminis-

tered by the Commissioners of the State Domains and the Daira Saniya. Foreigners and the class ‘Notables and Officials’ thus held a third of the privately owned land. They were able to increase this proportion considerably in the next ten years.

Prices were low and much land was placed on the market by the State Domains, the foreign land companies, and the two large mortgage companies, the Crédit Foncier Egyptien and the Land and Mortgage Co., both of which were anxious to sell the properties they had been forced to expropriate for nonpayment of interest. In addition, the Government began to

make it possible for cultivators to purchase state land not included in the tax registers. Foreigners in particular were active in purchasing land, the amount they held rising from 225,000 feddans in 1887 to 550,000 feddans ten years later.3 Landownership, 1894-1913

In 1894 the government figures show that 42-5 per cent of the

land in private ownership was held in estates of fifty feddans and above.+ In an Egyptian context such estates must be regarded as large. Medium-size properties (five to fifty feddans) occupied another 37-7 per cent, while those of five feddans and under accounted for the remaining 19-8 per cent. Thereafter,

the proportion held in large estates increased to a high of 45° per cent in 1907. This was mainly the result of the sale of " Enclosure in Baring (Cromer), 8 Dec. 1884, P.P., 1884-5, vol. Ixxxviii, p. 712. ‘Umdas were classified as ‘notables’ at this period (Wallace, p. 208) and must certainly have been included in this category rather than in that of ‘villagers’. ? These figures have been arrived at by dividing the total amount of kharaj and ‘ushr tax due from each group by the average rate per feddan then being paid on each category of land. The rates used were kharaj, Pt. 128/feddan; ‘ushr, Pt. 50°5/ feddan: Baer, History of Landownership, p. 31.

3 Ibid., p. 67. * All figures for the distribution of land into estates of various sizes are taken from A.S. 1914, p. 320, and Baer, History of Landownership, pp. 224-5.

240 The Growth of the Economy 450,000 feddans of Daira Saniya land between 1900 and 1906,

most of which was purchased by big landowners or land companies. Meanwhile, there was a tendency for the mediumsize estates to break up into smaller and smaller properties, either because of the Muslim law of inheritance which provided for the equal partition of land between all the heirs ofa deceased owner or, to some extent, because of the purchase of parcels from such estates by the richer fellaheen.! By 1907 (a convenient year for analysis) there were 12,624 estates of fifty feddans or over, and 133,988 of five to fifty

feddans. Together they accounted for 75-6 per cent of the privately owned land. The remaining 24-4 per cent (1,323,313 feddans) was divided into 1,120,791 properties with an average size of 1-6 feddans. ‘This was condiderably less than was needed to support a single family.2 On the assumption that each family contained six members and that there was only one landowner per family, the following picture emerges. Of the 1,700,000 rural families in 1907, only just over one-twelfth owned sufhcient land to secure an adequate living for themselves, another two-thirds possessed some property but not enough to satisfy their needs, while a quarter had no land at all. With the steady

rise in population the effects of the unusual distribution of ownership grew worse. By 1913 the land held in properties of under five feddans had mounted by only 95,646 feddans. But as these were now owned by an extra 290,467 cultivators, the average size of such plots had shrunk to just over one feddan. In the meantime, the number of landless families had continued to increase, until by 1917 they accounted for 53 per cent of the population in Upper Egypt, 40 per cent of that in the Middle Egypt, and 36 per cent in the Delta. The figures for the distribution of landownership into hold-

ings of various sizes also allow some comparison between conditions in the country’s two regions. Most importantly, they show that there was a very much greater concentration of t According to the survey of the use made of loans from the Agricultural Bank in 1908, 25-26 per cent of the money advanced was used for land purchase by small proprietors. Harvey, Sir P., ‘Memorandum Regarding the Agricultural Bank of Egypt’, in Gorst, 20 Mar. 1909: F.O. 368/284. 2 It was generally assumed that it took about four feddans of land to support a family: W. Cleland, ‘A Population Plan for Egypt’, Z.C., no. 185 (May 1939), p- 47!: 3 Thomas, Agricultural and Economic Position of Egypt (GB), p. 21.

1880-1914, Agriculture 241 large estates in the Delta than elsewhere. In Igo1 properties of fifty feddans and over occupied 51 per cent of the privately owned land in Lower Egypt compared with only 27 per cent in Upper Egypt.! This evidence of the power of rich men to obtain control of so much of the most valuable soil is further emphasized if one looks at the four main cotton-growing provinces, Buhaira, Sharqiya, Daqahliya, and Gharbiya. There, estates of fifty feddans and over accounted for 56 per cent of the land in private ownership. 2. THE RISE IN LAND VALUES AND RENTS The value of land

One of the consequences of the greater security for property which accompanied the increasing European control of the

Egyptian administration after 1880 was the creation of a considerable market in land. Advertisements in the Bulletin of the Egyptian Agricultural Society in 1880 and 1881 show that in those years a number of large estates were being offered for sale at prices which ranged from {E25 to £E50 a feddan. Such a development was very much assisted by the introduction, in 1876, of a mortgage law along French lines, which provided guarantees for anyone who lent money on land by allowing him to seize it for non-payment of capital or interest. Until then both law and tradition in Egypt had forbidden the seizure of property against a debtor’s will. This was followed, four

years later, by the establishment of two large mortgage companies, the Crédit Foncier Egyptien and the Land and Mortgage Co. Once land could be freely used as security against loans it became an important asset, and the value attached to

services of these companies can be seen from the fact that within the first five months of operation the Crédit Foncier made advances worth over £E1,000,000.? Further development of the market in land was hindered by the ‘Urabi rebellion, the occupation of Egypt by British troops, 1 These calculations are based on figures in Baer, History of Landownership, m Creda Foncier Egyptien, Crédit Foncier Egyptien, 1880-1930 (Cairo n.d.), p. 15.

The Crédit Foncier only advanced money up to 50 per cent of the value of the land given as security. Assuming that good land was worth £E25 a feddan, loans

821643 R

of £E1 million would have affected 80,000 feddans.

242 The Growth of the Economy and the uncertain conditions which followed. At the same time

agricultural incomes declined and instalments of mortgage loans went unpaid. Between 1883 and 1889 the Crédit Foncier was forced to expropriate nearly 20,000 feddans, which it could

sell only on the most generous terms.! Other companies and institutions with land to sell had a similar experience.

| Land prices began to revive again in the early 1890s as a result of such factors as the increase in agricultural yields, the development of rural transport, and the growing feeling among property-owners that the British Occupation was going to be more permanent than had at first seemed likely. ‘The upward movement in values was then continued by the sharp rise in the

price of agricultural products after 1898, and the influx of foreign capital seeking investment opportunities in mortgage and land companies which began at the turn of the century. In 1901 the Belgian Consul-General was reporting that he knew of land which had risen by 100 per cent in value in the previous seven or eight years.2 And in 1904 Delta fields were changing hands at £{E6o-80 a feddan,3 while a year later some sales went as high as {E160 a feddan.* Such an increase provided a large, almost wholly unearned, increment for those fortunate enough to possess property. Prices continued to rise until the financial crisis of 1907. ‘There was then a brief fall in values,$ but by 1914 they seem to have been back at their former high level.®

Rents

One other factor which helped to make landownership more

profitable was the rise in money rents which started in the 1890s. At the beginning of the decade they may have been as low as Pt. 140-50 a feddan, but then increasing agricultural incomes and growing competition among the fellaheen to lease land caused a sharp upward movement.’ In 1902 the Belgian

Consul-General suggested that the average rent in the Delta 1 Papasian, E., L’ Egypte économique et financiére (Cairo, 1926), pp. 238-9. 2 Recueil consulatre, vol. 113 (1901), p. 330. 3 Keyptian Gazette, 6 Jan. 1904.

4 The Times, 1 Jan. 1906. 5 Recueil consulatre, vol. 146 (1909), pp. 116-17. 6 Balls, Eeypt of the Egyptians, p. 180.

7 Schanz, pp. 44-5.

1660-1914, Agriculture 243 was about £E4 a feddan.! Ten years later Schanz stated that much permanently irrigated land was being let for £E8-10,? while Kitchener, in his report for that same year, mentioned that some rents were then as high as £E12-18.3 This rise in rents had two important consequences. In the first place, it greatly increased the incentive for a landlord to let

his land. By the turn of the century a number of the richer landlords were beginning to discover that they could secure almost as high a return by renting out their land as by farming it themselves.4 The advantage of such a practice was further augmented by a change in the method of leasing land. Tradi-

tionally the vast majority of Egyptian rented property had been subject to the métayer (sharecropping) system, whereby the

owner let the ground and buildings to his tenants under an

agreement that the produce of the land was to be shared between them in a certain proportion. This was the only means feasible in a society where the fellaheen were unable to provide

all their own working capital and where profits from the traditional crops were so uncertain.s Such an arrangement involved the close supervision of the tenant’s activities by the owner to ensure that he received his proper share and that the land was worked in the way he desired.© However, with the rise in cash incomes in the 1890s and the provision of easier credit facilities produced by ever-increasing concentration on cotton cultivation, the conditions which had given birth to the métayer system began to disappear, at least in the Delta, while landlords were less and less willing to go to the bother of arrang-

ing for the necessary supervision. here was thus a tendency to change to a new method of renting, that known as fermage, in

which the land was taken over by the tenant for a certain period of time for a fixed sum. This was particularly suitable for land where cotton was grown, for the landlord was assured of a steady income.’ He could also avoid the need to collect the rent himself by letting his land to agents who would, in turn, ' Recueil consulaire, vol. 119 (1902), p. 297. 2 Schanz, pp. 44-5. 3 Annual Report for 1912, pp. 214-15.

4 Schanz, p. 81. See also J. H. Monson, “The general Management of Egyptian Landed Property’, pt. 2, 7.K.A.S., i, no. 3 (May/June 1899), p. 105. s K. Gali, p. 138. ® Monson, pt. 1, 7.K.A.S., i, no. 1 (Mar./Apr. 1899), p. 71. 7 ‘Todd, Political Economy, p. 53.

244, Lhe Growth of the Economy sublet it to the fellaheen.! Another advantage stemmed from the fact that the fermage system was essentially a short-term arrangement. This allowed the owner to take advantage of periods when the price of agricultural products was rising to raise rents at short intervals,2 and was undoubtedly much in vogue from the 1880s onwards.3

Unfortunately the absence of any statistics as to the area of land rented according to either method (or, indeed, as to the total area of land rented at all)4* makes it impossible to assess the extent to which the métayer system may have been replaced by the fermage before 1914. On the one hand, we have H. Pensa’s

statement that the former was the usual means of renting in the early 1890s;5 on the other, the assertion by two writers, J. A. Toddé and P. G. Elgood,’ that the popularity of the latter was

increasing round about 1910. There is also W. Cartwright’s suggestion that fermage was the common practice on the larger estates at about the same time;$ but that is all. Meanwhile, the situation is complicated still further by the fact that there was also much use made of a hybrid system, known as shirk, which involved payments by the tenant in both cash and kind.° A second problem concerns the arrangements involved in a tenancy based on a sharecropping agreement. Such an agreement traditionally involved a decision to divide the produce of

the land according to some fixed proportion, perhaps a third to the tenant and two-thirds to the landlord, where the latter provided most of the working capital. It follows that, whereas an owner who employed the fermage system could ensure that he alone obtained all the benefit deriving from an increase in ™ Boustani, H. 8., Pour Pagriculture égyptienne (Cairo, 1920), p. 21.

2 Gali, p. 135. 3 Some owners were employing one- to three-year contracts as early as 1881:

Société égyptienne d’Agriculture, ‘Rapport du comité pour l’exerice 1881’, B.S.E.A., no. 11 (31 Mar. 1881), p. 17. 4 The methodological introduction to the 1917 census contains the information that the census enumerators were instructed to discover whether land was rented or farmed by its owner: Census of Egypt taken in 1917, vol. i (Cairo, 1920), Annexe VI. However, these data were never published. 5 Pensa, H., L’Egypte et le Soudan égyptien (Paris, 1895), p. 113. © Political Economy, p. 53.

7 ‘Egyptian Agriculture’, C.S.7., iv, no. 41 (Feb. 1910), 100.

8 ‘Notes on Rent, Labour and Joint-ownership in Egyptian Agriculture’, C.S.F. iv, no. 41 (Apr. 1910), p. 30. 9 Boustani, Pour [agriculture égyptienne, p. 22.

1880-1914, Agriculture 245 agricultural prices by raising the rent, anyone using the métayer method had to content himself with only a part of the

extra income. However, although there is a great deal of information about different type of sharecropping agreements,! it is impossible to state categorically that landlords of this latter

type were not able, over time, to alter the basic arrangement so as to secure a greater share of rising receipts. The reform of the tax system

One last factor which made the ownership of land more profitable was the series of reforms in the system of taxation which began after 1880. The many abuses in the system of apportionment and collection before that date have already been described.? A first attempt at a remedy was made under

the Dual Control. Later, in the early years of the British Occupation, other minor but important improvements followed. These included paying tax-collectors a regular monthly salary and subjecting them to closer supervision, efforts to ensure that

all the large landowners actually paid their taxes, and the publication of comprehensive regulations governing every aspect of assessment and collection. Thus, by the middle of the

1880s, it is possible to assume that for the first time in the century the majority of cultivators were paying only what was officially inscribed in the tax registers. In addition, the maximum rate of tax on any piece of land was fixed at Pt. 164 a feddan, arrears of over £E1,000,000 were cancelled, and, in the 1890s, when the threat of bankruptcy was averted, reductions in assessments worth over £E500,000 were made in various parts of the country.3 As a result, the average amount collected

per feddan declined from £E1-046 in 1884 to £Eo-842 in 1898.4

However, in spite of these substantial improvements taxes continued to be assessed on the basis of the land-tax registers drawn up under Sa‘id, a situation which resulted in many people

paying money for land they did not own. Again, the tax often had little relevance to the actual value of the land. One example 1 See, for example, Cartwright, pp. 29-31; Gali, pp. 135-40. + See pp. 145-6. 3 Cromer, Annual Report for 1897, P.P., 1898, vol. cvii, p. 632. 4 A.S. 1914, p. 414.

246 The Growth of the Economy mentioned by Gorst in his report for 1907 concerned a village in which some of the holders of kharajiya land had paid at a rate of 82 per cent of the rental value, while a number of ‘ushuriya holders paid only at 3 per cent.! No attempt was made to remedy this state of affairs until 1895, when a commission under Sir William Willcocks was

appointed to examine the incidence of land-tax as it then existed.2 In order to allay the fears of many landowners, and thus to ensure their co-operation, it was made clear that the

purpose of the examination was not to increase the total amount of land-tax paid—this was to remain the same—but to undertake a redistribution of the existing tax burden so that it bore a closer relation to the value and the fertility of the land. The work of the Willcocks Commission was accomplished by ten sub-commissions which visited every village in the country and assessed the rental value of each ‘hod’ (haud: an area of 100

feddans or so of the same quality). The next stage was to calculate what proportion of the value of each hod should be taken in taxes. This was done by dividing the total rental value

for all the cultivated land of Egypt, £E16,356,000, by the amount of land-tax paid in 1894. The result was a figure of 28-64

per cent. However, before these new rates could be introduced a new cadastral survey was needed, since it was known that

the areas recorded in the land-tax registers were often incorrect and that the boundaries of many villages were uncertain. The survey was begun in 1808. As the relevant maps were produced, the new tax rates were introduced province by province.

Once this was done the old distinction between karajiya and ‘ushuriya land disappeared and everyone paid at the same rate. Owners whose property was now assessed at a lower figure clearly derived great benefit from these reforms. But even those who were forced to pay more received considerable advantages. Ever since the beginning of the British Occupation it had been clear that some changes in the system were neces-

sary, and the removal of the uncertainty surrounding the Government’s intentions was one of the number of reasons underlying the rise in land values in the 1890s. Again, the 1 Annual Report for 1907, P.P., 1908, vol. cxxv, p. 200. 2 This paragraph is based on information in The Cadastral Survey of Egypt (Eg-),

pp. 113-39. 3 Willcocks and Craig, ii, p. 802.

1880-1914, Agriculture 247 revised registers gave owners a more secure title to their property, a factor of great importance especially when it came to obtaining mortgages. Finally, an owner whose tax assessment might have been raised could rest assured that, according to law, there would be no new adjustment for a period of thirty years.’ As a result he was able to keep for himself all the benefit from the rapid rise in the price of agricultural produce which

began in the late 1890s. Throughout the remainder of the period there was a steady diminution of the fraction of gross profits paid in tax. 3. AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

The area under crops other than cotton , Table 44 shows the changes in the areas devoted to each major crop between 1886-7 and 1910-13. These figures do not

have the same claim to accuracy as those for cotton. In a TABLE 44 Area Devoted to Each Major Egyptian Crop, 1886-7 and 1894-5 to 1912-13 (Annual Averages) 1894-5 to 1899-1900 1904-5 to 1909-10 to

1886-7 1893-4 1898-9 to 1903-4 1908-9 IQI2-13 feddans feddans feddans feddans feddans feddans

Wheat 1,241,100 1,296,411 1,214,463 1,270,276 1,207,088 1,269,513

Beans 755,868 689,472 650,996 647,292 5745176 524,511 Barley 529,351 459,947 499,114 537,131 4475542 373,102 Maize 1,125,121 1,474,826 1,474,227 1,726,504 1,781,771 1,838,151 Rice 149,717 180,776 198,554 164,162 249,273 245,657

Sugar 71,203 72,339 799233 79,282 46,847 48,253 Cotton 865,526 965,946 1,090,240 1,305,019 1,582,717 1,699,690

Fruit,

vegetables .. 13,675 16,467 20,493 26,997 29,166

SOURCES:

1886—7: Recueil consulaire, vol. 78 (1893), pp. 86-7. 1893-4: A.S. 1909, pp. 268-9.

1894-5 to 1898-9: A.S. 1910, pp. 238-41. 1899-1900 to 1912-13: A.S. 1914, pp. 322-5.

sample check made in Qalubiya in 1905-6, the sarrafs’ returns were shown to be 6-7 per cent too high for wheat, 12 per cent too high for beans, and 39-2 per cent too high for barley. As for ' Michel, B., ‘Etude sur les recettes de l’Etat’, E.C., no. 72 (Apr. 1923), p. 301.

248 Lhe Growth of the Economy birsim, here they were 127°4 per cent too low,! an error which seems to be so large as to make such figures useless to work with,

and they have been excluded for this reason. Again, an inaccuracy of this magnitude must be taken to throw serious doubts on the statistics for the total crop area, and these too

have been excluded.

The most obvious point, apart from the advance made by cotton, is the increase in the cultivation of rice and maize and the decrease in that of beans and barley. The wheat area, on

the other hand, remained almost constant throughout the period. T'wo main factors underlay these movements. Firstly, the extra summer water allowed the expansion, not only of cotton cultivation, but of maize and rice as well. Secondly, one

result of the substitution of a biennial for a triennial cotton rotation was that a cereal crop could generally be grown only one winter out of every two instead of two out of three.? This is

probably sufficient to account for the decline in the area devoted to beans and barley. As far as can be ascertained, the small changes which took place in the comparative prices of the various crops played only a minor role in these movements. As in the case of cotton, price changes were also of little

importance in influencing the cultivators’ annual decision

about what to plant. Wheat-cultivation failed to expand following the 20 per cent increase in receipts in 1897 and an even larger rise in 1908; the area devoted to beans remained

constant in spite of the fact that prices were augmented by

35 per cent in 1906. This is in line with the assertion,

made earlier, that the fixed system of rotations practised in Lower Egypt ensured that fields were cultivated in the same way year after year. In Upper Egypt, on the other hand, culltivators seem to have paid greater attention to price, and on a number of occasions they appear to have increased the area under cereals in response to prospects of greater profit. As already noted in Chapter VII, they were also willing to substi-

tute cotton for sugar when the value of the latter harvest declined after 1900. A more important cause of annual 1 H.G.M., p. 169. The regular collection of statistics began only in 1893-4, but the village sarrafs were also used in an earlier attempt to calculate the area devoted to the major Egyptian crops, that made by A. Boinet for the year 1885-6. 2 For an example of both systems of rotation, see pp. 253, 258.

1880-1914, Agriculture 249 fluctuations in crop area in the Delta was the regulations issued by the Irrigation Department restricting the growth of rice and maize in summers when the level of the Nile was abnormally low.

The fact that the area under cotton and maize increased by a very much larger amount than the decrease of that devoted to beans and barley indicates a more intensive use of agricultural land. This trend can be measured statistically by a method suggested by Dr. El-Iman of the Institute of National Planning in Egypt.! The first step is to make an estimate of the length of time taken to produce each crop. The following average periods will be used: wheat, 6 months; barley, 54; beans, 44, bzrsem, 23; cotton, 9; sugar, 12; rice, 6; maize, 4; and other crops, 4.? Each of these average periods is then multiplied by the area cultivated with that particular crop, to give what Dr. El-Iman calls ‘the exploitation area’. Finally, the sum of the individual exploitation areas is obtained and divided by the total amount of cultivated land to obtain ‘the exploitation rate’, that 1s the average amount of time for which each Egyptian feddan was actually under cultivation, expressed as a fraction of a year. This procedure has been followed for 1886-7 and 1912-13.3 During the first of these two seasons the exploitation rate was 0:531 (6:37 months), while during the second it was 0-662 (7-94. months). Such a comparison provides a good indication of the more intensive use of land and of the consequent diminution in the annual fallow period. One other significant development should be mentioned. This was the way in which there was a further decrease in the variety of crops grown in Egypt.

On the one hand, no new product of any importance was introduced during this period; on the other, there was a decline in the cultivation of sugar, while tobacco was banned entirely in 1890 in an effort to raise the revenue obtained from the special duty levied on imports.+ The only exception to this trend towards ever-increasing concentration on five or six major crops was the 1 Egypt, Institute of National Planning, Memo no. 259, A Production Function for Egyptian Agriculture, by Dr. M. El-Iman (Cairo, 31 Dec. 1962). ‘The explanation which follows is taken from pp. 5-7. 2 Cressaty, p. 28. 3 I have used a figure for the cultivated area in 1886. Sources: Table 4 and A.8S. 1914, pp. 322-3. The statistics for the area devoted to birsim have had to be used

regardless of their great inaccuracy. | 4 Gelat, pp. 465-6.

250 The Growth of the Economy growing attention being paid to the production of fruit and vegetables, the area under which nearly doubled between 1894 and 1914. The volume of agricultural production

It seems likely that all the major Egyptian cereal crops showed some improvement in yield during the period under discussion.

However, official statistics are lacking before 1909, and the only consecutive series of figures comes from the State Domains.

These are given in Table 45. Unfortunately, even though they TABLE 45

Average Yield of Wheat, Beans, and Barley on the State Domains 1860-1913. (Annual Averages)

Wheat Beans Barley

ardabbs| ardabbs| ardabbs/

feddans feddans feddans

1880-4 3°29 2°37 2°37 1885-9 3°54 2°45 2°89 1890-4 4°56 3°23 1895-9 5712 3°55 3°98 3°97 1900-4 1905-9 5°37 5°72 3°78 3°43 3°71 3°57

IQIO-13. 545 3°7 51 Source: A.S. 1914, pp. 448-50.

were taken from estates in different parts of the country, there is no real reason to suppose that they bear very much relation to the national average. Comparison with the various official figures for the years 1908-9 to 1914 given in Table 46 shows that, at this time, there were marked variations between the two. Again, there is evidence to suppose that during the early 1880s the yields on the Domains were lower than those for Egypt as a whole, very largely owing to bad management,! and thus that the advance was more rapid than the national average for the

remainder of the period.? This must be born in mind when 1 Chélu, pp. 256-7. # Cromer, Annual Report for 1895, p. 1001,

ee

1880-1914, Agriculture 251 TABLE 46

Comparison between Figures from the State Domains and Official

Sources for the Average Yields of Various Egyptian Cereal Crops, 1go8—g

to 1914 (ardabbs|feddan)

1909-13° 1913°

1908-9 1909-13> State 19134 State 1914

Egypt Egypt Domains Egypt Domains Egypt

Wheat 4 6 4°88 5°485°53 5°25 512 4°75 Beans 3°66 4 4°41 Barley 7 5°64 4°88 5°86 6°23 5°24

Rice 5 4°3 Maize 64 6°74 6-33

a. Cressaty, pp. 177-9.

SOURCES:

b. Allenby, Report for the Years 1914-1919, p. 789. c, e. A.S. 1914, pp. 448-50.

d,f. Egypt Ministry of Finance, Cotton Bureau, Technical Bulletin no. 3, Index Numbers of Agricultural Production in Egypt, 1913-1929, by M. El-Darwish

(Cairo, 1932), Table 3, p. 5.

looking at Table 47, which gives an estimate of the production of three of the four major cereals for the years 1886-7, 1895-9 to 1910-13 based on figures for the yield of crops on the State Domains. It is certainly legitimate to conclude, however, that

there was a substantial increase in the size of the Egyptian TABLE 47 Estimate of the Egyptian Production of Wheat, Beans, and Barley, 1886-7, 1895-9 to 1910-13 (Annual Averages)

1886-7 1895-9 1g00-4 1905-9 IQIlO-13

ardabbs ardabbs ardabbs ardabbs ardabbs

Wheat = 4,393,494 6,218,051 6,821,382 6,904,543 6,195,724 Beans = 11,851,877 2,311,036 2,446,764 1,969,424 ~— 1,919,710

Barley —1,503,814 1,981,483 1,992,756 1,597,725 21045295 Totals 7,749,185 10,510,570 11,260,902 10,471,692 10,219,228 SOURCES:

Production has been computed from figures for the area of the three crops contained

in Table 44 and for the yields on the State Domains contained in Table 46, with the exception of the years 1910-13, when the official figures for yields of wheat and barley (also to be found in Table 46) have been used. In the case of the season 1886—7 I have used the yields for the five-year period 1885-9.

252 The Growth of the Economy cereal harvest during the early 1890s. This was followed by a period in which output remained almost constant, the further rise in yields being offset by the reduction in the areas devoted to beans and barley. Figures for other crops are almost com-

pletely lacking. But where they exist they provide some additional evidence that the rise in yields was a general one. Maize, for example, yielded 3-64 ardabbs per feddan on Domains

land in 1879,! whereas, by 1913, the national average was

6-33 ardabbs per feddan.? |

The reasons for this advance in yields can only be guessed at.

In particular, as in the case of cotton, it 1s difficult to decide how much importance should be attached to the role of irrigation and how much to better management. As the years of most rapid increase, the 1890s, coincided with the period when the effects of the reconstruction of the Delta Barrage were first being felt, it would seem reasonable to assume that the provision of extra water was one factor underlying the rise in yields. And yet it seems unlikely that this could be the whole story, particularly as the increase seems to have continued so long after the first effects of the Barrage must certainly have passed. In the case of wheat some general advantage may have accrued from the introduction of a new strain, developed by

the State Domains administration, which, according to J. Anhoury, soon came to be preferred to the traditional types by the majority of cultivators on account of its higher yield.3 On the other hand, there is very little evidence to suppose that there was anything but the most marginal improvement in the skills with which such crops were grown. However, this is a point which will be dealt with at greater length in the following section. Methods of cultivation in Lower Egypt in the early twentieth century

It has already been suggested that by the first decade of the twentieth century the majority of cultivators in Lower Egypt had changed from a triennial to a biennial cotton rotation, and

that the more intensive use of the land had been further 1 Administration des Domaines de l’Etat égyptien, Rapport... a Vappui du compte général des recettes et des dépenses de l’exerice 1880 (Alexandria, Cairo, 1881),

” 2 See Table 46. 3 ‘Le blé en Egypte’, E.C., no. 85 (Mar. 1925), p. 202.

1880-1914, Agriculture 253 increased by the growth of an additional crop of summer or Nilt maize made possible by the extra supplies of water. The other crops in the rotation varied according to local practice, but one common system was as follows:

Winter Summer Nilt

First year Birsim Cotton Fallow

Second year Beans or Fallow Maize or

Wheat fallow!

It has also been suggested that, at this same period, there was a marked increase in the productivity of Egyptian agriculture, made possible not only by the more intensive use of the

land but also by a rapid advance in the yield of all the major crops. On the face of it such an improvement might seem a tremendous achievement. However, it has to be pointed out that it was only brought about at the price of a serious exhaustion of the soil which limited any further increase in productivity for the next twenty-five years. For one thing, investment in new drains had been allowed to lag far behind that in new dams and barrages, leading to salination in many areas and to a rise in the water table. This was not due to ignorance—from their first years in Egypt the Anglo-Indian engineers had shown themselves aware of the need to spend money on drainage?—but rather to a habitual tendency to think on a scale which totally failed to match the scope of the country’s requirements; and it was only right at the end of the period, in 1912, that something was done to remedy the situation with the inauguration of Kitchener’s large schemes in the North Delta. Secondly, the cultivators themselves, though quick to change their method of crop-rotation or to use new and more prolific varieties of wheat and cotton, were much slower to learn the lesson that a more intense system of cultivation

must, of necessity, be matched by measures to restore the fertility of the soil by the use of chemical and other fertilizers. ' B.C.G.A. Cotton Cultivation in Egypt and the Sudan and Other Agricultural Matters

(Manchester, Apr. 1906), p. 12. Examples of other rotations can be found in Charles Roux, La Production du coton, pp. 163-6; Schanz, p. 29; Cressaty, p. 30;

‘Soil Temperatures during the Sharaqi Period’ (Eg.), p. 33; Boustani, H. S., [’ Agriculture et la mise en valeur des terres en Egypte (Cairo, 1911), Pp. 24-5.

* See, for example, Hollings, M. A (ed.), The Life of Colonel Scott Moncrieff (London, 1917), p. 175.

254 The Growth of the Economy Agricultural experts and agricultural societies had been trying to draw attention to this fact from at least as early as 1880,! but initially their warnings must have gone largely unheeded even among the more well-to-do cultivators, for by 1902, the first year for which detailed figures are available, imports of artificial fertilizers stood at only two tons, Thereafter, however, the amount increased to seventy-two tons in 1913, largely as a result of the activities of the foreign land companies. Meanwhile, the sale of Egyptian phosphates by a German company provided an additional source of supply, so that by 1909-10 it was

estimated that 5 per cent of the total cultivated area was being artificially manured.3 As for the peasant proprietors, the bulk of whom relied on locally produced organic manure, here

the situation was less happy. Even though the majority of Egyptian fields received some sort of treatment at least once every two years, there was insufficient manure to meet the demands of more intensive cultivation.* Furthermore, supplies

were diminishing. The mounds of decaying matter from ancient cities (kaums) were being fast used up,5 while the fact that the number of cattle declined during the first decade of the twentieth century meant that there was not enough dung to keep pace with the expansion of the cultivated area.6 Some small compensation may have been provided, for those who could afford it, by the sale of sewage products by such enterprises as the Cairo Manure Company, although, not surprisingly, it took some years for proprietors to appreciate the advantage which could be derived from their use.? The effects of soil-exhaustion began to show themselves during

and after the First World War, so that by 1920~4 the yield of every major Egyptian crop, with the exception of maize, was well

below its 1913 level. Some improvement in the situation took place from the late 1920s onwards, but even as late as 1935-9 total agricultural production averaged only 25-7 per cent above 1 See, for example, B.S.E.A., no. 11 (31 Mar. 1881), p. 14. 2 AS. 1914, pp. 302-3. 3 Schanz, p. 36.

45 Egypt, Willcocks and Craig, 11, pp. 762-3. . Ministry of Public Works, Report for the Year 1902, by Sir W. Garstin (Cairo, 1903), p. 447. 6 Craig, p. 181. 7 E.T.F. i, no. 11 (29 Nov. 1907), pp. 12-13. 8 A.S. 1998-1939, p. 376.

1880-1914, Agriculture 255 its 1909-13 volume;}! and this in spite of the expenditure of large

sums of money on continuous improvements in the system of

irrigation and drainage, the introduction of more prolific varieties of cotton,? and the fact that imports of chemical fertilizers had reached an average of 575,000 metric tons a year.3

A second major qualification about the increase in yields just before the First World War has also to be mentioned. Rapid though the advance may have been, it did not, as yet, approach

anywhere near the country’s full potential. It is true that by 1909-13 Egyptian cereal yields compared very favourably with those in many European states, while those for cotton were over twice as high as the American average (see Table 48).

Nevertheless, such was the basic fertility of Egypt’s soil that, with better methods and the greater use of chemical fertilizer,

production could have been very much larger than it was. Proof of this can be found by looking at the yields obtained by some of the better-managed estates. For example, on the farm attached to the School of Agriculture, 14-5 ardabbs of barley were obtained per feddan in 1906, as well as 8-6 ardabbs of wheat and 8-7 ardabbs of maize.+ There 1s also W. L. Balls’s assertion that cotton, if cultivated correctly, could be made to produce twelve cantars a feddan.5

Meanwhile, yields apart, the quality of the majority of Egypt’s cereal crops remained low. The ordinary barley was too dirty and too adulterated for export, cultivators being unwilling to go to the trouble of removing the fenugreek seed it contained

so that it could be used for malting.® Similarly, wheat was generally full of foreign matter and, in the case of traditional varieties, so stiff and irregular that it could be employed in a European-type of bread only if mixed with imported flour.’ 1 This figure comes from a Laspeyres Index consisting of the annual production of the seven principal Egyptian crops: cotton, wheat, beans, barley, maize, rice, and sugar. The base period is 1909-13. See my paper “The Uneven Increase in Egyptian Agricultural Production, 1890—1939’ (to be published in the proceedings of the Conference on Egypt since 1952, held at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in Sept. 1966). 2 Selim, H. K., Twenty Years of Agricultural Development in Egypt, 1919-1939

(Cairo, 1940), pp. 36-8, 55-8, 81. 3 AS. 1938-1939, P+ 377+ * Yearbook of the Khedivial Agricultural Society, 1906 (Cairo, 1907), pp. 208-9. 5 Egypt of the Egyptians, p. 191.

° British Chamber of Commerce of Egypt, Annual Report for rgo2 (Alexandria, 1903), p. g.

Fale cept of the Egyptians, p. 186; Anhoury, p. 202.

a te 256 The Growth of the Economy

Again, the quality of all cereals was further reduced by the system of thrashing by norag which left the grains in a particularly bad condition. TABLE 48 Comparison of Egyptian Yields of Cotton, Wheat, and Barley with Those of Other Countries

Wheat Barley Cotton

bushels#/acre bushels? /acre Ib./acre 1885-9 1909-13 1909-13 IQIO—13

Egypt 18-52° Denmark 37°38

25°55° 29°58 423°1

United Kingdom 30°! 32°62 35°08

Germany19°72 31°88 24°9 38°58 France Austria 28°04 28-04

United States 12°85, 14°58 23°9 187-8 Russia 8:07 10°78 16-64 SOURCES:

Egypt, Tables 37, 45, 46. Other countries 1885-9: Wotinsky, W. S. and E.S., World Population and Production (New York, 1953), p- 550. 1909-13: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1914 (Washington, 1914), PP- 521, 527; 542; 544, 576. NoTEs:

a. For the years 1909-13 the figures refer to bushels of the following types: Egypt (Imperial); U.S. (U.S.); Russia, Germany, Austria (60 lb.); U.K., France (Winchester). For further information see The Economist’s Guide to Weights and Measures, 2nd edn. (London, 1962), pp. 8, 23. b. Figures refer to bushels of the following types: Egypt (Imperial) ; U.S. (U.S.); Russia, Germany, Austria (48 lb.); U.K., France (Winchester). c. Yield on the State Domains, see Table 45, converted to bushels/acre at the rate of 1 ardabb = 5°444 bushels. d. National average, see Table 46, converted to bushels/acre at the (above) rate.

Such a state of affairs was a direct reflection of the predominantly peasant character of Egyptian agriculture. The overwhelming majority of the cultivators were illiterate! and untouched by even the most rudimentary education. Many of those in Lower Egypt (perhaps over half the population there)? 1 According to the 1907 census 85:9 per cent of the male population over 5 could neither read nor write: A.S. 1974, p. 35. 2 Ferguson, A. R., ‘Bilharzis’, C.S.7. iv, no. 45 (June IgIo), p. 129.

1880-1914, Agriculture 257 also suffered from bilharzia, a water-borne disease, which led to a pronounced loss of energy. Again, the implements at their disposal remained those which had been employed all through the nineteenth century and for which no satisfactory substitute had yet been found. The native plough, for instance, left much

to be desired in that it only disturbed the soil and did not allow it to become properly aerated. On the other hand, it cost only twenty piastres to construct, required no upkeep,! and was not too heavy for weak animals to draw. Peasants found it dificult to obtain cheap credit. Again, the changes in the method of leasing land deprived those who paid a cash rent from any of the advantages they might have gained from close supervision by their landlord: under the fermage system there was little incentive for the latter to go to any trouble to assist his tenants to obtain fertilizers or better seed if he himself was not to profit from any rise in yield which might result.? Finally, there was also the fact that a large number of the smaller proprietors did not own one single plot but strips of land scattered in various fields around the village, so that much time was wasted simply moving from one to the other.3

« Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suppose that at this period, or at any other, the Egyptian peasant was incapable of improving the practice of his agriculture. This can be seen, for instance, in the way in which the dalli method of cotton cultivation was almost totally abandoned by the late 1890s,* or from the fact that some peasants at least seem to have paid sufficient attention to expert advice to plant their cotton in late February, rather than early March, as a means of reducing the time during which the plants could be subject to boll-worm attack at the end of the season.s It is true that most changes— the alteration in the system of rotation above all—took place in ' Schanz, p. 30. 2 Charles Roux, La Production du coton, p. 169; Schanz, p. 36.

3 This phenomena was observed by Wallace (pp. 232-3) as early as 1883. He mentions the fact that some proprietors might own 20 to 30 narrow strips, some not more than 2 yards wide. According to G. Saab, writing over 80 years later, losses due to fragmentation of holdings were then estimated at 30 per cent of gross profit; The Egyptian Agrarian Reform, 1952-1962 (London, 1967), p. 10. 4 Lecomte, H., Le Coton (Paris, 1900), p. 44. > Foaden, G. P., “The Cotton Season of 1899’, 7.K.A.S. (Sept./Oct. 1899), p. 179.

Later, however, the experts were less sure about the merits of early sowing; see |

821648 S

Foaden and Fletcher, ii. pp. 383-5.

258 The Growth of the Economy response to the prospect of an immediate rise in income and did not always coincide with real long-term interests, but this was not a universal rule. The use of manure is a case in point: some peasants employed whatever supplies were to hand, while

others sought to add nitrogen to the soil by ploughing in their spring crop of d:rsim,! an action which deprived them of the

income they could have obtained from one or two extra cuttings. Another change of the greatest importance was the growing use made of metal tips placed over the wooden spike used to turn the earth on the traditional wooden plough.? As a rule, however, the main interest in improving agricultural practices continued to be shown by a number of the larger

proprietors. To begin with, such men demonstrated their concern for the preservation of soil fertility by retaining a rotation in which cotton was grown only once every three years. Other crops might then be planted as follows:

Winter Summer Nala

First year Birsim Cotton Fallow Second year Beans or Fallow Maize Birsim

Third year Wheat Fallow Maize3 There was also an increasing tendency to purchase European agricultural machinery, pumps and ploughs in particular, the import of which mounted to nearly £250,000 in 1907, before declining again as a result of the general economic depression.‘ Again, for a while at least, greater use was made of the facilities offered by the Khedivial Agricultural Society, among them the provision of artificial fertilizer, the publication of the results of experiments into better methods of production, and_ the organization of agricultural shows during which new tools were put on display. Membership of the Society mounted from 243 in 1904 to well over 3,000 the following year. Foreign proprietors made a special contribution to the spread of improved methods. Schanz writes that the finest model farm in_ the country, an estate of 1,200 feddans near Zagazig, was ownec 1 Balls, Egypt of the Egyptians, p. 179; Foaden and Fletcher, ii. pp. 363. 2 Rapport de la Commission du commerce et de V’industrie (Cairo, 1918), p. 118. 3 B.C.G.A., Cotton Cultivation in Egypt and the Sudan, p. 11.

4 A.S. 1914, pp. 302-3. 5 Schanz, p. 32.

1860-1914, Agriculture 259 by a German and managed by a Syrian.! There was also an increased interest in good management. Some landowners employed pupils from the Government’s Agricultural College to run their properties. Others sent their sons abroad to study modern methods. For example, Victor Mosséri, the son of

Moses Mosséri, a large landholder, studied agricultural science at Montpellier and Paris in the 1890s, before returning to Egypt to manage his father’s estates.? The first years of the twentieth century were also marked by increasing efforts on the part of the Government to do something to improve the general standard of Egyptian agricultural practice. l’o begin with, great reliance was placed on agricultural education of a type which had proved successful in Europe. A School of Agriculture was created in 1890, followed by a number of other technical schools for the sons of cultivators. Again, the Khedivial Agricultural Society was given a subsidy, part of which was to enable it to expand its work of organizing

meetings at which new techniques were described and of sending instructive literature out into the villages. However, it

was soon realized that methods of this kind had little or no impact on the vast bulk of the peasant population, and a search was made for ways which bore a very much closer relation to

Egyptian conditions. This process was given considerable impetus by the creation of the Department of Agriculture in 1911. Under its aegis, experimental farms were established in

various parts of the country in an effort to provide a more practical sort of instruction. Average or sub-average land would be borrowed from some local cultivator, who himself undertook

to carry out all the necessary agricultural operations on the advice of Inspectors from the Department. By this means the advantage of improved methods could be demonstrated in a way which was impossible on the Government’s own farms. Twenty-four such experiments were carried out in 1911 (eleven involving the growth of cotton), all of which produced better results than those obtained on neighbouring fields.3 As a result of the success which attended this innovation, the number of plots was increased to forty-four in 1912.4 Meanwhile, a second

' Ibid., p. 42. 2 Wright, p. 362. 3 Schanz, p. 33.

* Dudgeon, G. C., ‘Improvement in Quality and Yield of Cotton’, in Int. Fed. Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation . . . to Egypt, p. 31.

260 The Growth of the Economy way in which assistance was brought more closely in line with the country’s requirements involved the provision of specially

selected cotton seed to the poorest cultivators, on credit.! However, such activities came too near the end of the period under discussion for it to be possible to come to any sort of

assessment of the effect they may have had on Egyptian agriculture in general. 4. AGRICULTURAL INCOME The value of agricultural production

Only two thoroughgoing attempts were made before 1914 to calculate the total value of Egypt’s agricultural production (excluding livestock, milk, and eggs). The first was by Sir William Willcocks in 1895. This was part of his revision of land-tax assessments on the basis of the rentable value of the properties in question. In spite of the fact that it was a period when the prices of all major crops were at a very low level, he

produced an estimate for gross agricultural production of £E39,060,500,2 a figure which, in the light of later calculations, would seem to be somewhat too high. Fifteen years later, the Comte Cressaty, the founder of the Banque Hypothe-

caire Franco-Egyptienne, made a second estimate using information about area and average price which refers to the year 1908-9, obtained from the Government Statistical Yearbook.

Estimates for the average yield of the main agricultural products came from the Department of Agriculture and do not have the same claim to accuracy. In particular, the figure for wheat looks surprisingly low and that for barley too high (see Table 46). Cressaty put the gross value of Egypt’s crops at £E60,600,000, of which cotton produced £E26,700,000, and the four principal cereals, wheat, beans, barley, and maize, £E21,300,000. This estimate will be found in Table 49. For some reason it excludes cotton seed, the value of which must have come to around £F4,000,000. There is also a problem connected with birstm. Not only may the crop have been very much larger than the official statistics allow, but some sources ! Dudgeon, p.29. 2 Egyptian Irrigation, 2nd edn. (London, 1899), pp. 17-18. 3 Cressaty, pp. 178-9. 4 See pp. 247-8 for evidence as to the inadequacy of the official statistics fo! the area under birsim.

1880-1914, Agriculture 261 maintain that four or five cuttings could have been sold for more than the £E5 on which Cressaty bases his calculations.!

Table 49 also includes a second estimate, that of M. ElImam for the year 1913. This was obtained by multiplying figures for the volume of the 1913 harvest by 1914 prices.? It excludes bzrsim.

TABLE 49 Estimated Gross Value of Egyptian Crops for the Years 1908-9 and 1913

1908-9 1913 £E LE

Wheat 7,183,268 9,256,000 Beans 3,230,121 3,551,000 Barley 2,692,142 2,071,000 Maize 8,202,1407 11,675,000 Rice 2,693, 7362 3,211,000

Sugar 659,730 1,016,000

Cotton 26,720,880 29,145,000

Cotton seed 4,682,000 Birsim 7,058,965 Fruit and vegetables 455,010 Onions 346,580 561,000

Other 731,005

Total 60,573,577 67,315,000 SOURCES:

1908-9: Cressaty, pp. 178-9. 1913: A Production Function for Egyptian Agriculture (Eg).

Note: a. Includes value of straw.

Other estimates for the value of agricultural production also appeared before the First World War. But in every case they were unsupported by any evidence as to how they were obtained ;3 and a more satisfactory way of trying to assess changes 1 A.E.M. i, no. t (1 Nov. 1907), p. 8. 2 A Production Function for Egyptian Agriculture (Eg.), pp. 16, 38-41.

3 See, for example, two estimates for 1884, that of £E15,200,000 made by an anonymous author quoted in Borelli, O., Choses politiques de l’ Egypte, 1883-1895 (Paris, n.d.), p. 501, and that of 795,000,000 francs (£31,800,000) by A. Zogheb, to be found in ‘La production agricole de l’Egypte’, L’Economiste frangais (11 Oct. 1884), p. 447. The truth certainly lay between these two extremes.

262 The Growth of the Economy through time would seem to be to follow Cressaty’s and ElIImam’s method of multiplying the area under the main crops by a figure for the average export price, obtained from the Customs Administration, and one for the average yield per

feddan. This has been done for cotton, wheat, beans, and barley for 1887-8, and for five-year periods between 1894-5 and 1912-13. In such calculations the most obvious difficulty is to

obtain reliable figures for the yield of crops other than cotton for the years before 1909, and there is no alternative but to rely, once again, on those provided by the State Domains, in

spite of the reservations already made about them.! This accounts for the fact that only the three winter cereal crops have been included (see Table 50). TABLE 50 Estimated Value of Egypt's Production of Wheat, Beans, Barley, and Cotton, 1886-7 and 1895-1913, at Export Prices (Annual Averages’? (£ £,000)

1886-7 1895-9 1900-4. 1905-9 IQIO-13 LE LE LE LE LE

Wheat 4,186 5507 75314 8,738 7,843 Beans 1,691 1,790 2,208 1,831 2,096

Barley 880 1,110 1,196 1,110 1,797

Cotton 75999 11,064 16,688 21,301 26,995 Cotton seed 1,484 1,860 2,604 3,266 4,372 Total 16,240 21,331 30,010 36,246 43,103 SOURCES:

Cereals: area, A.S. 1914, pp. 322-5; yield, Table 45; price, Table 51. Cotton, cotton seed: Table 38. Norte: a. Prices have been raised by one-ninth until 1912.

Such calculations show that the gross value of these four crops increased one and a half times between 1887 and 1913. As the area devoted to their cultivation rose by only 15 per cent during the same period, the increase was almost entirely the result of the advance in both price and yield. The rise in value was most rapid between 1897 and 1907. Before this time 1 See p. 250.

1860-1914, Agriculture 263 the advance in yields was largely offset by the fall in price. After it, the reverse occurred, and yields levelled off or declined

while prices continued to advance. Figures for the yields of the other major crops are lacking, but it seems unlikely that

they declined. Thus, on the basis of the general advance in agricultural prices which occurred in the late 1890s, it must be supposed that they too showed a marked advance in value.

TABLE 5I Export Price of Major Egyptian Crops*

£,E/ardabb 4E/Kg 100 Wheat Beans Barley Maize Rice 1880-4. 1'102 1‘O10 0:630 0-871 1885-9 0-999 0-851 0°583 0-774 1890-4 0°940 0°797 0°532 0°657 1895-9 0-886 0-774 0°560 0°549 I-12 1900-4 1:072 0:902 0°593 0-714 1-188 1905-9 1-266 0°930 0-694 0°976 1-200 IQIO—-13 1-266 1092 0°854 0°895 I°125 SOURCES:

1880-94: Figures provided by G. Randome, Director of Statistical Service of the Customs, and given in Chakour, J. G., ‘Le rapport de M. Villiers-Stuart sur VEgypte’, L’Egypte, nos. xviii-xix (1 July 1895), p. 606. 1895-1913: A.S. 1914, p. 387.

Note: a. Prices have been raised by one-ninth until rgra2.

The question of movements in the value of Egyptian crops can also be approached from the point of view of their gross profits per feddan. In Table 52, figures from the State Domains have been used to give the returns of the three cereals, wheat, beans, and barley, from 1880 to 1913. Wheat, like cotton, shows a period of rapid advance between 1890-4 and 1905-9, when both yield and price rose sharply. The value of beans and barley, on the other hand, increased gradually over the

whole period until 1910-13, when prices moved quickly upwards.

264 The Growth of the Economy TABLE 52 Gross Income per Feddan from Wheat, Beans, and Barley on the State Domains, 1880-1913. (Annual Averages)

Wheat? Beans? Barley?

LE LE LE

1880-4 3°577 2°175 1°503 1885-9 3°773 2°128 1°663 1890-4 4°447 2°594 2°102 1895-9 5°358 2650 2°154 1QOO—4. 6°570 2-991 2°303 1905-9 8-954 3-266 2°885 1910-13. 8-440 4139 4598 Source: A.S. 1914, pp. 448-50. Note: a. Includes income from straw.

The general rise in agricultural incomes, 1887-1913

It has just been stated that the total value of four of Egypt’s main crops increased by 150 per cent during the period 18871913. It has also been suggested that other commodities became more profitable. ‘This clearly resulted in a considerable rise in rural incomes, particularly as there is reason to suppose that 1: was not accompanied by any great advance in costs.! Figures to support such an assertion in the case of cotton have already been given in Chapter VIII. Further evidence comes from the fact that agricultural wages, where paid, seem to have remained more or less constant,? while the expense of watering crops almost certainly declined owing to the improvements in the system of irrigation. The introduction of agricultural roads which allowed the use of carts rather than the traditional camel

or donkey,? of light railways, and, later, the reduction of freight rates on the state railway system produced a further fall in costs.+ For those who owned land and who were not forced to rent, the only important increase in expenses was the small rise 1 A number of contradictory studies of total agricultural costs were made in the years just before 1914 but will not be given here on account of the fact that there is no way of checking on their reliability. See, for instance, Cressaty, p. 166. 2 Evidence for assertion will be found on p. 266. 3 Jullien, L., ‘Chronique agricole de l’année 1923’, F.C. xv, no. 76 (Jan. 1924),

p. 20. 4 Recueil consulaire, vol. 126 (1904), p. 261.

1880-1914, Agriculture 265 in the price of chemical fertilizer during the first decade of the twentieth century. Confirmation of the general advance in agricultural incomes

can be found in a number of independent indexes of rural prosperity. Some of these will be mentioned in a later section dealing with changes in the pattern of cultivators’ expenditure. But before this is done it is necessary to say something about the distribution of income obtained from the land during the thirty years before the First World War. The distribution of agricultural income

As a general rule, 1t can be assumed that the major proportion of the increased profits from agricultural production after 1887 went to landowners who either grew cotton themselves or leased their land to those who did. Tenants who worked fields rented according to some system of sharecropping must also have benefited from the general rise in incomes. On the other hand, cultivators who paid their rents in cash or who grew only cereals, as well as day labourers, can have obtained only a small share of the rising prosperity. Proof of these assertions will, it is hoped, emerge during the following discussion of the position of persons in all these various categories. Figures to illustrate the growth in incomes from cotton have already been given in Chapter VIII. They suggest that gross

profits per feddan doubled between 1885-9 and 1910-13. Movements in the income obtained from the general exploitation of the land are more difficult to gauge, however, for statistics are lacking; and there is also the problem posed by the fact that different systems of rotation produced different

profits. Once again the only continuous series comes ,from the State Domains. On these estates, where cotton was grown triennially, gross returns per feddan advanced from £E6-18 in the years 1895-9 to £Eg‘66 in 1910-13.! As for those estate-owners who let out their land, the figures cited earlier in this chapter indicate that it was possible to raise

cash rents to keep pace with the increase in profits from cotton.2 In some cases the returns obtained from leasing may even have advanced faster. Elgood gives an example of a small 1 Computed from figures in 4.S. 7914, pp. 444-5. 2 See pp. 242-3.

266 The Growth of the Economy landowner in Minufiya who told him that he had been able to rent his land for £E5 a feddan in 1899, £E7 in 1900, and £,E12 in 1909,' years in which income from cotton rose by only 75 per cent. It seems possible to assume that by the first decade of the twentieth century tenants were paying a large part of their gross income in rents. This is certainly true of those who rented land from the Aboukir Company. A balance-

sheet prepared for foreign visitors in 1912 shows that a man who had been leased eight feddans received {E51 for his cotton

and paid £48 of this in rent. His profit was made on his crops

of wheat, birsim, and maize, and from the milk of his two buffaloes. If the assertions contained in the previous paragraph are true, then, clearly, tenants who paid their rents in cash were not in a position to obtain more than a small share of the rise in agricultural profits. The same is also true of those workers who were paid by the day. It has already been suggested that their wages may not have risen at all during the period. J. B. Piott in his article, ‘Gauserie ethnographique sur le fellah’, maintained

that in 1899 agricultural labourers were paid two to three piastres a day, no more, it should be noted, than they had received in the 1870s.3 Nine years later, workers supplied by contractors for the Manzalawi estate were still being paid at the same rate. De Chamberet, on the other hand, maintains that there was a slight increase in wages. In the 1890s, he wrote, no one ever obtained more than three piastres a day, but by 1909 this had become the national average.’ Evidence of this sort cannot be taken as conclusive. However, it suggests that, at best, labourers received only a very small share of the increase in agricultural incomes. Two reasons for this situation may be suggested. The first, which applies only to the Delta, concerns the summer influx of workers from Upper Egypt. This annual migration seems to have begun in the 1880s, when, following the 1 Elgood, p. rol. 2 Lang Anderson, R., ‘The Reclamation of Lake Aboukir’, in Int. Fed., Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation... to Egypt, p. 234. 3 B.S.K.G., 5th series, no. 4 (1899), p. 218. 4 See p. 275. 5 De Chamberet, R., Enquéte sur la condition du fellah égyptien (Dijon, 1909), p 17-

See also A. Lambert, who gives a day wage of Pt. 2$-3 for Lower Egypt in 1914: ‘Les salariés dans l’entreprise agricole égyptienne’, E.C., no. 211 (Mar. 1943), p. 229.

1880-1914, Agriculture 267 abolition of the corvée, the public-works contractors given responsibility for canal-cleaning were forced to recruit gangs of workers in the south of the country, where there was considerable seasonal unemployment owing to the absence of perennial irrigation.! Later, this movement received additional impetus from labour shortages in various parts of the Delta after the rapid expansion of cotton-cultivation at the turn of the century, and from the fact that the inhabitants of Upper Egypt were less prone to bilharzia and were thus physically stronger.? The existence of this pool of workers, willing to work for contractors at low rates of pay, must certainly have helped

to depress the general level of wages.? A second reason why wages remained low was the way in which many agricultural labourers were attached to the estates on which they lived. Nahas, writing in 1901, described one system by which a peasant would receive several feddans of land at reduced rent in exchange for an undertaking to provide a certain number of workers when required. Such men were then paid forty to sixty centimes a day (Pt. 1-5 to Pt. 2-3). In other cases, those labourers who were paid with a share of the crops produced on an estate were often deeply in debt to the landowners, on whom they depended for cash to meet any sudden exigencies between

harvest and harvest. A third group which failed to share fully in the rise in agri-

cultural profits was that of cultivators who had to rely on cereals for a large part of their income. Although receipts from wheat, beans, and barley increased proportionately as much as those from cotton, in absolute terms they provided a decreasing fraction of its returns. This was the situation in much of Upper Egypt. Evidence of the difference in income between Egypt’s two regions comes from an estimate made by H. Verschoyle in

1906. According to his figures, the gross value of crops then averaged £15°5 a feddan in the Delta, compared with only £E7-7 in Upper Egypt. 1 Artin, Y., ‘Essai sur les causes du renchérissement de la vie matérielle au Caire dans le courant du XIXeé siécle (1800—1907)’, Mémoires presentés a l’ Institut égyptien, vol. v (Cairo, 1907), p. 87. Artin estimated that 500,000 to 800,000 men

came north each year between 1888 and 1891. 2 Russell, Sir T., Egyptian Service (London, 1949), pp. 38-9.

3 De Chamberet, p. 17. 4 Nahas, pp. 135-6, 141-3. 5 Feyptian Gazette, 29 Oct. 1906.

a

268 The Growth of the Economy Finally, let us return to the original assertion that it was those

who either grew cotton themselves or rented land to other cotton-cultivators who obtained the major proportion of the increased profits from agriculture after 1887. The figures for the distribution of land into estates of various sizes given earlier

in the chapter allow a closer look at just who these men were. As 50 per cent of the cultivated area of the Delta was held in properties of fifty feddans or over by some 8,000 to 9,000 owners, it was these men who must have received nearly half of all the income obtained from cotton in any one year, whether they themselves grew it or not. Hence, it was they who were also the primary beneficiaries of the rise in gross profits. The rest of the increase was shared by the remainder of the many hundreds of thousands of proprietors who owned smaller pieces of cottongrowing land. The effect of increasing agricultural income on the pattern of rural expenditure

If the reasoning in the previous section is correct, and the primary beneficiaries of the rise in agricultural income after the mid 1890s were the large-estate holders, it provides an important clue to the way in which the extra money was spent. Such men had a particular interest in buying rural land; but they were also ready to purchase houses for themselves in the two principal cities, to increase their consumption of European

imports, and, after 1900, to invest in shares in Egyptian companies. Let us begin by looking at the position in regard to land. Here the major development of the period was the sale of the remaining property belonging to the Daira Saniya, one of the great estates created by the Khedive Isma‘il, and then, from 1876 onwards, administered on behalf of those who held stock in the loan for which it had been pledged as security. In 1898 the Government surrendered its right to dispose of the land to a private enterprise, the Daira Sanieh Company, in exchange for a sum of money sufficient to pay off the remainder of the debt. At least 300,000 feddans were sold between 1900 and 1906,' ™ According to Lord Cromer the estate had consisted of 306,330 feddans in 1896 (Annual Report for 1895, p. 1001). But Baer states that 450,000 feddans were sold by the company: History of Landownership, p. 95. It is difficult to reconcile these two

figures unless it is assumed that Cromer failed to include large areas of unculltivated land.

1880-1914, Agriculture 269 for just over £F:13,000,000.! Some of the purchasers were land companies,? but, according to Baer, the ‘lion’s share’ went to form new private estates.3 In addition, nearly 85,000 feddans belonging to the State Domains were sold between 1897 and 1906,4 and there must have been a host of smaller transactions.

Land sales virtually came to a halt during the worst of the depression in business activity during the second half of 1907

and the early part of 1908. Yet even after conditions had begun to revive they did not take place on anything like the scale of the boom years. There was less public land for sale, of course; but an equally important reason was that proprietors

were now forced to use the greater part of their available resources to repay instalments on purchases made on credit before 1907.

The same pattern of expenditure can be seen in the case of shares. Here too the great increase in activity took place between

1897 and 1907, the amount of money placed in Egyptian concerns by residents in Egypt mounting from just under £,E2,500,000 to over £,£30,000,000 during this period.’ It is true that not all this represents capital which derived directly from agriculture;® but there is evidence from a number of sources that the rural sector was much affected by the general speculative fever of those years, and that even some of the smaller proprietors began to invest their profits in this way.’ Once again activity came to a standstill in 1907. However, in this case there was not even a small revival before 1914. The purchase or construction of houses in Alexandria and Cairo must also have proved attractive during the boom. Calculations made by A. Eid show that the value of buildings subject to the urban house tax in the former city increased by nearly £,E10,000,000 between 1905 and 1907.8 Finally, the richer proprietors must certainly have been responsible for some, at least, of the increase in the consumption of luxury imports

|,

from Europe. Unfortunately the Egyptian foreign-trade ' African World, Annual 1906 (London, 7 Dec. 1906), p. 103.

2 Ibid., pp. 103-4. 3 History of Landownership, p. 96.

4° ForA.S. 1914, p. 446. 5 See Table 53. a discussion of this point see pp. 287-90.

and Nahas, p. Ifo. 8 Eid, p. 41.

7 See, for example, Métin, A., La Transformation de l’Egypte (Paris, 1903), p. 231,

:

270 The Growth of the Economy statistics are not sufficiently detailed to allow a survey of individual items, but there are isolated pieces of evidence about the sorts of articles involved. In 1907, for instance, 250 motor-cars were imported worth 3,083,860 francs (£123,354).! Apart from the types of expenditure just described, part of the extra income was also spent in developing Egypt’s rural resources. Agricultural machinery worth over £E1,350,000

was imported between 1906 and 1913.2 Again, the richer cultivators must have invested some money in improving their own fields. [hey may also have used some of their income to construct cotton gins and presses and to make loans to their

tenants. But there is no reason to suppose that the amount spent in these sorts of ways was more than a very small fraction of that devoted to land purchase. This is in marked contrast to

the situation which obtained in another country where agricultural income was also advancing rapidly during the late nineteenth century, Japan. There, the richer farmer-merchants seem to have played an important role in rural development by investing their profits in the establishment of credit institutions, commercial enterprises, and even industries in their own districts.3

As for the small cultivators, they too spent much of their extra income on land purchase before 1907, often entering into

obligations which they then found difficult to meet once the boom was over and credit less easy to obtain. The purchase of goods from Europe was also important. The value of imported cotton cloth and thread doubled between 1885-9 and 1905-9; that of butter, margarine, and cheeses increased two and a half times during the same period.* Vegetable oil was another commodity which began to be purchased from abroad in greater

quantity. A second index of increasing rural prosperity is the number of passengers buying third-class railway tickets on the State Railways. These increased from 12,454,000 1n 1900 to 26,083,000 in 1907 and 28,574,000 in 1913.5 Both indexes support the assertion already made that the greatest advance in t Rapports commerciaux (Fr.), 1911, no. 965, ‘L’Egypte’, p. 52. 2 A.S. 1914, pp. 302-3.

3 Nakamura, J. I., ‘Meiji Land Reform, Redistribution of Income and Savings from agriculture,’ Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. xiv, no. 4 (July

1966), pp. 437-8. 4 AS. 1914, pp. 300-3. 5 A.S. 1910, pp. 140-1; A.S. 1914, pp. 172-3.

1880-1914, Agriculture 271 agricultural incomes took place between 1895-9 and 1905-9, and that, thereafter, the rate of increase slowed down considerably.

In addition, there is no doubt that a substantial part of the increase 1n agricultural income was simply hoarded or converted

into gold ornaments. British administrators like Lord Cromer tended to complain about the practice, feeling that the money would be better invested in productive works. However, some sort of saving of this kind was clearly no more than good sense for men whose economic dependence on cash crops like cotton exposed them to wide fluctuations of income. It is also the case that without a reserve of this kind to fall back on the effect of the post-1907 depression would certainly have been very much

more serious than it actually was. | Agricultural indebtedness

One last factor relating to agricultural incomes must now be discussed. This is the rise in the level of rural indebtedness

between 1880 and 1914. Debts arose from three sources: mortgages on land, the purchase of property on credit, and the loans made to small cultivators by village usurers or, after 1902, by the Agricultural Bank. The practice of mortgaging land in Egypt began with the

introduction of European property laws after the establishment of the Mixed Courts in 1876. It immediately became very popular with landowners anxious to raise money, and by 1882

the total mortgage debt had risen to £E5,821,912, secured against nearly 400,000 feddans.! No further increase in this form of indebtedness then took place until the 1890s, when the capital invested in mortgage companies was greatly augmented, allowing owners to obtain larger and larger sums of money by pledging their property. As a result the debt rose to an estimated £E19,000,000 in 19052 and £E44,227,012 in 1912.3 The clients of the mortgage companies were almost exclusively the bigger

landowners. In 1894, for example, over 70 per cent of all such borrowing was secured on properties of fifty feddans or over.+ In the years before 1907 they used the money mainly to * Lord Dufferin ‘Report on the Reorganization of Egypt’ (Feb. 1883), P.P.,

1883, vol. Ixxxili, p. 106. 2 Kid, p. 93. 3 Cressaty, p. 195. * Cromer, Annual Report for 1894, P.P., 1895, vol. cix, pp. 924~7.

|

272 The Growth of the Economy purchase more land.! But after the financial crisis of that year it was also employed to meet previous debts.2 In addition, small amounts were used to purchase shares or urban property or, In some cases, to lend to their tenants.3 It was not usual to obtain a mortgage where land was bought direct from a land

company. On such occasions the transaction was usually financed by the company itself. In 1905 Eid estimated outstanding debts of this variety at £K10,752,720.5 But by 1912 the decline in the volume of land sales had reduced the sum to just over £ E2,000,000.° Peasants were generally both unwilling and unable to mortgage their lands. Not only did they fear any arrangement which might lead to the eventual seizure of their property, but there was also the fact that the large companies did not generally agree to provide sums which were small enough to meet fellah needs.” ‘Thus they continued to obtain loans from the usurers who had secured such an entrenched position for themselves in the villages during Isma‘il’s reign. In such a situation it 1s impossible to suppose that contemporary attempts to put a figure to debts of this sort were anything more than guesses, the one exception being the government commission which examined indebtedness among small cultivators in 1913 and which placed the amount owed to usurers by the owners of properties of five feddans or less at £12,123,189.8 The only institution which made loans to the poorer fellaheen was the Agricultural Bank, a private enterprise created in 1902. In the first six years of its existence it lent out over £10,000,000 in small sums, either in short-term loans of up to £Ez20 on signature or in longer term ones on the security of land.? However, operations were then restricted in response to an increase in the total of arrears. A second factor was the attempt which was made to ensure that requests for fresh loans were

scrutinized more closely.9 By 1911-12 new lending had shrunk to only just over {£E600,000,'° while a year later activities came 1 Baer, History of Landownership, p. 103.

2 Ibid., p. 104. 3 De Chamberet, p. 65. 4 Légrand, F., Les Fluctuations des prix et les crises de 1907 et 1908 en Egypte (Nancy,

1909), p. 20. S Eid, p. 114. 6 Cressaty, p. 196.

7 Nahas, p. 114. 8 A.S. 1914, Pp. 509.

®° Harvey, ‘Memorandum regarding the Agricultural Bank of Egypt’ (GB). 10 AS. 1914, p. 588.

1880-1914, Agriculture 273 almost to a standstill as a result of the introduction of the FiveFeddan Law, which, by making the seizure of land under five

feddans for non-payment of debt illegal, made it virtually impossible for the Bank to lend money to small cultivators on property. It has now been shown that by the start of the First World War the total amount of rural indebtedness may have exceeded £E58,000,000—1.e. a mortgage debt of just over £ £44,000,000, an outstanding balance of land sales of £ E2,000,000, and a sum

of money owed by small cultivators to usurers and other creditors of at least £E12,000,000. On the assumption that debts in the first two categories carried interest at the rate of 8 per cent a year (the legal rate), and that those in the third paid at 25 per cent,! this total must have represented annual payments by the debtors of almost £E6,700,000. On the basis of the limited amount of information available it would seem

that the majority of those who had raised money on the security of their land were able to meet their instalments with-

out too great difficulty. For example, in 1911, a year when its loans totalled over £28,000,000, the Crédit Foncier was only forced to expropriate land worth £E84,000.2, Those who owed money to usurers were less well off, and many of them must have been forced to pay most of their available income to their creditors. However, this is a situation which undoubtedly obtained from the 1870s onwards, and it would be wrong to use the size of their debts to conclude that their condition was any worse off in 1914 than in previous years. 5. THE ESTATES OF MUSTAFA MANZALAWI, 1907-1910

So far the discussion of Egyptian agriculture after 1880 has been of a general nature. It will now be useful to close this chapter by considering the operation of one particular estate. Once again, information comes from a letter-book belonging to the Manzalawi family. On this occasion it contains a record of correspondence between Mustafa Manzalawi and his Greek nazir between September 1907 and April 1g10, giving details of the day-to-day management of his lands. Unfortunately, | 1 Nahas (p. 115) describes this as an average rate for local usurers.

821648 T

: 2 Papasian, pp. 237, 239. |

274 The Growth of the Economy many of the letters are illegible, but enough can be read to provide interesting information about how such an estate was run. Some time between 1882 and 1907 Mustafa Manzalawi abandoned his activities as a cotton broker. But although he continued to live in Alexandria, he still exercised control over his estate near Abu ‘l-Sir in Gharbiya province. This included 400 feddans of Manzalawi family land as well as 200 feddans

belonging to his wife. In addition, in 1905 and 1906, if not before, he rented 200 feddans from a neighbouring waqf at just under £E6 a feddan. ‘This was increased to 456 feddans in 1907, giving him a total of at least 1,050 feddans, of which some 40 per cent was let out to tenants at £E7 a feddan. It would seem that he leased most of his own fields, and then rented as much

extra land on which to grow cotton as the state of his funds allowed. During 1907 the estate produced over 1,500 cantars of cotton,

Of this amount, 1,120 cantars were sold in December for £,E6,075 to an agent of the Alexandria export house of Carver Brothers. It must have been of very high quality, probably Joannovitch, for it was purchased for Pt. 542 a cantar, at a time when the Alexandria quotation for Good Fair Brown, the standard grade, was only Pt. 365.! Prior to delivery it was ginned locally for Pt. 8 a cantar, at Manzalawi’s

expense. The seed, on the other hand, was sold to the gin owner for £588-9.2 Gross profits from the cotton crop thus came to just over £E6,650, or approximately {E22 a feddan. In addition, Manzalawi received at least £3,000 from rents and an uncertain sum from the sale of his maize, wheat, and birsim. The letter-book does not contain details of the whole year’s expenses. But those for the period June to October 1907 amounted to £E2,036, including {E880 for instalments of the

land-tax, £277 for local labour, and E618 for labour supplied by various contractors. The correspondence is less complete for the following two years, but it continues to raise a number of interesting points. 1 The average export price for the month of December 1907 for Good Fair Brown was 1633 dollars/cantar. A.S. 1914, p. 398. I have raised this figure by one-ninth to allow for the 10 per cent deduction made by the Customs. 2 A small portion of the seed was retained for the next season’s sowing.

1880-1914, Agriculture 275 One is the evidence it provides of the very tight financial control exercised by Manzalawi over the management of his estates. As a rule the proceeds from cotton sales or rents were dispatched at once to him in Alexandria, very little cash was left on the estate itself, and the nazir had constantly to rely on funds being returned to him to meet any large current expense. Manzalawi’s control also extended to the disposal of his tenants’

cotton. Such an arrangement had two important advantages. It was a means of ensuring that all rents were paid promptly, in full. It also meant that the tenants themselves secured a good price for their cotton, for the nazir was careful to see that it

was well cleaned and properly graded. a

- Secondly, the letters illustrate the dependence of the estate on labour supplied by various contractors. Hence, on 2 March 1909, 156 such workers were employed on cleaning wheat and

planting cotton. The next day this number had increased to 177, Wages were low, the majority of workers receiving only two piastres for ten to twelve hours in the fields. A final point raised by the correspondence is the difficulties

imposed on the management of the estate by the Egyptian financial crisis of 1907. Manzalawi had lost large sums of money from the decline in the value of his stocks and shares, as

well as from the failure of a soap factory which he had been attempting to start in Alexandria, and he was often unable to provide the working capital his lands required. From May 1908 onwards almost every letter from the nazir contained a plea for money to meet pressing expenses. But little was forthcoming. Thus, the June instalment of the land-tax could only be met out of the sale of wheat, while in July it was found necessary to pay for agricultural labour in cereals rather than money. In the meantime the irrigation pumps had stopped working for lack of fuel, while many of the contractors went unpaid, Later, in the autumn, it was possible to get the cotton crop picked and transported and the next land-tax instalment paid only after a large loan from a local ginner. This

Situation persisted throughout the period covered by the correspondence.

|

|

xX

THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY 1880-1914 INDUSTRY, SERVICES, AND COMMERCE wo developments of major importance occurred in the ) Egyptian economy between 1880 and 1914. One was the spectacular rise in agricultural income. This has been discussed in the three previous chapters. ‘he other was the great increase in the investment of private capital in Egyptian companies, particularly those connected with transactions in rural land. Much of the money came from Europe—almost as large a sum was raised abroad during the period as that borrowed by the Khedive Isma‘il—but a considerable amount derived from savings within Egypt itself. In this way, as in many others, the two developments were closely interrelated. The present chapter will begin with a description of the investment boom. It will then go on to consider the effect of company-promotion and agricultural development on industry and foreign trade. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the role of the Government and the foreign community in the industrial and commercial life of the time. I. THE GROWTH OF CAPITAL INVESTED IN EGYPTIAN PUBLIC COMPANIES Investment in Egyptian companies before 1893

Isma‘il’s abdication and the increased European direction of the economy which followed were accompanied by a brief period of large-scale foreign investment in Egyptian companies, and in foreign companies whose principal purpose was to conduct operations in Egypt.! One form this took was the creation ' For the purpose of brevity both these groups of companies will be referred to as Egyptian companies for the remainder of this chapter. This classification does

The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 277 of a number of enterprises to carry out projected government reforms in the system of irrigation. These included the Société d’Entreprises et de Travaux Publiques! and the Egyptian Public Works Company.? But the major institutions founded in the first two years after Isma‘il’s abdication were two large mortgage companies, the Crédit Foncier Egyptien and the Land

and Mortgage Co. The former was founded in 1880 by a combination of French financiers and a group of Alexandria and Cairo bankers. Capital was fixed initially at 80,000,000 francs (£3,200,000), and then raised by another 40,000,000 francs the following year. Of this, half was paid up.3 The Land and Mortgage Co. was a smaller concern with a capital of £1,000,000, founded mainly with British money.‘ Although the overwhelming proportion of the capital for these new companies was subscribed abroad,S it is important to

note that in a number of cases the initiative which led to their foundation was taken in Egypt itself. Sometimes it was the work of one of the Europeans who had been recruited into government service during Isma‘il’s reign. One such was A. E. Garwood, a Welshman who had come to the country in 1877 as chief engineer of the Railway Administration and who was partially responsible for the creation of the Anglo-Egyptian Coal, Iron, and Machine Co., as well as of the Egyptian Public Works Co.® More significant was the role played by Raphael Suarés, a member of a small but important group of Jewish and Greek banking families long established in Egypt. It was he who was responsible for interesting French financiers in the idea

of the Crédit Foncier, and who took a leading part in the establishment, with local money, of a small sugar refinery at Hawamdiya near Cairo in 1881.7 In the first enterprise he was not refer to branches in Egypt of foreign companies whose main field of activities was elsewhere.

1 Charles Roux, F., ‘Le Capital francais en Egypte’, E.C., no. 8 (Nov. 1911), . Panes A. E., Forty Years of an Engineer’s Life at Home and Abroad (Newport, Mon., n.d.), p. 149. 3 Crédit Foncier Egyptien, p. 14. * Wright, pp. 315-16. 5 For an estimate of the amount of shares and debentures in Egyptian companies held in Egypt and abroad, see Table 53. ° Garwood, pp. 149, 154. * Crédit Foncier Loyptien, p. 14; Mazuel, J., Le Sucre en Egypte (Cairo, 1937), P. 37-

278 The Growth of the Economy, 1660-1914 TABLE 53

(ra a a A Paid-up Capital and Debentures of Compames Operating in Egypt

eel Showing Amount Held Abroad and Amount Held in Egypt, 1883-1914 (LE,o000) (After Crouchley)

1883 1892 1897

Type of Held Held in Held Held in Held Held in

company abroad Egypt Total abroad Egypt Total abroad Egypt Total

Mortgage 3,401 425 3,826 4,122 425 4,547 5,543 425 5,968 Banking/

financial 1,843 1,843 681 93 774 681 93 774

Agricultural/

urban land 180 180 221 368 589 360 982 1,342

ee eee canals 62 62 145 145 1,851 367 2,218

Transport/

Industrial/ mining/

commercial 669 669 O15 356 1,271 2,974 609 3,583 5,975 605 6,580 6,085 1,242 7,326 11,409 2,476 13,885

1902 1907 IQIt4

Type of Held Held in Held Held in Held Held in

company abroad Egypt Total abroad Egypt Total abroad Egypt Total

Mortgage 9,601 924 10,525 34,090 5,590 39,680 48,369 6,200 54,569

Transport/ Banking/

financial 1,770 522 2,292 4,895 3,200 8,095 3,229 2,498 5,727

Agricultural] /

urban land 2,096 878 2,974 7,135 12,221 19,356 7,261 11,312 18,573

canals 3,245 725 3,970 3,620 2,327 5,947 3,988 2,088 6,076

Industrial/ mining/

commercial 5,418 1,101 6,159 7,170 6,928 14,098 8,406 6,801 15,207 22,130 4,150 26,280 56,910 30,266 87,176 71,253 28,899 100,152

Source: Crouchley, A. E., The Investment of Foreign Capital in Egyptian Companies and Public Debt, Ministry of Finance, Technical Paper, no. 12 (Cairo, 1936), pp. 148, 154-6.

Nore: a. The figures given show only the net changes in capital, between the years given: that is, gross additions to capital less the capital in liquidated companies. The Suez Canal Company is not included.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 279 joined by three Alexandrian bankers and merchants, Israel Aghion, A. Ralli, and C. Salvago.! The events of 1882 brought this short period of foreign interest in Egyptian economy to a close. Banks, already hard hit by the

end of the lucrative market in government bonds, had to restrict their activities still further. A number of companies, including the Société d’Entreprises et de ‘Travaux Publiques,? were forced into liquidation; others only narrowly escaped. In this context it is significant that the Alexandria and Ramleh Railway Co. was saved from bankruptcy by the intervention of two wealthy merchants, Zervudachi and Salvago.3 As often happened, income derived from cotton was relatively unaffected by the crisis and could be used to support enterprises in other sectors of the economy. The two mortgage companies also experienced considerable difficulty at this period. Annuities went unpaid, expropriation proceedings had often to be under-

taken at great expense, and land taken over had to be farmed by the companies themselves when no purchasers could be found. Thus, in 1888, a year in which its paid-up capital and debentures amounted to just under £E3,000,000, the Crédit Foncier found itself in control of nearly 20,000 feddans which cost over £ E500,000 a year to manage.* [he companies also had

to face the problem of competition from Egyptians who were looking for opportunities to invest their money now that other outlets were closed. For these reasons they sustained losses on a number of years’ operations in the late 1880s and early 18g90s.5 Other institutions to suffer from the depressed conditions in the

agricultural sector were those formed to exploit large estates. Chélu, in his book Le Nil, le Soudan, Egypte, mentions four which failed between 1878 and 1891, including the Frenchowned Kom al-Akhdar Company, which was wound up in 1888

after spending more than £F1,000,000 in an effort to farm 30,000 feddans.6 Companies formed to reclaim and then sell waste land were only a little more successful. ‘The pioneer in

_ this field was the Aboukir Company, which was created to | ! Crédit Foncier Egyptien, p. 6. , 2 Charles Roux, ‘Le Capital frangais’, p. 484. | 3 Cameron, D. A., ‘Memorandum on the Interim Report of the Inter-depart_ Mental Committee on the Protection of British Companies Abroad’, 14 July 1913,

| p. 10: F.O. 891/26/3. 4 Crédit Foncier Egyptien, p. 16.

3 > Ibid., p. 16, 6 Chélu, p. 187. |

280 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 exploit a concession given to a Scots agronomist in May 1887

to drain Lake Aboukir, near Alexandria. During the first years of its existence it was severely handicapped by a shortage of funds and was forced to sell plots of reclaimed land at very low rates.! In these conditions new investment in Egyptian companies came almost to a standstill. According to Crouchley’s estimate, contained in Table 53, the amount of their paid-up capital and

debentures increased by less than £E1,000,000 from 1883 to 1892. Only two types of enterprises can be said to have prospered during this period and to have attracted new investors. One was the ginning and pressing of cotton and the manufacture

of cotton-seed oil. The other was the business of undertaking government public-works contracts. This became particularly profitable after the abolition of the corvéc, when the dredging of major canals was handed over to private firms. In addition, there was a certain amount of activity in the Alexandria area, conducted for the most part by cotton merchants and bankers, and assisted, 1t may be supposed, by the money which many of them received as compensation for the destruction of property during the riots and bombardment of 1882. As a rule it took the shape of forming companies to manage large buildings which were leased as offices or shops, a practice which had begun in 1874 with the establishment of the St. Mark’s Building Association and the Société Immobiliére d’Alexandrie.2 Another enterprise of the same type was the Alexandria Bonded Warehouse Co., founded in 1888 by the directors of Carvers’, the

cotton-exporters, and the merchants F. Allen and G. R. Alderson.3 In almost every instance, however, the amount of capital involved was small. Funds were limited and there was no great confidence in Egypt’s economic future. The boom years, 1893-1907

Egyptian business activity began to revive in the early 18g0s, stimulated, in the first instance, by the rise in land values and

the growing feeling of security engendered by the British t Lang Anderson, “The reclamation of Lake Aboukir’, in Int. Fed., Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation... to Egypt, pp. 234-5.

2 British Chamber of Commerce of Egypt, List of Financial, Manufacturing, Transport and other Companies Established in Egypt (Alexandria, June 1901), pp. 9-18.

3 Cameron, ‘Memorandum on the Interim Report’ (GB), p. 8.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 281 Occupation. Thus, in spite of an agricultural crisis of considerable magnitude in 1894 when cotton reached its lowest price since before the American Civil War, there was a large influx of European capital into Egyptian enterprises in 1895 and 1896. Money from Europe played a prominent role in the formation of the companies established to construct light agri-

cultural railways.' But just as important was the interest shown abroad in the efforts of Egyptian and foreign financiers at creating concerns having to do with some aspect of the exploitation of rural land. In 1894 the Behera Company, which had previously been occupied with government-contract work, asked for and received permission to change its purpose to that of land reclamation, While in 1896 a combination of the three most powerful Alexandria banking houses, Suarés Fréres,

J. L. Menasce, Figho & Co., and J. M. Cattaui et Cie., founded the Société Fonciére d’Egypte to operate an estate of

6,250 feddans in Giza province purchased from the State Domains, and the Société Egyptienne d’Irrigation to establish

a pumping station at Nag Hamadi on the Nile.? Another company established in 1896 was the Société Anonyme Agricole et Industrielle d’Egypte, the purpose of which was to

undertake such activities as irrigation, drainage, the manufacture and sale of manure, and the transformation of agricultural produce.

The funds for these and other enterprises came almost wholly from abroad. In 1897 the amount of foreign money invested in Egyptian companies was £E11,912,000, out of a total of paid-up capital and debentures of £E13,885,000. Five years later this sum had increased to £E24,642,000 out of

£.26,280,000.4 English investors, in particular, began to show great interest in Egypt. One sign of this was the foundation

in London in 1899 of two syndicates to provide capital for a number of Egyptian subsidiaries, the Egyptian Syndicate and the New Egyptian Co.5 Another was the work of a leading English financier, Sir Ernest Cassel, who was active in promotIng several Egyptian enterprises on the London market. There

was also a considerable purchase of shares in Egyptian com_ panies by Belgian and French investors. In addition, Alexandria

: t See pp. 214-15. 2 Papasian, pp. 442-3. 3 Wright, p. 355.

| * See Table 53. 5 Recueil consulatre, vol. 108 (1900), p. 280.

282 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 benefited from the fact that, as one of the leading commercial centres of the Levant, it was a natural repository for money which the bankers and landowners of Syria and Asia Minor were unwilling to place inside the Ottoman Empire.! Only after foreigners had shown the way did investors resident in Egypt begin to support local companies to any large extent. The boom in company-promotion gained in intensity in the early years of the twentieth century. Rural land values continued to rise; cotton yielded higher and higher dividends; the reconquest of the Sudan, the completion of the Aswan Dam, and the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 all reinforced the impression that Egypt was to have a peaceful and prosperous future. In the seven years after 1900, 160 new companies were

formed, representing a paid-up capital of £43,335,000. Of these, no less than 119, with a capital of £ £32,568,000, appeared between 1905 and 1907.2 In addition, there was a consider-

able increase in the resources of existing companies. Once again, a major proportion of investors’ money was placed in concerns connected in some way with rural land. Mortgage companies were the most important recipients. In the ten years, 1898 to 1907, they accounted for 46 per cent of the increase in paid-up capital and debentures.3 Another 26 per cent of the increase involved in land companies. The latter included a variety of enterprises. Some were concerned with the reclama-

tion of waste areas; others with the purchase of large tracts of land and their resale in smaller lots, the exploitation of their own estates, or the provision of credit with which to finance sales of property. Companies dealing in urban land are also included in this category. The last activity was particularly lucrative in the early years of the twentieth century, when the rapid growth of the foreign population and the Europeaniz-

ation and prosperity of wealthy Egyptians, combined with a scarcity of modern housing, meant that plots of building land in

Cairo and Alexandria became increasingly valuable. A number of companies were formed to erect European-style houses, 1 ELT. F., 1, no. 31 (7 Aug. 1908), p. 376. 2 Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, pp. 53, 104. Lists of the names of Egyptian companies can be found in A.S. rgro, pp. 327-32, and Egypt, Ministére des Finances, Statistique des valeurs mobiliéres traitées a la Bourse du Caire .. . pendant les années 1906—7 (Cairo 1908), pp. 20-38.

3 See Table 53.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 283 shops, and business premises, but the majority were concerned simply to obtain urban sites and then to resell them as soon as they were able. Examples from a number of sources show that it was often possible to make a profit of 100 per cent on transactions of the latter kind within a few months.!

Apart from land companies, money was also placed in the establishment or expansion of the banks and other credit inst1tutions needed to finance the great expansion in trade and commerce—this accounted for 10 per cent of the increase in total paid-up capital between 1898 and 1907. Transport undertakings, took another 8 per cent, and a variety of firms grouped by Crouchley under the joint title of “industrial, mining and commercial’, 18 per cent. As a general rule firms in the last category were concerned either with activities directly connected

with the agricultural sector, such as food-processing, or with the development of the large towns, for example the provision of

telephones and electricity. In addition, there was some expansion in the capital placed in three of Egypt’s traditional factory industries, cotton-ginning and pressing, the manufacture of cigarettes, and sugar-refining,? as well as in the establishment of the two cotton mills. The financial crisis of 1907

The investment boom reached its height in 1905 and 1906 in an excess of speculative fever. The ever-rising stock market made quick profits almost a certainty. Credit was simple to

obtain and people who borrowed to purchase property or shares had only to wait a few weeks before selling at a profit. Only the most minimal of resources were needed for a man to engage in this lucrative commerce. Land companies sold land for very small deposits; banks lent liberally on shares, often taking them at their market rather than at their nominal value;3 second or even third mortgages could be readily obtained. Foreign securities were largely ignored, but there was an in_ Satiable appetite for Egyptian issues, and many new companies were formed merely to allow their promoters to make huge _ Sums of money by unloading the shares at a premium on the | ' See, for example, Recueil consulaire, vol. 119 (1902), p. 300, and Egyptian Gazette,

; 153 Recueil Dec. 1906. 2 AS. 1914, pp. 530-1. consulaire, vol. 141 (1908), pp. 93-4. |

284 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 greedy market, or by manipulating the price of founders’ shares. In such cases prices were driven up out of all proportion to possible revenue. The break came in March 1907 when a decline on the Ameri-

can stock market was quickly transmitted to Europe, leading bankers in London and Paris, already much disturbed by the frenetic speculation in Alexandria and Cairo, to tighten credits and to call on their branches in Egypt to limit advances.! Many

people were at once forced to try and realize their assets, companies hastened to call up more capital to meet the emergency, and the subsequent fall in share prices was accelerated by a bad harvest and the temporary suspension of payments by the Cassa di Sconti e di Risparmi, one of the major foreign banks. Thereafter, it became virtually impossible to obtain new loans, and credit institutions energetically sought the return of advances already made. ‘The sale of shares then redoubled in volume, many of them being unloaded outside the Bourse well below their quoted price. ‘The panic had its effect on the issues of first-order companies as well ason the more speculative boom-

time foundations, and, according to Crouchley, the loss on the market value of all shares between 1907 and 1909 amounted to well over £E13,000,000.2 The atmosphere of crisis was heightened by the unexpected decision of the Mixed Court of Appeal in April 1908 that a company which was formed with the sole object of exploiting an enterprise in Egypt must be considered

as Egyptian, and thus needed a Khedival decree before it could start operations, a ruling which had serious consequences for the many companies which had been registered abroad for the purpose of avoiding certain local regulations.3 Those that were unable to reorganize themselves were forced into liquida-

tion; and this is the main reason for the fact that so many

companies, forty-six in all, with paid-up capital worth £E8,222,000, wound up their affairs between 1907 and 1914.4 The effects of the crisis were felt with particular severity in

the towns. Many of the buildings begun in 1907 remained t For a description of the financial crisis see Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, pp. 64-9; Recueil consulaire, vol. 141 (1908), pp. 93-5; Arminjon, pp. 589-

616; and Légrand, ch. 1. 2 The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 151. 3 Egypt, Ministry of Justice, Report for the year rgro (Cairo, 1911), pp. 24-5. * Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 65. A number of these companies

were later refloated under another name.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 285 unfinished for several years before their owners were able to obtain fresh advances, while new building activity was greatly restricted.! Again, the number of bankruptcies applied for in the courts increased from 310 in 1907 to 520 in 1908 and 546 in 1910.2 Equally significant, there was a decline in luxury imports.3 The price of urban land fell sharply.+ As for the workers, wages 1n the building industry, the largest employer of

labour, were reduced by a small amount.5 The position in the countryside is less clear. Those who had contracted loans to purchase land often found it difficult to meet their instalments when they fell due. And if Mustapha Manzalawi’s 1s a typical case, proprietors who had lost money on the stock exchange must have experienced difficulties in providing their estates with working capital. There was also a temporary fall in the purchase of agricultural machinery.7 On the other hand, it is unlikely that the incomes of small-estate holders and peasants were directly affected by the crisis, except where they had entered into obligations to buy land which they now found difficult to meet. A more serious problem was provided by the decline in the value of agricultural output in 1908, although even here the effect was probably not a longlasting one. Some

evidence of this comes from the fact that there was only a momentary reduction in the imports of such widely purchased goods as cotton cloth.

Egyptian business did not fully recover from the effects of the economic crisis until after the start of the First World War. In 1911, for instance, the price of Cairo building land was still

only half that of its boom-time peak,’ while a study of the Egyptian stock market on October 1g12 has revealed that shares in land companies, both urban and rural, were -being quoted at more than 12 per cent below their nominal value, and those in financial concerns at 46 per cent below.? The only establishments which were able to return to anything ™ Clerget, M., Le Caire, i (Cairo, 1934), p. 272.

7 2 Figures from the annual reports of the Ministry of Justice. : 3 See, for example, Rapports commerciaux, 1911, no. 965, ‘L’Egypte’, p. 52.

, 4 Recueil consulaire, vol. 146 (1909), p. 14. 5 A.S. 1914, p. 376.

| ° A.E.M. 1, no. 3 (15 Nov. 1907). p. 37. 7 A.S. 1914, Pp. 203.

8 Taylor, P. S., ‘Prosperity in Egypt’, in African World Annual 1911 (London, 20 Dec. 1911), p. 45. 9 Economides, J. G., ‘Essai sur les valeurs mobiliéres en Egypte’, E.C., no. 132, (Jan. 1932), p. 70.

1

286 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 approaching their pre-1907 level of activity were the banks and the mortgage companies. Trade continued at a high level, cultivators still required loans to allow them to grow cotton, while mortgages were much in demand by landowners anxious

to raise money on the security of their property to meet earlier debts. As a result both types of institutions could con-

tinue to attract investors, and together they accounted for £,£14,889,000, or 65 per cent of the net addition to capital in Egyptian companies between 1907 and 1914. Of this, two-thirds went to existing enterprises, and the remainder to the five new

companies founded in those years.! Shares and debentures were almost entirely subscribed abroad, investment by local residents having been diminished drastically by the shock of 1907.2

Not surprisingly business confidence remained at a low ebb,

a situation which was not assisted by the failure of two oldestablished enterprises, the Bank of Egypt and the merchant house of Zervudachi’s, in 1911, four years after the worst of the crisis.3 Nevertheless, there were still a few entrepreneurs will-

ing to start new enterprises. Foremost among these was the German cotton merchant Hugo Lindemann, who continued to expand his interests in a number of directions. In this he received much assistance from the Deutsche Orient Bank, an institution which, having been founded only in 1906, was largely free of the bad debts and other obligations with which the other banks were encumbered. With its capital and credit still intact, it was in a particularly good position to seek new business.4 The fact that Lindemann derived most of his profit from cotton was clearly no coincidence. Income from this source was, of course, unimpaired by the crisis and provided him and several of his colleagues with the funds to found a number of different enterprises in the years just before the First World War, among them his own Egyptische EgrenirFabriken founded in 1912,4 and the Egyptian Shoe Company established the same year by the owners of the house of Bally Fréres.5 In this context it ought also to be mentioned that a 1 Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, pp. 69-70. 2 See Table 53. 3 Times (Financial Supplement), 19 Oct., 11 Nov. 1911. 4 War Trade Dept., ‘Report on the Policy Adopted in Restraint and Liquidation of Enemy Trade’ (Eg.). 5 Journal officiel, no. 18 (14 Feb. 1912) (Supplement) (Eg.).

Industry, Services, and Commerce 287 number of other firms were able to survive the crisis by turning their attention to operations in merchandise, principally

cotton, advancing money to cultivators, and, if necessary, undertaking the sale of crops. Apart from the fact that this allowed them to participate in the activities of a sector of the economy which had suffered little from the financial crisis of 1907, it had the additional advantage in that such business required only the temporary use of the firm’s capital.! ‘Local’ participation in investment in Egyptian companies, 1893-1914

The extent of local participation in the investment boom and

its aftermath can be looked at from two points of view. The first of these concerns the amount of Egyptian capital devoted to the purchase of shares and debentures in Egyptian companies.

Crouchley puts it at £E4,150,000 in 1902 and £E30,266,000 in 1907.2 [his was a very sizeable advance and represents nearly 40 per cent of the total amount of capital subscribed during those five years. It meant that by 1907 the proportion of shares in Egyptian companies held abroad had declined from 78 to 51 per cent.3 However, it is important to note that these figures refer to money invested by people living in Egypt, not just Egyptian citizens. And it seems likely that much of it was provided by foreigners, albeit foreigners who had been long resident in the country. Most of the capital necessary to expand facilities for ginning and pressing cotton was supplied by foreign-

owned export houses out of profits, while funds for such con-

cerns as the Alexandria and Ramleh Railways Co. and the Alexandria Waterworks also came from this same source.‘ Again, half the shares of the National Bank of Egypt, founded in 1898, came from C. M. Salvago & Co., the cotton-exparters, _ and from Suarés Fréres & Co.5 There is some evidence, however, that at the turn of the century a number of Muslim Egyptians

and Copts began to use the profits they were making from agriculture to invest in Egyptian companies, although it is

1 See, for example, Wright, p. 314. 2 See Table 53.

3 Ibid. This excludes debentures. In their case the proportion held abroad ' declined from gi to 82 per cent only. 4 Cameron, ‘Memorandum on the Interim Report’ (GB), pp. 4, 10. 5 National Bank of Egypt, The National Bank of Egypt, 1898-1948 (Cairo n.d., for private circulation), p. 16.

: ° For references see p. 269, note 7

288 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 impossible to suggest how much this might have been. Another qualification which has to be made about Crouchley’s figures is that, even where shares were bought by residents

in Egypt, the money to do this was often borrowed from abroad, either directly or through some foreign bank. Once again it is not possible to suggest what sort of sums might

have been involved.

Local investment in Egyptian companies reached its pre1914 peak in 1907. Table 54 gives an estimate of the distribution of holdings of paid-up capital in five categories of TABLE 54

Estimated Distribution of Holdings of Paid-up Capital in Egyptian Companies, 1907 ({E,000) (After Crouchley)

Held abroad Held in Egypt Type of company Shares Debentures Total Shares Debentures Total

Mortgage 7,848 26,242 34,090 884 4,704 5,590 Banking/finance 4,895 4,895 3,200 3,200 Agricultural/ urban lands 5,600 1,475 7,135 10,383 1,838 12,221 Transport/canals 1,974 1,826 3,260 1,960 367 2,327 Industrial/mining/

commercial 4,163 3,007 7,170 6,334 594 6,928 24,360 32,550 56,910 22,763 7,503 30,266

Source: Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 154.

enterprise for that year. It shows that land companies were the most popular repositories of Egyptian funds, followed by the mixed bag of firms, ‘industrial, mining, and commercial’. Local residents showed no great inclination to purchase the debentures put up for sale by the mortgage companies, preferring, it can be assumed, the greater opportunity for capital gains offered

by shares. Thereafter, in the seven years before the start of the First World War, the amount of local money invested in Egyptian concerns declined by nearly £E1,400,000.! This represents not only the withdrawal of funds from existing companies but also money lost through the bankruptcy of certain others. In addition, there is some evidence that Egyptian ! See Table 53.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 289 shareholders forced the liquidation of one or two concerns as a means of getting their capital returned to them at a time when the price of their shares was well below par.! As a result,

the proportion of capital held in Egyptian companies by Egyptians and foreigners resident in Egypt declined from just over 50 per cent in 1907 to just under 30 per cent in 1914.

A second way of looking at Egyptian participation is to examine those companies in which local enterprise played an important role. Very generally, these were of two types. First,

there were companies in which almost all the capital was subscribed inside the country. Crouchley identifies thirty-three such firms in 1900, with paid-up capital and debentures worth

£E2,058,082.2 These included a very large number of small companies, as well as four with more substantial assets, the Behera Land Co., the Fayoum Light Railway Co., the Société Générale de Pressages et de Dépéts, and the land company, the Société des Immeubles d’Egypte. Another large company of this type which Crouchley does not mention was the National Insurance Co., founded at Alexandria in 1900 with a capital of

£200,000 and a board of directors which included the owners of almost every one of the town’s leading banks and cottonexport houses.3 In the same year there were forty-five companies with a capital of £E19,108,000, the bulk of which was subscribed abroad.* Unfortunately it is impossible to learn very much about local holdings of shares in Egyptian companies in the years which followed. But it seems safe to assume that a number of large concerns continued to be both founded and financed by Egyptians or foreign residents in Egypt. A list of such firms would almost certainly include the country’s second largest mortgage institution, the Land Bank of Egypt, founded by the Alexandria merchants and bankers Zervudachi, Salvago, and Aghion.5 Secondly, there were a number of enterprises in which money from abroad played an important part, but which owed their creation largely to the initiative of Alexandrian financiers. Among companies in this category were the National

|.

1 See, for example, A.E.M. i, no. 15 (7 Feb. 1908), p. 177. | 2 The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 43. 3 British Chamber of Commerce, List of Companies, p. 48. , * Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 43. : 5 ‘Limited Liability Companies in Egypt’, in African World Annual 1906 (London, 7 Dec. 1906), p. 105.

| 821648 U

290 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 Bank and the Daira Sanieh Co. In each case, the original concession had been given to Raphael Suarés; but their actual foundation had only been made possible as a result of financial

assistance from Sir Ernest Cassel and some of his British

business acquaintances.! Companies dealing in rural land

Another subject of the greatest importance concerning the

country’s financial history between 1893 and 1914 is the creation of companies to exploit some aspect of rural land. Not

only did they attract a large share of the capital invested in Egyptian concerns during these years, but their activities also exercised a considerable influence on developments in the agricultural sector of the economy. Some were responsible for

reclaiming sizeable tracts of waste ground, others were the means by which large areas of state land passed into the hands of private owners. Meanwhile, all contributed to the marked rise in the price of rural land which took place in the last years of the nineteenth century, by providing would-be purchasers with almost unlimited sums of money in mortgages or some other form of credit. It has already been asserted that the amount of capital placed

in Egyptian mortgage companies rose from ££4,574,000 in 1892 to £510,525,000 in 1902 and £E39,680,000 in 1907? This was the result partly of the expansion of the two existing companies, the Crédit Foncier Egyptien and the Land and Mortgage Co., partly of the foundation of three new institutions after 1900. The total amount of lending on mortgage advanced at almost the same rate, from ££.4,434,000 in 1897 to £E35,465,000 in 1907,3 and was largely responsible for the great increase in private land purchases during those years.‘

One company, the Crédit Foncier, continued to dominate the field. By 1907 it possessed two-thirds of the capital invested in Egyptian mortgage institutions, and had made two-thirds of the loans.4 A major factor in this situation was its involvement 1 National Bank of Egypt, pp. 15-16. 2 See Table 53. 3 Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 57. Not all these mortgages were

on agricultural land; a small proportion were on urban property. 4 Baer, History of Landownership, p. 103.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 291 in the affairs of the Daira Sanieh Co. in 1905. The latter was in some difficulty: it had disposed of almost all the land belong-

ing to the Dazra Santya estates, but was unable to meet its obligation to share half the profits with the Government on account of the fact that much of the property had been sold on credit, in advance of payment. As a result, there was some talk that it might have to transform itself into an ordinary mortgage company. To prevent the possible appearance of yet another

competitor, the Crédit Foncier decided to assist the Daira Sanieh Co. in settling its accounts with the Government by purchasing all its assets for £ E8,000,000. The money was raised

by the issue of shares and debentures, most of which were

taken up on the French market.' The Egyptian mortgage companies were the one type of enterprise not to suffer from the financial crisis of 1907. The demand for their services remained large, and they were able to find new investors in Europe without great difficulty. The Crédit Foncier increased its share capital by over £6,000,000 1n the seven years before 1914.2 Meanwhile, in 1908, a new company, the Mortgage Company of Egypt, was founded by Sir Ernest Cassel with a view to encouraging English financial interests to place their money in Egyptian mortgages. A second group of companies concerned with the exploitation of rural land consisted of those founded to buy and sell, to rent out, or to reclaim agricultural properties. A list of such companies, with the land they owned in 1go6and 1907-8, will be found in Table 55. This is drawn from two sources, an article in the African World Annual for 1906 and a series of estimates made

by Gabriel Baer, to which certain additions have been made. Unfortunately the list is not complete. The Annuaire statistique for 1910 gives the names of eleven companies dealing with

urban and rural land+ about which no information can be found. However, on the basis of this partial coverage, it would

seem that Egyptian land companies owned at least 250,000 feddans of rural property between 1906 and 1908. The ownership of this land formed the basis of a number of different types of activities. Some companies purchased waste land, reclaimed ! Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 56.

2 Crédit Foncier Egyptien, p. 20.

3 Wright, p. 304. 4 AS. 1910, pp. 327-32.

292 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 it, and then either sold it or rented it out to tenants; others bought large estates and attempted to sell them in smaller parcels; others again farmed the land which they had obtained TABLE 55 Egyptian Land Companies and Their Holdings of Rural Property in 1906 and 1907-8

Date of 1906 1907/8

foundation feddans feddans

Aboukir Co. 1888 11,000

Behera Land Co. 1894 (‘nearly’) 100,000 120,000 Soc. Fonciere d’Egypte 1896 1,872 S.A. Agricole et Industrielle 1897 41,086 40,672

New Egyptian Co. 1899 10,498 4,800 Wardan Estate Co. 1903 8,000 Kom Ombo Co. 1904 30,000 Compagnie Agricole du Nil 1904 (at least) 340°

Development Co. 1904 4,000 Gharbieh Land Co. 1905 9,0008,800 6,500°¢ Cheikh Fadl Co. 1905 Egyptian Estates 1905 Egyptian Land Investment Co. 15,0004 1905 693° Egyptian Enterprise and

Nile Land and Development Co. 1904 4,800

Union Fonciere d’Egypte 1905 10,000 12,300

Allotment Co.Lands 1905Ltd. 2,600 2,700 United Egyptian 1906 4,793! Sidi Salem Co. of Egypt 1906 14,500 Anglo-Egyptian Land

Soc. Agricole de Kafr-el-Dawar 1907 9,4758

pp. 103-7.

SOURCES:

1906: ‘Limited Liability Companies in Egypt’, in African World Annual 1906, 1907-8: Baer, History of Landownership, p. 125 (with additions). NotEs:

a. Figure for Jan. 1908, Wright, p. 355. b. A.£.M., 1. no. 13 (24 Jan. 1908), p. 154. c. Ibid., no. 26 (24 Apr. 1908), p. 311, gives a figure of 8,430 feddans. d. Ibid., no. 5 (29 Nov. 1907), p. 62. e. Ibid., no. 14 (31 Jan. 1908), p. 164. f. Ibid., no. 8 (20 Dec. 1907), p. 98. g. Ibid., no. 29 (5 June 1908), p. 351.

on their own account.! As a rule, it would seem that before 1907 most companies were anxious to resell their land as quickly as

possible to take advantage of the rising prices, but that the financial crisis and the decline in land sales which followed 1 Information about Egyptian land companies can be found in Wright, in the article ‘Limited Liability Companies in Egypt’, in African World Annual 1906, pp. 103-7, and in the various numbers of the Anglo-Egyptian Mail and the Egyptian Trade Journal.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 293 produced a change of practice. There was then an increasing tendency to make money from idle land by renting as much of it as possible. It is also unfortunate that only isolated figures exist for the amount of land reclaimed at this period; but from those which can be found it must have been well over 100,000 feddans. Of this, the Behera Land Co. was responsible for about 75,000."

The amount of capital invested in land companies of all sorts,

both rural and urban, increased from £E2,974,000 in 1902 to £E19,356,000 in 1907.2 This was in part a reflection of the very high profits which could be made. For instance, in 1907 the Gharbieh Land Co. sold 385 feddans of reclaimed land at an average price of £E117,808 a feddan, giving it a net profit of £LE45,732 a feddan.3 The pages of the Anglo-Egyptian Mail are full of examples of a similar kind. Business was less good after

1907. But although a few companies went bankrupt‘, the remainder were able to surmount the crisis by letting out land

which they were unable to sell, and so profiting from the continuing rise in agricultural income. The Aboukir Co. is a case in point. Prior to 1907 the company reclaimed and sold 19,377 feddans at a profit of over 100 per cent. Further sales were then stopped, and 7,000 of the remaining 10,600 feddans let out to tenants at an average rate of £E5 a feddan. Largely as a result of the rents received, the company was able to pay an annual dividend of 8 per cent on capital for the six years up to 1913.5

Foreign investment in Egypt other than in the public debt and public companies

Before leaving the subject of Egypt’s financial history in the twenty years before 1914 there is one final problem which must be mentioned. This concerns the flow of European capital to Egypt

for employment in financial transactions other than the purchase of shares and debentures issued by Egyptian companies.

1 Wright, p. 458. 2 See Table 53.

3 A.E.M. i, no. 26 (24 Apr. 1908), p. 311. * According to Crouchley of the 31 land companies with capital from abroad in existence in 1907, 9 had gone into liquidation by 1914: The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 65.

5 Lang Anderson, ‘The Reclamation of Lake Aboukir’, in Int. Fed., Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation . . . to Egypt, pp. 234-5.

204 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 Foreign money passed into the country in a variety of ways. Local branches of European banks obtained additional resources from their head office to allow them to increase their advances

on property or cotton; private individuals sent funds to Egyptian lawyers and others for relending in the form of mortgages to landowners; insurance companies in Egypt used

money from abroad to make investments in a number of business enterprises. Another form of foreign lending was discovered by the Chief Inspector of the Ionian Bank at Alexandria. Travelling on the Greek island of Mitylene just before the outbreak of the First World War, he found that the peasants and small landowners had entrusted over £1,000,000 of their savings to intermediaries in Egypt for investment at ‘usurious rates’.! In the nature of things it 1s impossible to give

a figure for the amount of European capital used for transactions of all these various kinds; but there are a number of isolated estimates. According to Eid, some £ E7,650,000 belonging to foreign insurance companies and private individuals was

used to provide mortgages on land and other property in Egypt between 1903 and 1906.2 Again, Charles Roux asserts that a number of large Paris banks advanced several million

francs a year to Egyptian banks and export houses against shares or cotton. The amount lent by British institutions must have been many times as large. Were it possible, sums of this kind ought to be added to the public debt held abroad and to the European purchase of shares and debentures in Egyptian companies, so that a proper assessment of Egypt’s total foreign debt could be made. 2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN INDUSTRY The structure of employment in 1907

According to the 1907 census, 376,341 people out of a total population of 11,287,359 were then engaged in what was classified as ‘industry’. However, for statistical purposes the word was interpreted as widely as possible. It included, among other ¥ De Bilinski (?) to Storrs, 15 July 1914 (?), K.P., 30/57/42 (1912).

2 p. 106. 3 ‘Le Capital francais en Egypte’, p. 496. 4 Egypt, Ministry of Finance, The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907 (Cairo, 1909); pp. 279-83.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 205 occupations, 45,500 hand-loom weavers and 10,622 railway workers. By comparison only a very few men were engaged in factory industry conducted on a European scale, that is in establishments which used sizeable quantities of capital and contained several hundred workers under one roof. Industries in this sense were confined to cotton-ginning and pressing, the manufacture of cotton-seed oil and cakes, and the two cotton mills, as well as the production of raw and refined sugar (which

employed 15,000 men in 1907), the cigarette factories (3,000 men), and a number of small works making cement, bricks

and other building materials, and food and drink products like alcohol, beer, and bread. As the industries connected with cotton have already been described in Chapter VII, only the remainder will be discussed in detail at this point. __ The manufacture of raw and refined sugar

The manufacture of sugar was Egypt’s oldest and most important industry. In its modern form it owed its creation to the Khedive Isma‘il. It was he who had planned to establish it as a factory industry on a large scale, and who constructed the necessary plant and rail network to bring in the cane from the fields. However, as has already been described in Chapter IV, the capacity of the factories was greatly in excess of the cultivators’ ability to produce sugar, and this was something which continued to place a considerable burden on the industry long after its administration was taken over by the Daira Saniya in 1876. It is true that there was a short period of prosperity in the 1880s and early 1890s, when improvements in management led to not only an increase in output but a fall in costs,! and when profits were such as to attract others to set up.new plant, among them the two French companies which in 1897 combined to form the Société Générale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d’Egypte, and five local concerns, two of which were founded by Muslim Egyptians and two by Copts.? However, by this time conditions had begun to deteriorate. A fall in the price of manufactured sugar3 was followed, from 1901 onwards, _ by shortages of cane due to the cultivators’ discovery that cotton | ' Mazuel, Le Sucre en Egypte, p. 38.

| 2 Ibid., pp. 42-3.

: 3 Williams, De Broe & Co., Sugar in Egypt and Elsewhere (London, 1903), p. 63.

296 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 had become a more profitable proposition. None of the five local concerns lasted more than two or three seasons. Soon the Daira Sanya also began to experience difficulties, and in 1902 it was decided that the Estate would accept an offer from the

Société Générale des Sucreries to buy all of its remaining factories as well as its network of railways. But this was not the end of the industry’s troubles. Three years later the Sucreries itself almost collapsed. This was the result, partly of the heavy charges with which it had burdened itself in making its purchase, and partly of a further decline in the supply of cane. According to Mazuel, the historian of the Egyptian sugar industry, there is also evidence of considerable bad management.! In the event, however, the near-collapse of 1905 can be seen to have been a blessing in disguise. Not only did it lead to a more beneficial financial arrangement in which, among other things,

the Government agreed to repurchase and to run the lightrailway system, but it also allowed the administrators to effect

a radical reorganization of the whole industry. A major improvement was the reduction of surplus capacity by closing six of the original factories, all of which had been built so close to other plants that their operations could very easily be transferred.? It was on this more streamlined basis that the company was able to surmount a second crisis in 1908, when the area placed under cane shrank to only 35,000 feddans, under half of what it had been at the turn of the century.3 But almost at

once there was a marked revival in its fortunes. Prices rose again, cotton became less popular as yields declined, and by the outbreak of war the company was able to make a substantial annual profit. When its reorganization was complete, the Sucreries possessed

five factories for making raw sugar. Of these, three were the last survivors of those built by Isma‘il and two dated from the 1890s. A sixth was added in 1g1o. It is asserted by Arminjon that, whereas the older establishments employed some methods which he described as “primitif’, the newer ones practised a very

efficient form of production. A small amount of the raw sugar produced (just over a fifth in 1908—9)5 was sold to Egyptian t Le Sucre en Egypte, pp. 45-6. 2 Arminjon, p. 242.

3 AS. 1914, P. 323. 4 Arminjon, p. 250. 5 Ibid., p. 253.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 297 consumers, while the remainder was sent to the refinery at Hawamdiya, twenty-five miles from Cairo. This refinery had been built originally by Raphael Suarés in 1881. It was then taken over in 1893 by one of the French companies which joined to form the Sucreries. In the early years its capacity was limited

and much of Egypt’s sugar was sent abroad for processing. Later, however, this situation was remedied, so that by 19g08~—9

the factory was refining not only most of Egypt’s production but also a considerable amount of imported material as well.! In 1914 the company’s sales of raw and refined sugar amounted to £ E1,152,000.2

Two by-products of sugar must also be mentioned, molasses and alcohol. In the 1880s both were manufactured in six plants belonging to the Daira Saniya.3 ‘The alcohol, which was dis-

tilled from the molasses, was not of a very high degree of purity. It was used in making drinks and also, in small quantities, for heating and lighting. However, even though supplies of molasses were large enough to allow the whole of the country’s

demand for alcohol to be met, they were not used, the Daira administration believing that it would be unprofitable to try to compete with imports from Russia, Germany, and France, all of which received an export subsidy from their governments. It was this situation which, in 1892, led a group of merchants who dealt in imported alcohol to try to manufacture their own product, using molasses from the Daira which they distilled at a plant they had constructed at Tura. The results of the first few years’ operations were disastrous. But in 1895 the capacity of the plant was increased and it was provided with equipment capable of distilling alcohol of the highest purity. Thereafter success was assured. A continuous policy of expansion allowed output to be raised from 1,500,000 kilograms in the 1890s to nearly 7,500,000 in 1914. In addition, the manufacture of amylique oil was begun in 1908, and that of carbonic acid in January 1914. The outbreak of war interrupted plans to buy

the machinery needed to make potassium carbonate and

chemical fertilizer. ? Ibid.

2 Mazuel, Le Sucre en Egypte, p. 151.

| 3 The information on which this paragraph is based comes from Cozzika, M. P., : ‘La Distillerie de Tourah’, E.C., viii, no. 29 (Jan. 1917), pp. 44-8.

| |

298 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 Cigarette manufacture

In 1906 Cairo possessed some fifty-five to sixty cigarette factories.. These ranged from enterprises with only a few workers to the Gianaclis works which employed 400 men and boys in 1906! and 500 in 1908.2 The majority of owners were Greeks, many of whom had come from Turkey during the 1870s; most of the cigarette-rollers were also Greek. All the tobacco used was imported from abroad, its cultivation in Egypt having been banned in 1890. Thus the import figures allow some indication of the industry’s capacity. This must have

doubled between the late 1880s and 1913.4 The number of cigarettes produced was more than sufficient to meet Egypt’s internal demand, and during the first decade of the twentieth century exports averaged well over £400,000 a year.5 Building materials

It was natural that Egypt’s industrial development should be based very largely on import-substitution. One group of products for which a local market clearly existed consisted of the cement used in public-works projects and the bricks and tiles required in the construction of business premises. A number of cement works were established around the turn of the century, but in spite of the fact that the industry enjoyed a marked competitive advantage in the important matter of transport costs, it does not seem to have prospered in the way one might have supposed. For instance, the largest firm, the Belgian-owned 8.A. des Ciments d’Egypte, made a loss every year between 1907 and 1g10.° This was partly the result of competition from Portland cement, which was produced in Europe so cheaply that it could overcome the difference in the cost of shipment.® There was also the problem posed by the low

quality of Egyptian lime and clay, which meant that at least one company had to import much of the raw material it needed to manufacture a product of standard quality.’ Firms making other types of building materials seem to have

been a little more successful. Among them was the factory 1 E.T.F. i, no. 1 (22 Oct. 1906), pp. 4-5.

2 Wright, p. 487. 3 Ibid., p. 486. 4 A.S. 1914, Pp. 303. S Ibid., p. 307. 6 A.E.M. iv. no. 49 (19 July 1911), p. 277. 7 Ibid, iv. no. 40 (31 May rgrr).

Industry, Services, and Commerce 299 established in 1895 by S. Sornaga for making bricks, pipes,

plaster, and a number of other articles needed in houseconstruction. A great many obstacles had first to be overcome before its activities were placed on a sound basis. Credit was difficult to obtain; there was a shortage of skilled workmen;

competition from European rivals was intense, a situation which was made worse by the fact that many of its potential customers had a prejudice against Egyptian products.! Nevertheless, over the years, Sornaga was able gradually to expand output, and to extend his range to include a number of new articles such as sanitary ware and pottery insulators. A second firm which also managed to prosper after encountering great initial difficulties was the Cairo Sand Brick Co. When it was founded the many advantages of the sand brick were unknown, and it was not until after it had been reorganized in 1911 that it was able to find a large market for its products. During the First World War the bricks, which were made out of sand and limestone, could be produced at a rate of 90,000 to 95,000 a day. About 150 men were employed in their manufacture, as well as another 100 to 150 who worked in the quarry.” Other industrial actiwity

Apart from the examples of factory production which have just been given, there were a number of other industrial enterprises which should also be mentioned. These included con-

cerns for producing paper, furniture, beer, brandy, and leather goods, as well as several engineering workshops and foundries making and repairing instruments used in irrigation, dredging, and land-levelling.3 Again, there was a tarbush factory at Kaha owned by Isma‘il Assam Pasha. The project was conceived in 1902, after which a number of years were spent in studying the organization of similar factories in Europe. Skilled workers were then obtained from Istanbul and the most

up-to-date machinery purchased from Austria, Germany, and

- France.4 The factory began operations just before the First World War. At this stage it employed a staff of some seventy to : 1 Rapport de la Commission du commerce et de l'industrie (Eg.), p. 159.

| 2 Ibid., p. 158.

3 The Times (Engineering Supplement), 24 Apr. 1907, p. 131. : 4 Rapport de la Commisston du commerce et de l'industrie (Eg.), p. 156.

300 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 eighty persons.! There was also an oil-refinery at Suez, owned by the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Co., which was able to produce

kerosene and benzine out of the crude oil from the newly discovered field near Hurgada on the Red Sea.? Finally, mention ought to be made of the building industry, which underwent a rapid expansion to meet the increasing demand for modern accommodation—19,000 new houses were built in Cairo alone between 1897 and 1907.3 In this latter year the

industry employed nearly 95,000 workers+, and provided valuable training in certain basic skills as well as stimulating a variety of ancillary activities such as plumbing and the installation of electrical equipment. Barriers to the further development of factory industry

The description of the state of Egyptian industry in the first decade of the twentieth century just given should dispel any impression that there was no industrial development at this period, or that there were no Muslims or Copts with business ability. But it also shows just what difficulties the early entrepreneurs had to face. For the purpose of exposition these difficulties may be grouped under four headings. The first concerns the country’s factor endowment. There is the obvious point that Egypt possessed few sources of energy, and that until the Red Sea oilfield was developed during the First World War, almost all the coal and the wood needed to run power-driven machines had to be imported from abroad.

Perhaps more surprising is the fact that many of the early industries had also to import much of their raw material from overseas. [his was true of the cigarette industry, of at least one

of the cement works, and of the tarbush factory at Kaha which required high quality wool from Australia.’ It was also true, paradoxically, of the cotton mill, which often purchased supplies of low-grade Indian cotton, ordinary Egyptian cotton I Wells, S., “Tarbush making in Egypt’, 17 Oct. 1914, in R. Grey (for Cheetham), 19 Oct. 1914: F.O. 368/957. 2 In the original agreement with the Government signed in 1912 the company agreed to construct a refinery with a capacity of 200 tons of crude oil a day. A copy of the agreement is enclosed in Wingate, 31 July 1917: F.O. 368/1723. 3 Recuetl consulaire, vol. 141 (1908), p. 96. 4 The Census of Egypt Taken in 1907 (Eg.), pp. 279-83. 5 Wells, “Tarbush Making in Egypt’ (GB).

Industry, Services, and Commerce 301 being too expensive for the manufacture of cheap cloth,' and of the sugar factories, which in some years could not be kept going at full capacity on the amount of cane grown in Egypt itself.2 Finally, Egyptian firms experienced great difficulty in finding the trained workers they needed, and were often forced to hire Europeans to whom they had to pay particularly high salaries. At the same time, the employment of cheap local labour was rarely as advantageous as it first seemed, on account

of the low productivity of the average Egyptian worker. Secondly, a large number of difficulties stemmed from the fact that Egyptian industrial development, like that in many other countries, was based very largely on import-substitution. This had the advantage that an entrepreneur could rest assured that a market existed for his product. On the other hand, in Egypt he often had to face fierce foreign competition with only minimal protection from the external tariff, which the British

officials felt unable to raise above a uniform 8 per cent ad valorem. In addition, a number of rival European manufacturers received quite substantial subsidies from their own governments, in an effort to make them more competitive in overseas markets. Such was the case with sugar and several

related products. To make matters worse, the Egyptian consumer had already come to believe that foreign goods were always preferable to those produced locally.’ This was not just a matter of prejudice. Where products like cotton-piece goods were concerned the consumer was accustomed to protect him-

self against inferior articles by purchasing only those which carried the familiar trade mark of one of the large, reputable importers.® In the years before 1912 the local cotton mills had

™ Schanz, p. gg. :

2 Mazuel, Le Sucre en Egypte, pp. 47-8. Another industrial activity based on the use of an imported raw material was that of distilling brandy. The firm of C. J. Bolanachie et Fils employed foreign grapes: Messrs. Southard & Co. to Australian Commonwealth Office, 11 Nov. 1914: F.O. 368/957.

3 Among those to make this point was the Financial Adviser, Lord Edward Cecil: quoted in McMahon, 16 May 1915: F.O. 368/1253. | 4 Arminjon, pp. 256-8; Rapport de la Commission du commerce et de Vindustrie (Eg.),

| ° : See, for example, Khaleel, G., ‘The Protection and Encouragement of National Products’, Minutes of the Proceedings of the First Egyptian Congress (Alexandria,

IOI! ° °

| “6 be Pitain, Dept. of Overseas Trade, Report on the Economic and Financial Situation of Egypt for 1919, by E. H. Mulock, P.P. 1920, vol. xliii, p. 247.

302 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 experienced great difficulty in selling their goods, for they possessed no such well-known trade mark,! and it was no doubt

for this reason that the Filature Nationale reached an agreement with one of the leading import firms in which the latter undertook to distribute the Filature’s cloth through its own retail network.? A third group of difficulties was connected with the fact that

economic activity in Egypt was directed almost exclusively towards the exploitation of the country’s agriculture. This was where the large profits were to be made. Banks were accus-

tomed to lend money on cotton or land but not to provide factory-owners with short-term capital. The limited number of Egyptians and resident foreigners with any degree of business ability were mostly engaged in managing mortgage companies or enterprises which bought and sold suburban land. Finally, there was the attitude of the Government to industrial development. Contrary to general opinion, a good case can be made for the assertion that neither Lord Cromer nor the other British officials were opposed, in principle, to the establishment of Egyptian factories before 1914.3 On the one hand, much of what was taken to be opposition was in reality no more than a rigid insistence on the rules of Free Trade; on

the other, it is clear that, towards the end of his period in Egypt, Cromer himself began to look to industry to provide employment for the surplus agricultural population. Nevertheless, whatever the real beliefs of the officials, there can be little doubt that their policies did much to discourage potential entrepreneurs. Lord Cromer’s attitude to the Cotton Mills Co. is a case in point. To begin with he was anxious merely to ensure that local cotton factories received no protection from 1 See Rapport de la Commission du commerce et de Vindustrie (Eg.), p. 144, which asserts that some of the importers of foreign goods sought to prejudice their clients against locally produced cotton cloth. 2 War Trade Dept., ‘Report on the Policy Adopted in Restraint and Liquidation of Enemy Trade’ (Eg.), p. 9. 3 I have tried to make such a case in my ‘Lord Cromer and the Development of Egyptian Industry 1883-1907’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 2, no. 4 (July 1966), pp. 282-301. For an opposite point of view see Baer, G., Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem, 1964), p. 137, and Issawi, C., Egypt at Mid-century (London, 1954), P- 37. 4 Annual Report for 1905, P.P., 1906, vol. cxxxvii, p. 547. Cromer’s attitude to Egyptian industrialization will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter XI.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 303 the 8 per cent duty levied on imported cloth, by imposing an equivalent excise duty on their own products; but later, as the management fought fiercely to prevent the imposition of

such an excise duty, he seems to have come to regard the affair as something which affected his own prestige. To outsiders he appeared determined to place every sort of barrier in the way of the Cotton Mills Co., regardless of the fact that, as he himself noted, public opinion was almost unanimous in thinking him wrong.! An example of this occurred in the month or so between the completion of the mill in March 1go1 and the

publication of the Khedival decree imposing the 8 per cent excise duty. According to Giles Atherton, the chairman of the company, the Government deliberately withheld permission for work to begin, on the grounds that the engine to be used to

power the spindles was of a greater horse-power than that provided for in the original agreement. When challenged, government officials refused to produce the formula on which their own calculations were based or to submit the question to independent experts. Only after the decree imposing the excise duty had actually been published did the Government with-

draw its objections and allow operations to commence.? Measures of this kind might legitimately have been taken by entrepreneurs and businessmen as evidence of a deep hostility to factory industry of any kind. Such considerations must certainly have weighed heavily with those like the members of the important Cattaui, Suarés, and de Menasce families who had everything to gain from continued co-operation with an administration which had already been responsible for their _ obtaining a number of very profitable business opportunities. Again, even if the eventual liquidation of the Cotton Mills Co. was not in fact the direct outcome of its having to pay the 8 per cent excise duty, it may well have appeared so to members of the local business community. And how were these men to know that the Government would not use its powers to impose _ a similar duty on other locally produced products,? particu-

larly after such a tax had also been placed on the sugar " Cromer, 12 June 1gor: F.O. 78/5162. ; 2 Egyptian Cotton Mills Co., Ordinary General Meeting, 24 July 1901, Financial Times, 25 July 1gor. 3 This argument appears in an editorial in La Bourse égyptienne, 21 Feb. 1902.

304 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 manufactured for local consumption by the Société Générale des Sucreries?! Difficulties of this nature were more than sufficient to account

for the fact that more Egyptian factories were not built before

1914. Indeed, in the circumstances, it might seem that the proper question to ask is not why so little, but why so much, industry was created at this time. The desire to build new plants becomes the more surprising if one looks at the number of industrial failures. It has already been noted that no fewer than five private sugar companies collapsed in the late 1890s;?

while in 1905 the largest sugar company of all, the Société Générale des Sucreries, almost came to grief as a result of a combination of bad luck and bad management, a near-disaster which was described by one contemporary observer as ‘a blow that at one time seemed fatal’ struck at ‘the industrial life of the

country’.3 Nevertheless, it is clear that there remained a number of entrepreneurs who were not disheartened by such

failures or by the many barriers to the establishment of a successful enterprise, and who continued to believe that it was still possible to make profits from the manufacture of such goods

as cotton textiles, building materials, and food products for

which a market was known to exist.

3. EGYPTIAN FOREIGN TRADE The balance of trade

Figures for movements in Egypt’s imports and exports between 1880 and 1913 are given in Table 55. Once again the value of the latter has been raised by one-ninth for the years before 1912. Egyptian exports scarcely increased in value during the period

1880 to 1899; but they more than doubled in the next thirteen years. This movement is easily explained by the fact that earnings depended almost entirely on the value of the cotton crop. Imports followed an almost identical path. Not only were the annual movements in exports reflected directly in the following 1 Cheetham, 27 May rg11: F.O. 368/526. 2 Mazuel, Le Sucre en Egypte, pp. 42-3.

3 Allen, W. A. T., ‘The Commerce, Industry, and Engineering Progress in Egypt, 1905’, in African World Annual 1905 (London, 8 Dec. 1905), p. 31.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 305 year’s purchase of goods from abroad, but the absolute level of imports also seems to have been decided, to an ever-increasing extent, by the total value of exports. The close correspondence between the two series has been illustrated in Fig. 4, in which imports have been lagged by one year.

30,000 i

£E,000 Exports ------~-- ‘' ‘

Imports —————— r iN/i ai i\! /ifs} y/ ;

wn

U

20,000 /

JY

ac

reeeae onse/ Av~/‘\ ‘oupel y

/

;

t SJ 4

10,000 "

1880 1890 1900 1910

Fic. 4. Egyptian foreign trade, [880-1913 (Imports lagged by one year). Sources: 1880-4, Le Commerce éxtérieur de ’ Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xii—

xi; 1885-1913, A.S. 1914, pp. 300-7. Note: a, Original figures not augmented by one-ninth.

For a country so dependent on the export of one crop which

was subject to marked changes in yield and price, year-toyear fluctuations in both exports and imports were remarkably

_ subdued during the period under consideration. With the _ €xception of the early 1880s, upward or downward movements _ Were generally sustained over several years, if not more. Again, _ Only in 1882, 1886, and again in 1908, was therea fall amounting

| 821648 x

306 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 to more than 10 per cent of the previous year’s receipts in the value of exports. The principal factor underlying this absence of severe fluctuations was the way in which a decrease in the

size of the cotton crop was only rarely accompanied by a similar decrease in price. Of the thirty-three years from 1880 to 1912, there were only seven in which both declined together. A second feature of Egyptian foreign trade during the period

under review is the fact that imports showed a tendency to increase at a slightly faster rate than exports, until just after the 1907 crisis (see Table 56). This trend is even more marked if TABLE 56 Egyptian Foreign trade, 1860-1913 (Annual Averages) ({£E,o00) Exports

Imports (adjusted)? Balance

1880-4 75384 13,673 + 6,289 1885-9 73947 12,270 + 4,323 1890-4 8,872 14,348 +5476 1895-9 10,249 14,787 + 45548 1900-4 1905-9 16,297 23,805 20,372 26,810 + + 4,075 3,005 IQIO-13 26,138 32,191 + 6,053 SOURCES:

1880-4: Le Commerce extérieur de l Egypte, 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xii—xili.

1885-1913: A.S. 1974, pp. 300-7.

Note: a. Exports increased by one-ninth until 1gra.

specie movements are also included, although it should be noted that the official figures almost certainly undervalue the export of gold.! As a result, in the years before 1907, Egypt was

increasingly unable to pay the interest due on its public and private debts. Crouchley’s figures given in Table 57 show that the balance was met only by the inflow of foreign capital. This 1 Crouchley, “The Visible Balance of Trade since 1884’, pp. 507-8. 2 Crouchley excludes certain invisible imports such as receipts from tourists and the British army in Egypt and exports such as expenditure by Egyptians abroad which, he states, more or less balanced each other: The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 192. Evidence to support this assertion can be found in the financial adviser’s note on the 1904 budget in which he estimates that in 1900 invisible imports came to £E1,850,000 and invisible exports to £E2,000,000:

Industry, Services, and Commerce 307 was particularly the case after 1893, when imports of goods and

specie were rising more rapidly than exports, and the unfavourable balance (column 5) was almost exactly matched by the money sent to Egypt by foreign investors (column 6). The financial crisis of 1907 led to no basic change in this method of

25 TABLE 57

Balance of Trade and Movements of Capital, 1884-1914 (Annual Averages) (£E,000)

I Exports 3 Net balImports of goods Visible 4 ance after

of goods and balance Net pay- payments 6

and specie of ments of of Inflow of specie (adjusted )® trade interest interest _ capital 1884-92 10,982 15,404 45422 4,841 — 419 12

1893-7 12,341 16,702 4,361 5,430 — 1,169> 1,065 1898-1902 = 17,173 19,823 2,650 5373 — 2,723 2,144 1903-7 28,934 28,579 — 354 8,718 — 9,072 8,616 1908-14 32,591 37,064 4,473 7,033 — 2,550 3,150

SouRcESs: Columns 1-3 Crouchley, “The Visible Balance of Trade since 1884’, pp. 494-5; Columns 4-6: The Investment of Foreign Capital, pp. 195-6. NorEs:

a. Exports of goods raised by one-ninth before 1912. b. I have changed this from the original figures because Crouchley’s calculation

seems 1n error. !

meeting the country’s foreign debt. Although the inflow of foreign capital decreased, this was accompanied by an automatic decline in interest payments to foreign shareholders, as well as

by a return to a favourable visible balance of trade.

Ihe composition of trade Movements in the value of Egyptian exports were almost entirely controlled by the value of cotton and cotton seed, _ which provided a greater and greater proportion of the country’s export earnings, their contribution increasing from 76 per cent

In 1880-4 to 92 per cent in 1910-13 (93 per cent if exports of . cotton-seed oil and cake are also included). Cotton’s pre_ dominance was further underlined by the decline of nearly quoted in Egyptian Gazette, 28 Jan. 1904. Crouchley also excludes the payment of

interest on the various types of private and institutional investment in Egypt described on p. 294.

308 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 every one of Egypt’s other traditional exports. The value of sugar sent abroad fell from an annual average of £E616,000 in 1895-9 to only £E118,000 in 1905-9;! the export of wheat, beans, barley, and maize also diminished sharply after the early 1890s (see Table 58). With the exception of cotton-seed cake no TABLE 58 Egyptian Trade in Cereals and Flour, 1860-1913 (Annual Averages) Imports (£E)

Wheat Barley Maize Rice Flour Total

1880-4 58,251» 41,481 99,732» 1885-9 115,319 22,568 25,925 73,640 113,000 350,452 1890-4 95,510 15,047 8,008 135,661 115,000 369,226 1895-9 68,396 36,835 128,814 140,836 325,000 699,881

1900-4 72,891 559,898 = 57,757" 302,000 507,000 999,546 1905-9 385,000 1,400,000 IQIO-13 20,907 131,496 109,248 382,000 1,660,000 2,303,651

Exports (£E)

Wheat Barley Maize Rice Beans Total 1880-4 573,632 47,074 130,799 161,514 770,168 1,683,187 1885-9 204,189 13,780 30,994 123,000 552,389 924,352 1890—4 260,229 51,392 144,097 133,000 822,458 1,411,176 1895-9 54,420 27,614 35,948 114,000 = 450,250 682,232

I1Q00—4 14,906¢ 22,961°¢ 15,571°¢ 118,000 245,740 1905-9 160,000 46,052 IQIO~13 18,3724 8,0964 3,5354¢ 301,000 51,466° SOURCES:

1880-3: Le Commerce extérieur de l’ Egypte 1884-1889 (Eg.), pp. xvi-xix.

1884-1903: Ibid., pp. 34-51, 134-9. 1904-13: (except beans) A.S. 1974, pp. 284-8, 300-7; (beans) Schatz, J., ‘Apercu général sur les principales cultures égyptiennes’, E.C., no. 138 (Dec. 1932), p. 712. NOTEs :

a. Export figures have been augmented by one-ninth before 1911 b. Excludes imports from Turkey and Ottoman Empire. Cc. 1900-3 only.

d. 1912-13 only. €. 1910-14.

important new product or group of products was discovered to take their place, while the only manufactured goods of any importance remained cigarettes, the export of which improved 1 All trade figures used are taken from A.S. 1974, pp. 300-7.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 309 from £,E240,000 a year in 1895-9 to £E426,000 in 1900-4. Thereafter, however, it too showed a small decline in value. Very generally, Egyptian imports can be divided into four groups: manufactured goods; industrial raw materials, such as coal, petrol, and building wood; raw materials for workingup in Egypt, such as tobacco; and food. Egyptian trade was thus not a simple question of exporting primary products in exchange for manufactured goods; much of its export earnings were spent on a variety of raw materials which it needed for its own development or to feed its own population.

Imports of commodities in all four groups increased considerably during the period, reflecting the expansion of the economy, the increase in population, and, for some, the rise in prosperity at the turn of the century. Inside this general movement the most significant development lay in the rise in the value of food and raw materials for working locally. Egypt became a net importer of cereals about the year 1900.! This was

not the result of a decline in domestic cereal-production but rather of two other factors, the growth in population and rising living standards, which caused many families to purchase imported flour of a higher quality than that produced from Egyptian wheat and maize. Again, in the case of sugar, the

large increase in imports which also began at the turn of the century was not related to a failure to raise output from the local factories, but stemmed rather from their inability to

expand output sufficiently and to manufacture a product _ which was of the standard required by the members of the _ foreign community and by Europeanized Egyptians. Other _ food imports to increase at this time were butter, margarine

and cheeses, fruit, and coffee. )

, The main items in the second group, raw materials for local _ working, were tobacco and short-staple cotton. It is significant

_ that both had been cultivated in Egypt during the early part of ™ See Table 58. Unfortunately the Annuaire statistique does not provide separate

_ Series of figures for the individual cereals except rice, and I have been unable to ’ find such statistics for the years after 1903. The persistence of wheat exports after 1900 was probably due to a continuation of the traditional Egyptian duty of : Supplying food for the pilgrimage: British Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report for 1900, p. 9. There was also a small export of cereals to the Sudan: Egypt, Supplies ; Commission, ‘Situation in Egypt with Regard to Supply of Cereals’, Appendix 1, in Cecil, 29 Jan. 1917: F.O. 368/1719.

310 The Growth of the Economy, 1860-1914 the century. Imports of tobacco increased regularly, from an

annual average of £274,000 in the period 1880-4 to £,E1,160,000 in 1910-13. Short-staple cotton was used throughout the period by local weavers, but it was not until the establishment of the two cotton mills in 1900 that it became of any great importance. Its consumption then advanced rapidly, until by 1912 imports were worth over £E350,000. There was also

a considerable import of cotton thread for use in weaving.! Indigo was a third raw material which had once been grown in Egypt. In this case imports reached their peak by volume at the turn of the century, before declining gradually until 1913. Apart from these three items, other raw materials imported from abroad for working in Egyptian factories included wool, grapes, and lime. A second way of looking at the pattern of Egyptian imports is to divide them into investment and consumption goods. A rough division along these lines shows that the value of imports in the first category amounted to an annual average of £E2,600,000 between 1885 and 1889, compared with one of £E5,300,000 in the latter.2 Thereafter investment goods increased by 300 per cent in the next twenty years, to an average

of £E10,500,000 from 1905 to 1909. The import of consumption goods rose only half as rapidly. By 1905-9 it had reached an average of £113,300,000. The terms of trade

The problem of determining the movements in the terms of trade for the period is more difficult than it was for the years

1854-79. In this instance there is no small group of goods which made up a sizeable proportion of total imports and for which a price index can readily be constructed. The best that can be done is to show the movements in the value of five homogeneous commodities—flour, rice, coffee, coal, and tobacco—and of all British exports of manufactured goods (see 1 Imports of cotton thread amounted to approximately £E260,000 in 1909: Arminjon, p. 208. 2 Taking the figures for imports given in A.S. 1914, pp. 300-3, I have classified the following articles as investment goods: petrol, live animals, wood for building, coal, stone for building, chemical fertilizers, iron and steel, machines, and tobacco (the major part of which was used in Egypt’s cigarette factories). With some exceptions the remainder were classed as consumption goods.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 311 Table 59). The former provided 22 per cent of all Egyptian imports in the years 1910-12, while the latter may be supposed to have accounted for another 20 to 25 per cent.! On the basis

of this admittedly very scanty evidence, it can be tentatively TABLE 59

The Price of Various Egyptian Imports and Exports, 1880-19193 (Annual Averages) 1913 == 100

Imports Exports British

manufac- Cotton

Flour Rice Coffee Coal Tobacco tures*® Cotton seed

1880-4 115 146 99 102103 93 83 g! 74 63 77 87 78 88 77° 1885-9 1890-4 92 89 13966 7781 7873 79 54 65 52 71 1895-9 100 77 73

1900—4100 85 89 81 63 63 75 gI 75 75 go 83 84 76 76 64 1905-9 IQIO-12 113 89 116 73, 113 95 117 98 SOURCES:

Rice, flour, coffee, coal, tobacco, computed from figures in A.S. 1974, pp. 300-3. British manufactures, Schlote, p. 177. Cotton and Cotton seed, computed from figures in Table 37. NOTES:

a. British exports to all countries. b. 1886-9 only.

suggested that there was an adverse movement in the country’s

terms of trade in the 1890s, when the fall in cotton prices exceeded the fall in that of British manufactured goods and coffee and coal. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, cotton’s price recovery was more rapid than that of the other goods listed, and the terms of trade must have become more favourable. 4. THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT Revenue and expenditure

The Egyptian Government obtained its revenue from three main sources: direct taxes (of which the land-tax was very much

the most important), indirect taxes such as the duties on 1 A.S. 1914, pp. 296-7, 300-3.

312 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 imported goods, and the receipts from certain governmentowned public services like the railways and the posts and

telegraphs. In addition, there were certain extraordinary receipts in a number of years. These included a subsidy from the British Government towards the cost of the war in the Sudan

and the profits from the sale of state lands. During the period under consideration, the money obtained from direct taxation

remained almost static (see Table 60), and the fact that revenues doubled between 1880 and 1913 was due almost entirely to the increase in the receipts from the other two main

sources. This in turn was a function of growing economic prosperity after the turn of the century. Revenue from both customs duties and judicial fees increased by 100 per cent between 1900 and 1913, while railway receipts rose by 85 per cent during the same period. As a result the proportion of total revenue provided by direct taxation declined from an average

of 58 per cent between 1881 and 1884 to only 33 per cent between 1910 and 1913, a situation which meant that government finances became increasingly vulnerable to fluctuations within the economy. Such was the case during the financial crisis which began in 1907, when the fall in imports and the

general reduction in the level of business activity led to a decline of some £F1,000,000 in revenue within the next two years. It was not until 1911 that the revival of trade allowed receipts to return to their boom-time peak. The pattern of taxation owed much to government policy. Firstly, so far as direct taxes were concerned, there were a number of reasons why they could not be increased. At the beginning of the Occupation the British officials were united in thinking that the tax placed on most “ushuriya land was too high. ‘This led them to fix a maximum rate, and also to reduce the sums levied in a number of the less prosperous provinces. Later, at the time of Willcocks’s cadastral survey, it was decided that it would only be possible to obtain the co-operation of the

large estate-owners if they were promised that there would be no increase in the total amount of land-tax.! By this means the Government debarred itself from obtaining any share in the great advance in agricultural income which began in the last few years of the nineteenth century. As for those who lived in ™ See p. 246.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 313 TABLE 60 Government Revenue and Expenditure in Selected Years ({E,o00) Revenue

Ordinary ary ; Railways,

Extraordin-

Direct Indirect Posts,

-_-_———————_—- OO CiTTeele- Other

Land Total Customs Tobacco Total — graph* revenue Total Total

1881 4,881 5,311 662 97 2,071 1,54! 307 8,998 391 1885 4,972 5,389 711 212 2,246 1,815 188 9,637 4,692 1890 ~—s55,, 118 5,463 651 728 2,823 1,689 261 10,237 1,656 1895 4,827 5,069 770 969 3,151 1,983 228 10,431 290 1900 = 4,379 = 44,621 1,258 1,160 4,152 2,360 315 11,447 420

1905 4,767 5,045 1,799 1,525 5,573 3,308 887 14,813 2,290 1907 4,916 5,245 2,143 1,648 6,027 = 3,985 1,110 16,368 465 1910 «5,119 «55539 ~—iT 905 1,591 5,439 3,842 1,146 15,966 372

1913 5,041 895,518 2,134. 1,720 6,012 4,329 1,509 17,369 337 Expenditure

Ordinary Extra-ordinary Public debt,

Tribute ee Posts, Posts, pensions, Public TeleTeleMilitary Works Educ. Total graph? Total —Irrig. graph_ =‘ Total Civil list, Government depts. Railways, Rlwys.,

1881 5,766 674 72 2,144 768 8,678 1885 7,023 726 2=— Bt 2,460 10,335 1890 6,152 871 81 2,545 893852 9,590 4243,594> 1,662

1895 5 727 907. —-:103 2,636 1,066 9,249 7 195 ZO! 1900 5,973 966 107 2,696 1,226 9,895 443 253 1,160 1905 6,259 1,187 147 3,521 1,889 11,668 885 676 2,874 1910 6,609 1,246 481 4,855 2,386 13,850 1,155 405 2,534 1913 6,561 1,414 515 5,681 2,642 14,884 722 580 1,931 1907 6,268 1,262 352 45394 2,315 13,231 1,688 1,205 ‘4,646

SourcE: A.S. 1914, pp. 406-26. NoTEs:

a. Includes government packet-boats until 1899. b. Alexandria indemnities.

towns, for most of the period the only direct tax they paid was one on buildings over a certain value. Here the main barrier to any increase in taxation was British reluctance to challenge the rights which the local European communities had obtained

314 Lhe Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 for themselves under the Capitulations. It is true that the urban-

buildings tax was extended to foreign residents in 1887. But four years later an attempt to make them pay the professional tax was abandoned in the face of strong consular opposition. In this situation the Government felt that it would only be just to remove the tax from Egyptians as well.!

Secondly, it followed that, if income from direct taxes remained more or less static, new forms of indirect taxation would have to be discovered. ‘This was the more important as the Government was determined to get rid of a large number of vexatious minor taxes which hampered trade and commerce or which placed an unnecessary burden on the poorer sections of the community. In these circumstances the major innovation was to make a series of increases in the duty on imported tobacco, accompanied, in 1890, by an absolute prohibition on tobacco-cultivation inside Egypt itself.2 In consequence, the amount obtained from this source rose from under £E300,000 in 1887 to over £E1,000,000 ten years later. A second, less remunerative, tax was the so-called rachat militaire introduced in

1885, by which young Egyptian men could avoid military service by paying a small fee. In addition, money was obtained by the sale of state lands, including the Daira Saniya Estate. By these and other means the Government was able to obtain a small but continuous increase in revenue during the first fifteen years of the British Occupation. Thereafter, growing economic

prosperity obviated the need to discover new methods of taxation. Rising receipts from traditional sources not only caused total revenue to advance by nearly 60 per cent between 1897 and 1913, but also enabled the Government to remove a wide variety of smaller duties. These included the salt tax, the tolls on Nile bridges, the boat tax, and finally the rachat militaire, which was abandoned in 1908.

When it came to expenditure the Government had very much less freedom to manceuvre for most of the period under discussion. Under the system of international control established by the Law of Liquidation of 1880 and modified by the London Agreement of 1885, only £E5,237,000 was set aside for ordinary administrative expenditure, while restrictions were ' Cromer, Annual Report for 1891, P.P. 1892, vol. xcvi, p. 410. # See p. 249.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 315 placed on the way in which any revenue over and above this sum, and that needed to make certain fixed annual payments like the interest on the Public Debt, could be spent. These provisions were of no great importance during the 1880s, when receipts were barely sufficient to permit the Government to discharge all its obligations; but, in the years which followed, they made it difficult for the administration to allocate more than a small fraction of its increasing surpluses to such important ministries as those of Public Works and Education. In addition, large sums of money which had been saved through changes in the rate of interest on the Public Debt—the so-called ‘conversion economies’—remained idle because the French and

British Governments were unable to agree how they should be spent. The Government’s own financial conservatism was another factor in the situation. In order to safeguard itself against any possible danger to the revenue from an extra low Nile or some other natural disaster, a sizeable reserve fund was

accumulated. As a result, by 1904, ordinary administrative expenditure was only £E1,000,000 above its 1885 level, while

the reserves (including the conversion economies) stood at over £K13,500,000.!

In these circumstances it is clear that efforts to promote the development of the economy could not be financed out of ordinary revenue. Two other methods were tried instead. First, a number of capital works were undertaken with money derived either from loans or from the reserves at the disposal of the Government and the Caisse de la Dette Publique. Some £,£13,333,000 was expended in this way between 1886 and 1904. Of this, the bulk went to works or irrigation and drainage, while smaller sums were spent on public buildings, on the railways, and on the port of Alexandria. These were all projects which could be relied upon to lead to an increase in revenue in the short run. Second, the Government encouraged the formation of several private companies to undertake useful works, like the construction of light agricultural railways, or to establish institutions such as the Agricultural Bank, for which no public funds were available. In each case the concession carried with it an official guarantee of profits up to a certain amount each year. 1 A.S. 1914, Pp. 441.

316 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 The Anglo-French Agreement of 1904 produced a radical change in the situation. Not only did it remove all the restrictions on the use of revenue, but it also led to the release of certain reserve funds, including the conversion economies now worth over £E6,000,000. This new freedom, coming as it did at

a time of rising receipts, allowed a great advance in government expenditure. Funds allocated to the principal ministries out of ordinary revenues were increased; the reserves were run down to pay for a variety of public works. The main period of heavy expenditure was from 1906 to 1908. During these three years over £ E4,800,000 was spent on drainage and irrigation, and another £E3,800,000 on the railways and telegraphs, mostly on the former.! Prior to 1904 expenditure on rollingstock and the repair of the permanent way had been limited by international agreement, and there was much that had to be done to provide sufficient capacity to meet the country’s growing needs. This period of heavy spending was brought to an end by the financial crisis of 1907. The Government responded

to the threat to its revenues in the orthodox manner—by restricting expenditure; and, although a number of projects were too far advanced to allow them to be suspended at once, the economy measures began to take effect from 1908 onwards. From then until the war there was a steady decline in the sums

spent on new capital works financed out of the reserves. Government policy also produced a check on the rapid rise in ordinary expenditure. The sums spent by the principal ministries continued to increase, but at a very much slower rate than had been the case before 1908. The role of government in the development of the economy

Enough has been said to give some indication of the role played by the Government in the development of the economy

during the period under consideration. In the most general terms, it consisted in following the British financial orthodoxy of the time, modified to some extent by the experience which many of the leading officials had obtained during their service in India. Financial orthodoxy demanded low taxes, a balanced t A.S. 1914, p. 426. The figure for the money spent on the railways and telegraphs also includes a small amount devoted to the improvement of Alexandria port.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 317 budget, and the accumulation of large reserves. It also demanded

that the Government did all in its power to provide conditions

in which private enterprise could flourish. All restrictions on trade and industry should be removed; nothing ought to be done to interfere with the free exercise of private initiative.

Indian experience, on the other hand, suggested a more positive role for government. There were certain works like dams and barrages which, if not constructed out of public funds, would not be constructed at all. Again, when it came to something like agricultural education, the Government might have to take up a task which in Europe could safely be left in private hands. Political considerations also played their part. Britain’s position in Egypt would clearly be strengthened by any measures which led to an increase in the general level of prosperity.

The Government’s activities in the agricultural sector have already been described in some detail in Chapter IX, so that the remainder of this section will be devoted to an analysis of its policy towards developments in the rest of the economy. Here there are two general points to be made. Firstly, government response to the major events of the period—the rapid increase of capital in Egyptian public companies, the financial crisis of 1907, the growth of foreign trade—was almost entirely one of non-intervention. This policy, in turn, had its roots in the official attitude towards the Egyptian business community. During the period up to 1907 the latter were subject to only the loosest control. In part this was the result of the Capitulations, which made the passage of any regulatory legislation affecting foreigners a matter for long and difficult negotiations

with the governments concerned. But Lord Cromer, the British Agent and Consul-General, was also averse to laws of such a kind on grounds of principle. Business should not be discouraged by government interference, so he believed, for this would be to inhibit the investment of private capital in enterprises needed to develop the country’s resources. Hence

little was done to restrain the speculative excesses which marked the height of the boom in company-promotion, the only measure of any importance being a regulation to prevent one of the worst abuses, the manipulation of ‘founders’ shares, by restricting their issue to those cases where they were a return

318 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 for some specific asset. However, as the rule applied only to Egyptian companies, it was easily circumvented by concerns which had themselves registered abroad.! Gorst, Cromer’s successor, was ready to adopt a slightly more forceful approach

and introduced a law which allowed the Government to

exercise some control over the operations of Egyptian stock exchanges.” But it was left to the Mixed Court of Appeal to take the only effective step, with its ruling in 1908 that companies formed with the sole object of working in Egypt must be

treated as Egyptian regardless of where they were actually registered. As a result, a large number of local concerns were brought under Egyptian law.3 But if the Government was not anxious to discourage private business it was equally averse to giving it any direct assistance. A good example of this occurred early in 1908. Worried by the collapse of the market in land, a number of leading financiers pressed the Government to prevent a further fall in prices by placing £,E2,000,000 of public money at the disposal of the leading mortgage banks. Gorst refused this request, arguing that ‘no sufficient justification had been shown for government interference .4 The foregoing general principles governing relations with the business community were not, of course, always rigidly applied. On at least one occasion it was considered of such vital importance to the economic well-being of the country that official assistance was given to an industry which suddenly found itself

in considerable difficulty. This was in 1905-6, when the Société Générale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d’Egypte was almost forced into liquidation. It was saved only by the reorganization of its finances, which involved, among other things, the purchase by the Government of its unprofitable 1 Crouchley, The Investment of Foreign Capital, p. 63. Between the publication of

the new regulations in 1906 and Apr. 1908, no less than forty-seven companies with the sole purpose of operating in Egypt were founded abroad so as to avoid having to comply with Egyptian law. Ibid. 2 Tignor, R. L., Modernization and British Colonial Rule in Egypt, 1882-1914, (Princeton, 1966), p. 371. 3 Ministry of Justice, Report for the Year 1910 (Eg.), pp. 24-5.

4 Annual Report for 1907, P.P., 1908, vol. cxxv, p. 194. The Government did agree, however, to an earlier request that the Crédit Foncier Egyptien be given mn time to repay money owing from the liquidation of the Daira Saniya estate.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 319 network of light agricultural railways.! Further assistance was

provided by the decision to waive the duty paid on sugar exports for one year.” But to offset this, there was the notorious affair of the countervailing duty which, at Cromer’s insistence,

was placed on all Egyptian factory-produced cotton goods. For a variety of reasons, including his belief in the principles of Free Trade, his fear of another political dispute similar to that which had marked the introduction of the Indian cotton duties in 1894, and perhaps his desire to propitiate the Lancashire cotton interests, Cromer went to considerable lengths to prevent the two cotton factories from obtaining any benefit from the external tariff.3 The consequences of this policy have already been discussed earlier in the chapter.‘ The second general point about the Government’s role in the development of the economy concerns its efforts to facilitate

trade and commerce by improving the country’s system of transport. Thus, once the financial situation became easier in the 1890s, money was spent on the extension and improvement

of the railways. Over 500 kilometres of new track were laid between 1888 and 1914.5 There was also a considerable addition to the rolling-stock, once the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904

had freed the Government from all the limitations imposed on expenditure by the international control. During the next four years the number of locomotives was increased from 488 to 589, and the number of wagons from 8,157 to 11,251. Meanwhile, the port facilities at Alexandria were greatly expanded by the construction of new jetties and mooring stations for ships

unloading bulky cargoes such as coal, wood, and nitrates. Attention was also paid to the harbour mouth, which was deepened and widened in 1890 and again in 1907.7 Without improvements of this kind it is unlikely that the system of transport would have been able to cope with the continuous increase in trade which began at the turn of the century. As often happens, the indirect effects of government policy were as important as those steps taken deliberately to promote the development of the economy. This was certainly true of the 1 Arminjon, p. 242. 2 Mazuel, Le Sucre en Egypte, p. 172. 3 This point is dealt with at greater length on pp. 342-4. ‘4 See pp. 303~4.

5 Wiener, p. 94; A.S. 1914, pp. 170-1. © Ibid.

7 Crouchley, Economic Development, pp. 172-3.

320 The Growth of the Economy, 1860-1914 maintenance of political security. It was also true of the decision to raise money by selling off parcels of state land. One of the central themes of this present chapter has been that the purchase, improvement, and resale of such estates formed the

basis of a great deal of the economic activity of the period. Numerous companies were formed to engage in transactions of this kind; Egyptian and foreign investors were easily persuaded that this was where there were large profits to be made. Altogether it would not be too much to argue that the boom in company-promotion might have taken quite a different course had it not been for the fact that, just at the right moment, so large an amount of land became available for exploitation. 5. THE ROLE OF THE FOREIGN COMMUNITY

Any discussion of the role of Egypt’s foreign community in the development of the economy must begin with an account of its size and composition. According to the census of 1907 there were then 286,301 foreigners resident in Egypt. Of these, 138,543, or just under half, were Europeans! and Americans, 69,725 citizens of the Ottoman Empire, and 65,162 from the Sudan. Two other general points ought also to be made. First, a very large proportion of the foreign community, 79-4 per cent, lived in the five largest towns, Cairo, Alexandria, Port Said, Ismailia, and Suez. Second, it seems safe to assume that the overwhelming majority had settled permanently in Egypt. This

must have been true of many of the Ottoman subjects and of the Sudanese; we also have the authority of the Annuaire statistique for 1914 that it was true of most of the 62,725 Greeks,

the 34,926 Italians, and the 1,847 Germans.? The point is an important one. It 1s often assumed that members of foreign communities remit the bulk of their earnings and savings to their own mother country. However, such behaviour becomes very much less likely if these people see their residence in a foreign land as permanent.

It is to labour the obvious to state that the economic

importance of Egypt’s foreign community was out of all proportion to its numbers. The community may have owned as 1 T have excluded 6,292 British subjects classed as ‘Maltese and others’. 2 AS. 1914, p. 25.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 321 much as a seventh of the agricultural land.! [ts male members had a high level of technical skill, and a rate of literacy which

was many times in excess of that of the Egyptian average, 69°I per cent as against 8-5 per cent in 1907.2 By virtue of its purchasing power and its European tastes it must certainly have been responsible for the consumption of a considerable pro-

portion of Egypt’s imports. Most important of all, it was foreigners who provided nearly all of the expertise and managerial ability necessary to market the cotton crop and to create and run the country’s banks and other commercial institutions. In so far as the development of the economy was concerned, two groups of foreign residents deserve special attention. It was they who were responsible for the formation of the bulk of the commercial enterprises started locally in Egypt after 1880; they who must certainly have made the largest fortunes. The first

group, which have already been mentioned in an earlier chapter, consisted of the owners and managers of the four largest cotton-export houses, Ghoremi, Benachi & Co., Carver Brothers & Co., R. and O. Lindemann, and Peel & Co. These

men, the majority of whom had been born in Egypt and expected to spend the whole of their working life there, did not

confine their attention to the cotton alone, but also devoted their money and their talents to other businesses as well. Percy

Carver, the senior director of Carver Brothers just before the First World War, 1s a good example of this type of man.3 Though born in Gibraltar, he came to Egypt in 1879 at the age of 19 to work in the family firm. In 1888 he assisted his father and uncle in the foundation of the Alexandria Bonded Warehouse Co. and by 1909 was himself director of three of the country’s most important public companies as well as of the Alexandria General Produce Association. E. A. Benachi+ and Hugo Lindemann were equally prominent in Egypt’s business and commercial life. Like Percy Carver, they were anxious to t According to the official statistics for 1907 foreigners then owned 674,564 feddans out of the total cultivated area of 5,435,789 feddans: A.S. 1914, pp. 320-1. However, some of these owners may have lived outside the country. 2 AS. 1914, P. 24. 3 For information about Percy Carver see Wright, p. 325. 4 See Wright, pp. 438-9.

5 See War Trade Dept., ‘Report on the Policy Adopted in Restraint and

821643 Y

Liquidation of Enemy Trade’ (Eg.), pp. 4-10.

322 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 use the profits they made from cotton to invest in a wide variety of other enterprises. The second group contained members of many of Alexandria’s oldest banking and merchant families, among them those of de Menasce, Cattaui, Suarés, Zervudachi, and Salvago. Some were

of Greek origin; others were Jews who had come to Egypt at least as early as the reign of Muhammad ‘Ali and who, over the years, had obtained the nationality of a European country.

The de Menasce family is an example of this latter type.! Jacoub, the founder of the firm, was born in Alexandria in 1810. In 1848, having incurred the displeasure of Muhammad ‘Ali, he was forced to flee to Austria, where he managed to

obtain proof of Hungarian nationality. On his return he established himself in business as a banker and general merchant. Before he died in 1883 he had founded branches of the firm in Manchester, Liverpool, Marseilles, Paris, and Istanbul. Some years before his death he was created a baron by the Austro-Hungarian Government in return for his ‘valuable services to trade’. Jacoub’s son, Bohor, the second baron, was born in 1830. He married the daughter of Jacob Cattaui when he was 19, and spent the rest of his life in the family business. Bohor died soon after his father and was succeeded by his eldest son, Jacques Levi, the man responsible for the firm’s tremendous expansion in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. There were few major enterprises begun in Egyptat this period in which the de Menasce family did not take some part, and in 1909 Jacques Levi was chairman of four companies and on the board of eight more.

Some account of the activities of the Greek and Jewish banking houses has already been given earlier in this chapter. It was Raphael Suarés who succeeded in interesting French financiers in the creation of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien; and he, too, who obtained the concessions for the National Bank and the Daira Sanieh Co.? Again, it was members of the de Menasce, Suarés, and Cattaui families who were among the

first to see the possibilities of rural land reclamation in the early 1890s, and who founded one of the light agricultural railway companies at about the same time.3 Other enterprises information about the de Menasce family see Wright, pp. 448-50. 21 ForSee pp. 277, 279. 3 See p. 281.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 323 with which they were involved were public utilities like the various companies founded to provide the Delta towns with water,! rural land companies,” and at least two manufacturing firms, the refinery founded at Hawamdiya in 18813 and the Anglo-Egyptian Spinning and Weaving Company, in which all held shares.4 Meanwhile, both C. M. Salvago and C. G.

Zervudachi, before his firm went bankrupt in 1911, had financial interests in a variety of companies including mortgage

banks, cotton-pressing concerns, and land companies like the Union Fonciére d’Egypte, of which Zervudachi was chairman.’

Information about the profits which the leading cotton merchants and members of banking families obtained from the enterprises which they founded or managed or financed is, unfortunately, very much more difficult to obtain. About all that can be learned comes from the evidence provided by their wills

when they died. ‘These would seem to indicate that some, at least, made considerable fortunes. For instance, C. Bayerlé, a business associate of the Suarés family who became managing director of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien,® left the huge sum of £400,000.7 Another source of information, where British subjects were concerned, are the records of the consular court. These reveal that Jacob Rolo, the owner of a firm of bankers, coal merchants, and general importers,’ left an estate worth just over £70,000.9 A second question about which equally little is known involves the problem of how much of the money made in Egypt by members of the foreign community remained in the country. The fact that so many of the principal banking

families were long established in Alexandria must surely indicate that sizeable sums were spent locally on the purchase of land or houses or shares in Egyptian companies. But this, of course, does not preclude the fact that much may also have been invested abroad, either on private account or through one of the overseas branches of the family firm. ' British Chamber of Commerce, List of Companies, pp. 45-7. 2 Ibid., pp. 16, 25-6. 3 See p. 277. 4 See list of shareholders in PRO BT 31/16184/61619.

5 See, for example, Wright, p. 440, and British Chamber of Commerce, List of Companies, pp. 21, 24-5.

, © British Chamber of Commerce, List of Companies, p. 7.

7 A.ELM. ii, no. 40 (8 Jan. 1909), p. 95. 8 Wright, p. 464.

: 9 “The Estate of Jacob Rolo’ (died 14 Nov. 1g10): F.O. 847/45/35.

324 The Growth of the Economy, 1880-1914 It must not be supposed, however, that Egypt’s financial and commercial development owed everything to the two groups of merchants and bankers just described. They were merely the

most prominent members of a foreign business community which included several hundred men at the very least. Again, the activities of every member of that community would have been severely circumscribed had it not been for the large sums of money which European investors were willing to place in Egyptian enterprises. It is true that profits from cotton were generally more than enough to finance undertakings of a small kind outside the export sector of the economy, but the creation

of larger companies would have been impossible without assistance from Europe. The role of the Government was equally important. Not only was security maintained and the

system of transport improved, but the administration also tried, deliberately, to create conditions in which private enterprise could flourish.

Finally, something ought to be said about the relative importance of Egyptian businessmen and financiers. Such men existed, but in small numbers. The List of Companies compiled

by the British Chamber of Commerce in 1go1 reveals that of a hundred or so directors only fourteen can confidently be identified by their names as men who might have been Egyptian citizens.' ‘This excludes the eight Copts on the board of the ill-fated Fayoum Light Railways, but includes a number of people who may have been given a place on a board in return for the sale to the company of some piece of urban or rural property.2 Only two Egyptians were directors of more than

three companies at this time, Nubar Pasha, who was on the board of nine, and Prince Husain Kamil, who was on the board of six. Information is lacking about directorships in the years which followed, but the number of Egyptians holding them

must certainly have increased. One important entrepreneur was Mansur Shakur Pasha, who resigned from government service in 1905 to devote his attention to various business interests. By 1909 he was general manager of the Egyptian Enterprise and Development Co., Ltd., which he had helped t The use of names as a criterion for nationality means, of course, that there is no way of distinguishing between Egyptians and other Muslims. 2 For this practice see, for example, Recueil consulaire, vol. 108 (1900), p. 282.

Industry, Services, and Commerce 325 to found, President of the Gharbieh Land Co., and Chairman of the Koubbeh Gardens Building Land Co.! Other Egyptians

owned cotton ginneries and factories, others again were merchants and government public-works contractors.? But in

each case their numbers were small compared with their foreign competitors. As in the days of Sa‘id and Isma‘ll, Egypt remained largely dependent on Europeans for the exploitation of its agricultural resources. 1 Wright, p. 397. 2 Ibid., pp. 389, 440, 465.

XI THE GROWTH OF THE ECONOMY IN CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT I, INTRODUCTION— WRITERS ON THE EGYPTIAN ECONOMY PRIOR TO 1880

OWHERE is Egypt’s status as a developing country more

| \ clearly confirmed than in the large number of descriptive and prescriptive analyses of its economic progress published throughout the nineteenth century. The original impetus to these, as to so many other things, came from members of the French Expedition, who were the first to introduce into writings on Egypt the increasingly powerful European assump-

tion that growth was the natural condition of a country’s economy. They were followed by a long succession of authors whose interest was aroused by the efforts of successive Egyptian rulers to grapple with practical aspects of this same subject. Of the early writers on the development of the economy two

are of particular importance, the Englishman, John Bowring, whose ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ was presented to Parliament in 1840, and the Frenchman, A. Colin, who wrote an influential series of articles in the Revue des Deux Mondes which

appeared in 1838 and 1839.! Both were concerned to discuss the issue then central to Muhammad ‘Ali’s_policies—did Egypt’s factor endowment inevitably dictate that it remain a purely agricultural country, or was there a case for devoting some resources to the encouragement of industry? Their views were firmly opposed. Bowring disapproved strongly of the attempt then being made to introduce a European-style factory system. He was willing to admit, he wrote, that, ‘if there was an obvious and perceptible tendency towards an ultimately bene* Reference to Bowring’s report and Colin’s articles will be found in Chapter IT.

Although Bowring’s report was published in 1840 it was based on information collected in Egypt in 1837-8.

The Growth of the Economy In Contemporary Thought 327 ficial employment of capital and labour, there would have been

a fair excuse for the sacrifices the government made in the beginning of these attempts’. But they had been both costly and unsuccessful. ‘With few exceptions the progress made has

been small, they have added nothing to the resources of the country, while the same amount of capital and labour applied to agricultural objects would have deposited large returns of profit.’ Proof of this lay, for him, in the fact that for a number of reasons, mostly connected with faulty management, the factories had never succeeded in producing articles which were

as cheap as their European equivalents.! Colin, on the other hand, while recognizing that Egyptian goods were generally inferior to imported ones and that the system as it existed was far from perfect, took a different view. It was just because Egypt was a predominantly agricultural country, he argued, that some industry should be established, for it was only by factories that agriculture itself could eventually be improved. As he put it: If Mohemet Ali, who has taken up the role of educationalist and

innovator in the East ..., had wished suddenly to reform the methods of cultivating the soil of Egypt where it did not appear that there had been the slightest change for 4,000 years, he would cer-

tainly have failed. . . . But in introducing Western factories into Egypt, in demonstrating to his people the power of machinery, in teaching them to master influences from the outside world, he had

wisely prepared the way for the reform of agricultural method.?

As this argument suggests, Colin was a firm believer in the | interdependence of agriculture and industry. And he goes on to i suggest that the increased sale of locally manufactured goods, | however inferior, to the local population would be profitable for both sectors of the economy—just as the manufacture of cheap clothes for sale to the slaves and poorer classes had been advantageous to all in America, another agricultural country.

In return, the cultivators would provide raw materials like sugar, skins, cotton, and flax for use in the local factories, commodities which Egyptians had already demonstrated their capacity to work successfully.3 Finally, it was wrong, he argued, | ™ ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (GB), pp. 29-30. | 2 ‘Lettres sur l’Egypte — Industrie manufacturiére’, pp. 485-6 (translation). 3 Ibid., pp. 490-1, 490 n.

328 The Growth of the Economy to maintain that Egypt’s factor endowments would present a continuous obstacle to further industrial development: iron mines and coal could be discovered somewhere in the region, while it would be possible to train skilled engineers over a period of time.! Bowring and Colin also dealt with two other important issues,

the improvement of agriculture and the proper role of the foreign community in the country’s development. As far as agriculture was concerned, they both believed that the state had had to play a fundamental part in its direction. ‘It may be

true’, wrote Bowring, ‘that nothing but despotic authority would have forced the cultivation of many of those important articles such as cotton, opium, sugar, indigo, etc., of which Egypt furnishes so large a supply. It is undoubtedly the fact that the capital and other facilities furnished by the government have been the primary cause of these increased productions.’ But they disagreed over future policy. Bowring was critical of the inefficiency with which the various agricultural

monopolies were administered and suggested that direct taxation would, in fact, produce more revenue. He also believed strongly in the virtues of free enterprise. He was convinced, he

wrote, that in spite of the poor and dispirited condition in which he found the peasants, and the fact that they only grew the lucrative summer crops when they were forced to, “the desire

to accumulate and to retain wealth is as active among the fellah race as in any other class of human beings’.3 In opposition to this, Colin seems to have been content to accept Muhammad

‘Ali’s assertion that direct supervision of the cultivators must continue, as they were lazy and no longer knew, unaided, to whom to sell their crops. There was more agreement about the important role which

Furopeans had to play in Egypt’s economic development, although each emphasized different points. Bowring was almost completely uncritical: I ‘Lettres sur l’Egypte — Industrie manufacturiére’, pp. 489-90. 2 ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (GB), p. 19. 3 Ibid., pp. 14-15. 4 ‘Lettres sur l’Egypte — Budget et administration’, p. 125, note 2. Colin did, however, suggest to Muhammad ‘Ali that he impose an export duty which would raise sufficient money to allow him to dispense with the profits from his agricultural monopolies and to free the growth and sale of Egyptian crops. Ibid.

In Contemporary Thought 329 Egypt has, indeed, received immense benefits from the presence of Europeans. They have not only rendered direct service by the

knowledge they have communicated, but the circumstances of their having been so much associated with all the improvements which have been introduced, has diffused a great respect for their superior acquirements, and a toleration for those opinions whose influence has been spreading widely among the people.!

Colin was more concerned with the encouragement of European

capital and skill, of which, he said, Egypt has great need. Muhammad ‘Ali was wrong to place obstacles in their way. If

such barriers were removed, European capital would go looking for profits in Egypt which it could find in no other place

in the world.2 However, unlike Bowring, he was far-sighted enough to see what difficulties this might create and why it was that Muhammad ‘Ali was so wary in his dealings with Europeans. The Pasha was afraid that the latter would exploit the Egyptians—‘the first piastre that Europeans spend when they arrive in Egypt is for the purpose of a courbash’, Muhammad ‘Ali had once said—and his problem with European capital was ‘knowing how to call it, but to contain it, to dominate it, and to put it to his advantage’.3 Colin was also very critical of those foreign merchants who, he said, came to Egypt only to make their fortunes, which they then sent off to Europe, leaving

- nothing to the benefit of the country. Their departure, he thought, would be no loss.4

After the progressive abandonment of Muhammad ‘All’s factories in the 1840s the question of whether the country would

~ benefit from the introduction of European-style industry _ ceased to be of any practical importance and was rarely raised

until the years just before the First World War. It was almost _ universally assumed that Egypt’s economic future lay ex' Clusively with the development of its agricultural resources, and

' discussion centred largely on specific means by which this | might be achieved. One author who wrote along these lines __ was Grégoire, whose article ‘De la culture du coton en Egypte’,

published in 1862, contained a number of practical suggestions | 1 ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’ (GB), p. 30. 2 ‘Lettres sur Egypte — Industrie manufacturiére’, p. 493.

; 3 Ibid., p. 497, 497 n. (translation). A courbash was a leather whip. 4 ‘Lettres sur l’Egypte — Commerce’, p. 69.

330 The Growth of the Economy as to the way in which the cultivation of cotton might be improved. Another was J. Lattis, a Frenchman, who came to the country in the 1850s to introduce a system of intensive rice-

cultivation.! In a paper read to the Institut Egyptien in December 1862, he pointed out how important it was that the

gains made as a result of the cotton boom should not be immediately dissipated. ‘The peasants, temporarily enriched by

circumstances which would not last, were at that moment accessible to the idea of progress and amelioration; and the main aim of those interested in the development of Egyptian agriculture should be to make them understand that all their energies should be devoted to increasing the yield of their land to compensate for the lower prices they would receive once the boom broke. To this end it was necessary to perfect the tools

they used, and also to improve their animals.? As a result of Lattis’s initiative, a committee of the Institute was set up to examine his proposals in detail and to suggest practical measures which could then be recommended to the Government.3 A few months later, however, Isma‘il’s accession was thought to make its deliberations superfluous, and the whole idea was dropped.‘

The works of a second group of agricultural experts have already been mentioned in an earlier chapter. They included L. Behmer and many of the men whose experiments were described in the Bulletin de la Société égyptienne d’ Agriculture.’

Like Grégoire and Lattis they all shared a concern for the practical improvement of traditional methods; but, unlike

them, their recommendations tended to be based on the

assumption that Egyptian peasant agriculture was hopelessly backward and that the only way to improve it was by technical education and the wholesale introduction of European tools and European practice. Their attitude to the local plough was a case in point. Whereas Behmer condemned it out of hand as primitive and ineffective,° Grégoire was prepared to recognize that, for all its faults, it could be replaced only with the greatest difficulty. Most of the European ploughs introduced in the 1850s had soon been abandoned, he wrote. They were too 1 The Times, 2 July 1855. 2 ‘Le fellah et 'individualisme au point de vue de progrés agricole en Egypte’, B.I_LE. 1st series, i, no. 8 (1862-3), 64-5.

3 Lattis, p. 65. 4 Ibid., pp. 117-18. 5 See pp. 142-3, 152.

© Observations sur Pagriculture (Eg.), p. 5.

In Contemporary Thought 331 complicated for peasant use and could not be made to fit into the pattern of rural life.’ However, given the temper of the times, it was those who advocated the employment of modern tools who exercised an increasing influence. Government and private agricultural societies alike advocated the import of foreign ploughs, harvesters, and, later, tractors. Thus it was only in the first decade of the twentieth century that any serious effort was made to suggest that the way ahead lay not in the

slavish imitation of European methods but, rather, in an adaptation of traditional practice by means of a wide variety of small-scale improvements which the peasants could understand and with implements which they could afford to purchase and to repair.”

The easy optimism of Behmer and those who thought like him can also be seen on a wider scale in the writings of numerous financial journalists, businessmen, and others who, for most of Isma‘il’s reign, seem to have taken it for granted that Egypt

was a developing country much like any other, and that the

introduction of European skills and the use of European capital to build railways and ports and to improve the system _ of irrigation would automatically produce the same growth in prosperity which had marked the recent history of the United States, the Argentine, and Canada. Such an attitude is well illustrated in an anonymous article in the Bankers’ Magazine in 1870 entitled “The Progress of Egypt’: | Glancing back at the last seven years or more, it may be questioned whether any country in Europe has made as great advances as this _ African satrapy has done. The predecessor of Ismail Pasha com_ menced the work of progress but the Khedive has given it an impulse _ which, seconded by favourable circumstances, has produced results

_ little short of marvellous. In addition to great reforms effected in _ every department and in the finances, the present ruler has brought ' to his important task the ideal and spirit of Western Europe.

_ Then, after describing the great progress in agriculture and » commerce and the construction of so many works of public - utility, the writer went on: ‘The result of Western capital | ™ Grégoire, pp. 450-3. : 2 See, for instance, the articles and papers of V. M. Mosséri and, in particular, his joint paper with C. Audebeau, ‘Le labourage en Egypte’, B.I.E., 5th series, x (1916), 83-127.

939 The Growth of the Economy flowing in is similar to that of the over-flowing of the Nile:

production has advanced, the wealth of the country has increased, and the government revenue has risen steadily as a natural consequence.’! Bankruptcy soon put an end to optimism of this particular sort. The financial and administrative confusion of the last

years of Isma‘il’s reign produced an inevitable reaction, leading a number of writers to turn their attention to the many obstacles which lay in the path of further development. One such man was Dr. E. Rossi, whose book La Population et les finances: question égyptienne was published in 1878. Rossi began

with an attack on the attempts being made by European financiers to get Egypt to pay its debts by increasing revenues and decreasing expenses. This could only be self-defeating. As he put it: ‘Péconomie qui empécherait de faire,des dépenses desquelles pourrait résulter un ensemble de mesures aptes a augmenter les recettes, et qui aboutirait a énerver les forces de celui qui doit travailler pour remplir ses engagements, serait une économie fatale et homicide.’2 Instead, what should be

done should be to supplement the wealth of the country by improving the agricultural system, in particular by extending crops to previously uncultivated areas.3 But this could be done only with an increased labour force, and thus the basis of the Egyptian problem was population. People were the true riches of the state and it was precisely ‘parce que la population manque que la détresse y est a son supréme degre’.4 Fertility rates were high but infant mortality was exceptional, and he ended this section of the book by suggesting a number of remedies, including the prohibition of early marriages and the reorganiz-

ation of the vaccination service.’ Among other recipes for Egyptian agricultural progress, he strongly stressed the need for liberty. Prosperity, he wrote, existed only where men had assured possession of their property, the product of their labours, and their savings. In Egypt all these basic preconditions were missing.®

Others to make this last point were the Egyptian National Party in a manifesto produced in November 1879, and a group calling itself the Union de la Jeunesse Egyptienne which 1 Vol. xxx (June 1870), pp. 504-5. 2 Rossi, p. 7. 3 Ibid., p. 9.

+ Ibid., p. 10. s Ibid., pp. 28-31. 6 Ibid., p. 50.

In Contemporary Thought 333 presented a ‘projet de réformes’ to the new Khedive, Taufiq, in September of the same year.! Both were concerned with deteriorating conditions in the countryside. A large number of cultivators are in great misery, began the Projet, they are often unable to pay their taxes, many are losing their lands to people who know nothing about agriculture, while the fellah who remains ‘n’est jamais garanti contre la rapacité de son puissant voisin, sheich, notable, ou gros propriéte, qui se croit en droit d’user de la force physique et des bestiaux de son faible voisin quand il veut bien respecter son grenier’. His only protection was to steal and cheat himself.2 Among the remedies suggested were the establishment of a new land-tax, the reform of the rules governing public works, and the suppression of all taxes

whose levy was difficult or vexatious.3 oo

2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ECONOMY IN CONTEMPOR-

ARY THOUGHT, 1880-1914 The British Occupation of Egypt brought a sharp change of _ emphasis in much of the writing on the Egyptian economy. To the officials sent from England to report on Egypt’s future or to assist in its administration it was seen not so much as a developing country, the prosperity of which was being daily increased

_ by injections of European capital and skill, but more as an _ inefficient despotism, which had only narrowly escaped from - complete anarchy, and which it was their duty to restore to _ order. Thus they were led, naturally, to concentrate their ' attention on projects of reform and reconstruction rather than | on measures designed to assist the long-term development: of _ the economy. This tendency was accentuated by the fact that : the majority of senior officials looked at Egyptian conditions ' very much in the light of British imperial experience in India. | Once the idea of influencing Egypt from outside and of secur_ Ing its improvement by indirect means had been made im_ possible by the events of 1882, India was the only example of _ an area in which an alternative approach had been tried. For 1 Manifeste du Parti National Egyptien (Cairo, 4 Nov. 1879); Union de la Jeunesse

|;

; Egyptienne, Projet de réformes présenté a Son Altesse Tewfick Ier (Alexandria, Sept.

: Union de la Jeunesse Egyptienne, pp. 1-2. - 3 Ibid, p. 3.

334 The Growth of the Economy this reason it is not surprising that Lord Dufferin should cite Indian precedents for the practical consequences which had followed the introduction of European property legislation, in his “Report on the Reorganisation of Egypt’.! And his use of Indian examples was the more natural as there were indeed a number of obvious similarities between the conditions in the two countries. ‘This had been recognized before 1882 by the employment of two Indian land-settlement experts, Colvin and Gibson, to assist the Egyptian Government in a cadastral survey. Again, Dufferin pointed to what must have seemed a very straightforward parallel when, apropos of his suggestion that Anglo-Indian engineers be recruited for service in Egypt,

he observed: ‘Egypt is so similar to many of the irrigated districts in India that it is natural to turn to that country for advice. ’?

But the attitude which regarded Egypt as an Eastern country much in need of European guidance is best exemplified in the writings of Lord Cromer, the man who, as British Agent

and Consul-General from 1883 to 1907, was its real ruler. Cromer’s views on the Egyptian economy cannot be understood without reference to the basic principles which he felt should underlie what he was later to call ‘the government of subject races’.3 Experience in India had convinced him that sound financial management was the key to the regeneration of Oriental societies. It was, he felt, by ignoring this principle that Egypt had gone bankrupt, and it was by the application of this same principle that Britain’s Indian Empire was being reclaimed and provided with the basic institutions of European civilization. But whatever the country the recipe must always be the same. Attention to the laws of sound finance—and by these he meant low taxation, efficient fiscal administration, careful expenditure on remunerative public works, and the removal of barriers to trade—was the only sure way to moral

2 Ibid., p. 100. . 1 “Report on the Reorganisation of Egypt’ (GB), p. 106.

3 This is the title of an article to be found in his Political and Literary essays, 1 (London, 1913), 3-53. For further information about Cromer’s economic thinking see my ‘The Influence of Lord Cromer’s Indian Experience on British Policy in Egypt, 1883-1907’, St. Antony’s Papers, no. 17 (Oxford, 1965), pp. 109-39, and “The Attitudes of British Officials to the Development of the Egyptian Economy, 18821922” (unpublished paper presented to Conference on the Economic History of the Middle East, School of Oriental and African Studies, July 1967).

In Contemporary Thought 335 and material improvement. Furthermore, and this was almost equally important, a programme of this sort was a vital means of convincing the local population of the benefits of British rule.!

Otherwise, imperial considerations apart, Cromer’s attitude to the development of the Egyptian economy was shaped very largely by what is best described as the ‘conventional wisdom’ of the age. Like many of his fellow Victorians, he believed not only that most of the nations in the world ‘gradually increase in production and population’,? but also that the process would be more or less rapid according to whether certain sorts of conditions obtained. Central to his thinking was his conviction that growth was essentially a question of the development of a country’s resources through the application of capital to productive works. Such capital could be either raised domestically by the savers in the society or imported from abroad. But, in either case, it was his belief that it would only be forthcoming in any quantity if there existed a framework in which enterprise

could flourish. ‘This was what was meant by the word ‘security’ | —a shorthand for such things as law and order, an equable and efficient system of justice, and a legal code which preserved

private property and, in general, allowed men to profit from the fruits of their labours. Another prerequisite for progress was the creation of a certain infrastructure without which commercial interests could not be expected to come forward. On some occasions, where railways and ports could not be constructed by

private initiative, this might require action by the state. But, these aids apart, the Government should do nothing to interfere with the free exercise of enterprise. All restrictions in industry and trade should be removed, while the administration confine itself only to those few things which it could do best. Any other

course would lead to the stultification of that individual ini_ tiative upon which further progress so largely depended. One other instance of Victorian ‘conventional wisdom’ must

_ also be mentioned: the assumption that the development of a country’s economy followed much the same pattern wherever | 1 An exposition of Cromer’s view of the principles which he felt should inform | the Government of non-European peoples can be found in the following sources: | Modern Egypt, ii (London, 1908); Speeches and Miscellaneous Writings, i (Edinburgh, 1912); and Political and Literary Essays, i.

| * Mill, J. S., Political Economy, 11 (London, 1848), 244.

336 The Growth of the Economy it occurred. In Cromer’s case this is well illustrated by the policies he pursued during his three years in India as Finance Member in the Viceroy’s Council, 1880 to 1883. India’s first economic requirement was that its resources should be developed without delay, he asserted in March 1881 when introducing his

first budget; and on this and subsequent occasions he went on to outline some of the ways by which such a requirement might

be met.! For one thing greater encouragement should be given to private individuals anxious to invest in the construction of new railways. Not only was it unlikely that the Government could perform this vital task entirely on its own, but he

also hoped that an initiative of this kind might lead Indian capitalists to come forward and take up some of the burden themselves. A second group of policies was designed to promote trade by freeing it from almost all the duties with which it was

still encumbered, while a third went as far in the direction of assisting Indian industry as Cromer felt able, by introducing the principle that the Government purchase goods from local factories wherever they were as cheap and as well made as imports from Europe. This last innovation was supported by arguments which suggested that he did not expect India to

remain a purely agricultural country, and that he looked forward to a measure of industrialization including, among other things, the establishment of a plant to manufacture iron and steel.

In the early years of the Occupation, Lord Cromer’s atten-

tion was devoted mainly to the problem of balancing the budget. Nevertheless he was still willing to assign any extra money that was available to another project to which he attached

the greatest significance, the improvement of the system of irrigation. It was only by developing Egypt’s agricultural resources, he felt, that revenues would rise fast enough to avoid a second bankruptcy.? But irrigation also had other virtues. As

he wrote to the Foreign Secretary in 1886, it was a subject to which ‘the good results of European administration can readily be brought home to the natives. Hence there is some chance 1 See, for example, ‘Financial Statement of the Government of India for 18811882’, P.P., 1881, vol. Ixviii (especially pp. 303-9) and ‘Financial Statement of the Government of India for 1882-1883’, P.P., 1882, vol. xlviii (especially pp. 308-49). 2 Annual Report for 1902, P.P., 1903, vol. Ixxxvii, pp. 960-1.

In Contemporary Thought 337 that, in the event of our withdrawal, our work would not be wholly undone.’! To this end Cromer gave the British officials

in the Ministry of Public Works his full support. No other branch of the administration, with the exception of the Army, was allowed as large a budget. Again, it was the only ministry which could count on financial support for long-term development projects.? It was also the recipient of a number of foreign

loans. In 1885 £E1,000,000 was borrowed abroad to pay for : an initial series of reforms which included the repair of the Barrage. Then, when this was exhausted, a further £E800,000 was turned over to the department, while an even larger sum was obtained to enable the construction of the Aswan Dam. The success achieved in raising agricultural production, in extending the area of perennially irrigated land, and in averting much of the danger from insufficient Nile floods was regarded

by Cromer as a major justification of Britain’s presence in Egypt. During the first decade of the Occupation, expenditure on irrigation took precedence over a second series of reforms to which Cromer attached much importance, the reduction of the land-tax. But as soon as there was money to spare, in the early 1890s, he introduced a number of measures of fiscal relief aimed at relieving some of the burdens imposed on the rural popu-

lation. Once again his motives were both economic and political. On the one hand, he was a firm believer that one of the main purposes of financial policy should be to leave as much

money as possible to ‘fructify’ in the pockets of the producing classes, so that they might increase their material prosperity by the careful investment of the rewards of their labours. On the other, he viewed a low rate of taxation as an instrument for creating a contented, conservative rural class which could be relied on to give at least passive assent to foreign occupation.5 Cromer was quite content that such policies should lead to an improvement in agricultural incomes without the Government having to intervene in the actual process of production itself, ¥ Quoted in Marquess of Zetland, Lord Cromer (London, 1932), p. 171.

2 Tignor, R. L., ‘British Agricultural and Hydraulic Policy in Egypt, 18821892’, Agricultural History, vol. 37, no. 2, p. 65.

3 Modern Egypt, ii, pp. 456-65. 4 Annual Report for 1902, pp. 960-1. 5 “The Government of Subject Races’, pp. 45-6, and “The French in Algeria’,

821643 Z

Political and Literary Essays, i, pp. 253-4.

338 The Growth of the Economy a policy of which he strongly disapproved. Nevertheless, he was

forced to modify this principle to some extent during the agricultural depression of 1894-5, when the price of all the major crops fell so low that there was considerable hardship in a number of districts and it became necessary to postpone one instalment of the land-tax. In an effort to alleviate distress, Cromer took action in two directions. Firstly, as already noted in Chapter VIII, the Government supplied a limited amount of cotton seed to fellah cultivators at a low price which had to be paid only after the harvest. This had the additional advantage of meeting some of the concern then being expressed at the

supposed deterioration in the yield and quality of the crop. Secondly, the Government began to lend small sums of money

to peasants in a few areas of the Delta. However, in neither case was the operation to be a permanent one. As Cromer made it clear in his annual report for 1895, he regarded the business

of agricultural lending as something best left to the private — banks. The Government did not have the resources to embark on such an activity. Nor was it wise that it should become the creditor of a large section of the rural population. This was an occasion on which the Government might legitimately act as a pioneer, but he hoped that if the experiment was successful it might be possible to come to some arrangement with a private concern with a view to more extended operations.! This was

in fact what happened three years later, in 1898, when the newly created National Bank of Egypt agreed to take over the business of making small-scale loans in exchange for government assistance in collecting the instalments when they fell due.? Again, in the matter of supplying cheap seed, Cromer was only too happy to see this activity transferred to another private institution also founded in 1898, the Khedivial Agricultural Society. His anxiety to avoid further state intervention in the rural economy can also be seen in his attitude to the establishment of a government department of agriculture.

During the depression of 1894-5 there was considerable pressure from a number of quarters for the creation of such an office, which would take the lead in finding methods of 1 P.P., 1896, vol. xcvil, pp. 997-9. 2 The National Bank of Egypt carried out the business of lending money to the smaller cultivators until 1902, when it was transferred to the Agricultural Bank.

In Contemporary Thought 339 safeguarding the cotton crop against worm attacks and other dangers which threatened to produce a decline in yield. But, here again, Cromer was well content to leave activity of this kind to the Khedivial Agricultural Society, in exchange for an annual subvention to its budget. Cromer’s dislike of government interference in the agricultural sector of the economy was the subject of much criticism outside the administration. Local feeling on the subject can be scen in a series of articles published in the magazine L’ Egypte during the depression of 1894-5, in which a number of writers

discussed some of the wider questions of agricultural policy raised by the fall in prices and the increase in rural distress. In most cases, the authors’ starting-point was their concern

about the threat to the country’s well-being posed by the

decline in income from cotton. The tone of the discussion was set by an anonymous article, ‘Agriculture et dégrévement’,

which began by pointing to the dangers inherent in such a situation, ‘quand il s’agit d’un pays ou [agriculture s’est imprudemment engagée dans la vie toujours dangereuse de la monoculture’. What was needed was a campaign to demonstrate correct methods of cultivation by means of model farms and experimental plots. The best farmers should be singled out at

meetings and rewarded. There should also be an efficient system of cotton-selection to maintain quality. All this was, logically, the duty of the Government and it was astonishing that in an agricultural country like Egypt there was no department to take charge of a programme of this kind.! Apart from its criticism of Lord Cromer, however, such an article was typical of the main body of Egyptian writing on the economy during the first twenty-five years of the British Occu-

pation, in that it shared the all-prevailing assumption that Egypt was an agricultural country and that its future prosperity

depended solely on the introduction of improved methods of cultivation. This, for instance, was very much the line taken by the two agricultural societies which succeeded the Société Egyptienne d’Agriculture, the Comité Agricole, which enjoyed

a short life round about the year 1884, and the Khedivial Agricultural Society. ‘The latter was mainly the work of Prince Husain Kamal, himself a large landowner, who felt that there 1 No. vili (15 Jan. 1895), pp. 238-42.

340 The Growth of the Economy should be some Egyptian institution capable of making a scientific study of agricultural problems.! After its creation in 1808, it established an experimental farm at Giza; it conducted trials with ploughs and other implements to discover which were the most suitable for Egyptian conditions ;? in 1908 it assumed direction of the Ministry of Interior’s ‘Section d’élevage’, the main aim of which was to investigate better methods of raising cattle.3 Information about the results of experiments was disseminated to cultivators at agricultural shows organized by the Society and by means of a journal and other publications.‘ The great difference between Indian poverty and Egyptian plenty, and in particular the ease with which it appeared, after India, that Egyptian prosperity might be obtained, seems, for a long while, to have blinded the eyes of Cromer and many of | the other British officials to some of the less happy aspects of the economic situation: the great increase in population, the danger of over-dependence on one crop, the consequences of the rapid conversion of the whole country to perennial irrigation. Northbrook reported in 1884 that it was his impression, ‘confirmed by officers well acquainted with the Presidency of

Bombay and the North-West provinces in India, that the people of Egypt were on the whole better off than the people of India’.5 And in the same year, Scott Moncrieff, the AngloIndian engineer who was the Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Public Works, wrote that, in spite of the cour-

bash and conscription, cruelly heavy taxation, and a total absence of justice, the Egyptian fellah ‘is a fatter, jollier, better-

to-do individual than the average Indian ryot’. He put this down to ‘the marvellous fertility and happy condition of Egypt’. Cromer went still further in stressing the difference. As he wrote to Goschen in December 1891: ‘So far as I know

Egypt is the only agricultural country in the world whose wealth can, by human skill, be insured against all or nearly all 1 Société sultanienne d’Agriculture, Mémento agricole égyptien, 3rd edn. (Cairo,

a tte on the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt’, in Egypt, Ministry of Finance, Almanac for 1930 (Cairo, 1930), pp. 252-4. 3 Société sultanienne d’Agriculture, p. 3. 4 Ministry of Finance, Almanac for 1930 (Eg.), pp. 252-4. 5 ‘Report on the Condition of Egypt’, P.P., 1884-5, vol. Ixxxviil, p. 229. 6 Quoted in Hollings, p. 179.

In Contemporary Thought 341 risks.. And he concluded that, ‘in the nature of things, there is really nothing to prevent Egypt in our grandchildren’s time from being one of the most prosperous countries in the world’. The reason for this happy state of affairs is given in his Modern Egypt. In Egypt, he wrote, ‘no semi-insoluble problem lurked between the leaves of the budget. The Finance Minister had not, as in India, to deal with a congested population, of whom a large percentage were, in normal times, living on the verge of starvation. He never had to refer to the pages of Malthus or Mill, Ricardo or Bastia.’2 There is, however, some reason to believe that this last over-

optimistic assertion was actually written some eight or nine ~ years before the book’s publication, and that in the period just i before Cromer left Egypt he was beginning to realize that an effortless increase in prosperity was not the Egyptian norm. His last four annual reports all contain some reference to elements in the Egyptian economic situation which he felt might give cause for concern. In 1904 it was the question of competition among cultivators to lease land, forcing up rents. ‘As the pressure of the population on the soil increases’, he then

wrote, ‘the question of legislating in order to regulate the relations between landlords and tenants will not improbably be brought to the front.’3 Then, in 1906, he turned his attention

to the evidence that cotton yields were beginning to decline. After a description of the economic advance which had taken place during the British Occupation, he added: ‘Probably the greatest danger which threatens Egypt lies in the fact... that the country depends too exclusively on one crop, namely,

cotton.’ Ihe plants might be damaged by some blight, the quality deteriorate, or the price fall heavily. However, the remedies he suggested hardly seem to match the gravity of the situation he was attempting to describe: people should be encouraged to grow crops like sugar and cereals to lessen the country’s dependence on cotton, while the decline in yields might be arrested by warnings against the dangers of over-

1 28 Dec. 1891, C.C.: F.O. 633/5. 2 il, Pp. 453-

3 Annual Report for 1903, P.P., 1904, vol. xci, pp. 220-1. He also suggested that

‘at some future time, though it may be remote, the Soudan will draw off some portion of the surplus population of Egypt’. Ibid. 4 Annual Report for 1905, P.P., 1906, vol. cxxxvil, p. 503.

342 The Growth of the Economy cropping, and the increased distribution of good seed by the | Khedivial Agricultural Society. As for rural over-population, _ this could be alleviated by providing men with the skills which would allow them to find employment outside agriculture. His views on the subject are worth quoting at length. Egypt being essentially an agricultural country, agriculture must of necessity be its first care. Any education, technical or general, which tended to leave the fields untilled, or to lessen the fitness or disposition of the people for agricultural employment would be a

national evil. Nevertheless there is a rapidly growing need for skilled labour of various kinds, and scope for the development of many useful industries. The population of the country is rapidly increasing, and though the area under cultivation is being steadily

extended, it is probable that a growing proportion of the people must find employment in other occupations.!

However, the only hint that the Government should play any role in this process came with his decision to establish a new department to supervise the expansion of facilities for technical and commercial education.? The reasons for this rather negative approach are not difhcult to understand, for they follow directly from those basic principles which he felt should underlie official policy towards the whole question of development. His attitude to the question of government assistance to agriculture is a case in point. Public works apart, there were few operations which the administration might be forced to undertake in an emergency— among them the Delta-wide campaigns against locusts in 1904 and the cotton-worm in 1905—but, as a rule, activities such as those designed to improve methods of cultivation or to introduce

new crops were best left to private initiative. It was not just a case of lack of funds, there was also his profound belief that local

enterprise could so easily be stultified by central direction. But if Lord Cromer was unwilling to allow the Government more than a minimal role in the primary sector of the economy, he was even more sure that it would be quite wrong to do anything to reduce Egypt’s dependence on agriculture by giving direct encouragement to industrial development. As a general

rule, so he believed, the limits of state activity had been 1 Annual Report for 1905, p. 571. 2 Annual Report for 1906, P.P., 1907, vol. c, p. 718.

In Contemporary Thought 343 reached by two sorts of measures, the reduction (in November

1905) of the tariff on certain imported raw materials such

as coal and wood from 8 per cent to 4 per cent, and efforts to improve the skills of the urban labour force by expanding the system of technical education. There were, however, special cases. On at least one occasion he was willing to come to the assistance of an industry which found itself in great difficulty. This was in 1906 when, among other things, he

agreed to purchase the network of light agricultural railways

belonging to the Société Générale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d’Egypte.! But to offset this there was the notorious affair of the countervailing duty which, at Cromer’s insistence, was placed on all Egyptian factory-produced cotton goods.? Cromer defended his actions by a number of arguments, but

at this distance it is difficult to discover which, if any, he regarded as the more powerful. Certainly he had all the freetrader’s conventional distaste for protecting industry and thus, as he saw it, encouraging inefficient factories and forcing consumers to pay more for their purchases than they need. In so far as his official life was concerned, views of this kind were in

evidence as least as early as 1882, when as Finance Member in Council he had introduced an Indian budget which abolished all the remaining duties on imported goods. He supported this

move not only by reference to certain practical considerations but also by an appeal to the success which had attended the introduction of Free Trade in Britain: ‘As an incident in her

connection with England, India has a right to profit from English experience and from English economic history. That experience and that economic history show that by the adoption of Free Trade a country benefits, indeed, all the world, but more specifically benefits itself.’3 Equally clearly, Gromer was anxious, at all costs, to avoid protests from Lancashire millowners similar to those which, during the early 1890s, had forced the Government of India to impose an excise duty on domestic cotton goods equal to that which they had begun to levy on imports.* As he saw it, one of the major responsibilities t See p. 296. 2 See pp. 302-4. 3 ‘Financial Statement of the Government of India for 1882-1883’, p. 340.

533/9. 4 ee to Bergne, 15 Apr. 1895, C.C.: F.O. 633/5, and 2 May 1901, C.C.: F.O.

344 The Growth of the Economy of a British official overseas was to avoid any action which might lead to the embarrassment of the government of the day. Furthermore, it may have been the case that he was anxious to remove a potential source of friction between England and Egypt by establishing, from the very beginning, that mills in the

latter would not be allowed to receive any measure of protection. However, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he also came to regard the issue as something affecting his own prestige, quite independent of principle. From the time of his first exchange of correspondence with the directors of the Cotton

Mills in 1898 he had asserted categorically that a countervailing duty would have to be imposed.! In these circumstances,

the company’s attempts to have the duty declared illegal must have been seen as a challenge to his authority, and the Mixed Courts’ first decision in the company’s favour as a personal defeat. Hence he may have felt that he had little option but to appeal against the decision, even though, as he admitted in a private letter, he and Gorst, the Financial Adviser, were the only two people in the country who believed that the Government had a case.?

Cromer’s imposition of the 8 per cent excise duty was heavily criticized by almost all sections of Egyptian opinion as placing an unnecessary barrier in the way of industrial growth. La Bourse égyptienne described the Mixed Courts’ decision that the duty was illegal as ‘un véritable triomphe non seulement pour la société des Cotton Mills, mais aussi pour l’industrie égyptienne en général’ ;3 while the reversal of this decision, on appeal, was attacked as detrimental to the country’s interests

even by the Egyptian Gazette, normally the most staunch supporter of the Occupation.‘ Criticism of the British attitude to the development of local industry continued unabated for the remainder of the period up to 1914.

Lord Cromer’s departure from Egypt in May 1907 was _ followed by a period of considerable economic difficulty. The _ financial crisis, which brought the boom in company-promotion

to an end, the sudden reduction in the value of agricultural 1 Cromer to Salisbury, 29 Oct. 1898: F.O. 141/335, and enclosures. 2 Cromer to Bergne, 12 June 1gor: F.O. 78/5162. 3 Undated extract enclosed in Cromer, 12 June rgor: F.O. 78/5162. 4 21 Feb. 1902.

In Contemporary Thought 345 output in 1908, and the alarming fall in cotton yields in 1909 © produced effects which were felt throughout the country. It has already been described how business confidence was rudely shaken, how the price of land dropped sharply, and how many people found themselves unable to meet the instalments due on mortgages and bank overdrafts. Another important result of this prolonged depression was the stimulus it gave to a reappraisal of Egypt’s economic position. It raised, among other things, the whole question of the country’s dependence on Europe, and of the wisdom of relying so exclusively on one crop of such uncertain returns. In official circles reflections of this kind naturally took second place to a discussion of the measures necessary to cope with the immediate effects of the crisis. But

even there, the requirements of the situation led to the reexamination of many of the principal tenets which were central to Cromer’s thinking about the process of Egyptian development.

One matter which was soon raised was the problem of rural debt. Many proprietors who had bought land on credit were now in difficulties, others were affected by the fall in the value of their crops in 1908 and 1909. In these circumstances, arrears in payments owing to the Agricultural Bank rose from 3-1 per cent of the capital out on loan in 1907 to 17-7 per cent in 1909.! This led, in turn, to restrictions in further lending, as well as to a more thorough investigation of requests for advances. There was also some consideration of a suggestion put forward

by Sir Paul Harvey, the Financial Adviser, that one way round the vexatious question of lack of security for small loans

might be to encourage the creation of agricultural co-operatives.'! But in the event, no new initiative was thought necessary; and it was left to Kitchener to try a different approach to the problem with his Five-Feddan Law, designed to ensure that a peasant could not be deprived of his land for non-payment of

debt. His thinking on this subject was diametrically opposed to that of his predecessors. For Cromer and Gorst, the main question was one of providing the small cultivator with sufficient credit to keep him out of the hands of the village usurer. Kitchener, on the other hand, was quite ready to make such advances very much more difficult to obtain, by depriving the ' Harvey, ‘Memorandum regarding the Agricultural Bank of Egypt’ (GB).

346 The Growth of the Economy lender of any possible security. It was his belief that the peasants needed very much less working capital than had often

been supposed, and that it would be a good thing if usurers would stop tempting them into debt.! The disastrous cotton harvest of 1909 also produced a change in Cromerian policy. As a result of the recommendations of the

government cotton commission, a Department of Agriculture was created in 1910 with special responsibility for measures to

prevent any further decline in yield. Two years later the Department was upgraded to the status of Ministry. But if Gorst and Kitchener were willing to go to some lengths to modify a number of Lord Cromer’s more important principles, they were in complete agreement with him as to the

general lines along which Egyptian development should proceed. Like him, they placed most of their trust in largescale public works and a policy of non-intervention in the country’s commercial and financial life. By such means they hoped to increase agricultural production and to provide the sort of framework inside which private enterprise could flourish.

As Sir Paul Harvey put it in a statement which Gorst repeated in his annual report for 1908: ‘National prosperity can only be secured, in so far as it lies with the government to secure it, by the steady development of the country’s natural resources and

the prudent and economical expenditure of the revenue.” Again, like Cromer, Gorst and Kitchener were both willing to discuss the problems posed by monoculture and a rapidly rising population, without appearing to suggest that they represented any very formidable difficulties. A good example

of this occurs in the latter’s report for 1912. Egypt was an

agricultural country, he then wrote, and almost entirely dependent on cotton to pay for its imports and to service its debts. In the past this dependence had exposed the economy to serious fluctuations, and it would undoubtedly do so again. However, so long as the cultivation of cotton remains as profitable as it is at

present, that commodity will probably retain its place as the principal factor in Egypt’s international exchanges, and its production will continue to absorb the preponderant share of the t Annual Report for 1912, P.P., 1913, vol. Ixxxi, p. 214. 2 P.P., 1909, vol. cv, p. 349.

In Contemporary Thought 347 activities of the population. [Nevertheless] the government 1s thoroughly alive to the expediency of developing the resources of the country in other directions, whether agricultural, mineral, or industrial. The departments of Agriculture, of Survey, and of Technical Education, in their several spheres, are accomplishing good work towards this end.!

The activities of the departments mentioned in the last sentence were as follows: the Department of Agriculture was

experimenting with other crops which might become as profitable as cotton, the Survey Department was anxious to develop Egypt’s mineral resources, oil in particular, with the assistance of private capital, while the Department of Technical

Education was doing its best to provide a well-trained labour force for the country’s new factories. This was a programme with which Cromer was certainly in whole-hearted agreement. A more wide-ranging debate about Egypt’s economic future took place outside government circles. Once again the startingpoint was generally the economic dangers exposed by the events of 1907 to 1909. Reactions to these events took three main forms. Some writers focused their attention exclusively on cotton and on practical ways of improving its quality and yield. Here there was little inclination to speculate whether it was safe to rely on one commodity. Rather the question was put the other way round: Since Egypt was, in fact, so dependent on cotton what steps could be taken to ensure the well-being of the crop? This is very much the tenor of a series of articles by J. A.

Todd in which he was concerned to point out the harm which

would be done to the special position of ‘Egyptian’ in the Lancashire market by a further decline in quality, and to suggest how this might be remedied.? Discussion took place largely on a technical level, a trend which was further encouraged by the two commissions set up to inquire into the causes of the decline in yield, both of which had commented on the lack

of reliable information and recommended that detailed research into the problem be at once undertaken.3

A second reaction was to look at cotton in its wider agricultural context. This was the approach of W. E. Medewar in 1 P.P., 1913, vol. lxxxi, p. 213. 2 See ‘The Demand for Egyptian Cotton’, “The Market for Egyptian Cotton in 1909-1910”, and ‘Further Notes on the Egyptian Cotton Market’. 3 Collection of Statistics of the Areas Planted in Cotton in 1909 (Eg.), p. 7.

348 The Growth of the Economy | a pamphlet written in December 1909. He began by asserting | that the dangers of monoculture had been overstressed by those

who argued that the demand for ‘Egyptian’ was bound to diminish as competitors emerged and substitutes were discovered. He himself believed that its market would continue to

increase with rising world prosperity, and that new uses for cotton would always be found.! Nevertheless, dependence on this one crop did pose certain problems, notably the general instability of incomes produced by fluctuations in price and yield.2 Among the remedies he suggested were efforts at the diversification of agricultural production through the more extended cultivation of fruit and vegetables, and the creation of rural banks to overcome the difficulty of variable receipts.’ Finally, there was the increasing attention paid to the idea that Egypt’s future prosperity would only be ensured by the creation of a modern industrial sector of the economy. This policy was particularly popular among nationalists, for whom it seemed to offer the additional advantage of assisting the country to achieve some measure of economic independence. Such feelings were much in evidence at the meeting of the Egyptian National Congress at Heliopolis in April and May 1911. As the Organizing Committee put it in its introduction to the debate on ‘the economic situation’ : We have no collective economic existence; we play not an active but a passive role; we suffer in Egypt the fluctuations of economic movements without being able, in turn, to exert any influence upon them. ... The goods which pass out of the hands of the agriculturalists pass, in nearly all cases, into those of foreigners. . . . We take little or no part in industry, because we have not the capital to enter usefully into financial transactions. The least crisis that occurs, in whatever country, affects our financial market.

Speakers turned with enthusiasm to the advocacy of industrialization as a means of decreasing Egypt’s dependence on Western

Europe. How, it was argued, could the country prosper so

long as the riches yielded by the soil were spent on the 1 §. A. Agricole et Industrielle d’Egypte, Etudes sur la question cotonniére et l’organi-

sation agricole en Egypte, by W. E. Medewar (Cairo, 1910), p. 76.

2 Ibid., p. 77. 3 Ibid., pp. 82, 84.

4 ‘Report of the Organizing Committee of the First Egyptian Congress—Part I1I—The Economic Situation’, Minutes of the Proceedings of the First Egyptian Congress

(Alexandria, 1911), pp. 30-1.

In Contemporary Thought 349 acquisition of industrial products from abroad.! Industrialization also had other advantages. According to Gabriel Khaleel,

it was important not only as a means of creating national wealth but also as a method of providing employment for an ever-increasing population. However, there were considerable difficulties to be overcome. For one thing, Egyptians always exhibited a preference for buying foreign articles rather than those produced at home. This was reinforced by the fact that European manufacturers were able to provide cheaper goods because of the advantages of large-scale production. Nevertheless, a start should be made in creating factories to work up such materials as cotton thread, metal, wood, leather, wool, and food products like corn and oil.2 Other speakers urged their fellow Egyptians to take an interest in promoting national industries. Students should be encouraged to study objects like economics and commerce; the rich ought to place their money in banks prepared to give financial support to local enterprise ;4 everyone had a duty to purchase Egyptian-made goods whereever possible.$

Among others to advocate the introduction of new industries was 9. Sornaga, the owner of a factory making building materials, whose remarkable book, L’ Industrie en Egypte, was published

in Cairo in 1916. Like the nationalists just cited he believed that the creation of factories would help avert some of the dangers of monoculture and provide a measure of economic independence

without which political independence would have only a relative value.® To this end he offered a comprehensive series of

suggestions as to how barriers to industrialization might be

surmounted.” These included efforts to reduce the cost of fuel by developing the use of oil and hydro-electricity,’ to encourage the production of the necessary raw materials such as sugar, 1 Chamsy, A., ‘Practical Education in Industry, Commerce and Agriculture’, Minutes of the Proceedings of the First Egyptian Congress, p. 165.

2 Khaleel, G., “The Protection and Encouragement of National Products’, Op. cit., pp. 175-6. 3 Chamsy, op. cit., p. 165. According to Chamsy, of the 700 Egyptian students then in Europe only 3 per cent were studying economics or commerce. 4 Madkour, A. K., ‘The Improvement of Trade and Industry in Egypt’, op. cit.,

P.7 ‘The 193. 5 Ibid., p. 194. 6 Sornaga, p. 3. subtitle of Sornaga’s work is: ‘Quelques idées et propositions dictées par

l’expérience pour contribuer a4 établir un programme complet et organique pour

le développement de l’industrie en Egypte.’ 8 Sornaga, p. II.

|

350 The Growth of the Economy silk, tobacco, indigo, and fruits,' and to improve industrial education.? Other innovations should be the modification of banks’ charters to allow them to lend money to industry,3 long-term government contracts for the purchase of Egyptian-

made goods,4 and the creation of industrial syndicates as a way of encouraging the habit of mutual assistance among factory-owners and of defending their interests against foreign pressure.’ Sornaga also gave a list of the industries which, he felt, could profitably be introduced. As with other writers, the bulk of his suggestions concerned plants to work up local raw

leather.® |

materials such as cotton, jute, sugar, vegetable oils, and L’ Industrie en Egypte is a good example of an intelligent,

thoughtful approach to the development of the Egyptian economy which was beginning to find expression in the years just before and after 1914. It combined a sweeping analysis of the problems to be faced—the threat of over-population (which, according to Sornaga, would soon assume menacing proportions),”7 the lack of local enterprise, the foreign domination of Egyptian economic activity—with detailed, practical suggestions about how improvements might be effected. No extrava-

gant claims were put forward. Sornaga himself pointed out that his programme, even if implemented in its entirety, would not lead to Egypt’s being able to compete with the imports of manufactured goods from the chief industrial countries for a long time to come.’ Nevertheless, action had to begin at once. On the one hand, political independence, when it came, would have to be supplemented by the development of the country’s

economic potential. On the other, certain basic problems would only get worse if a start was not made at once in their solution. There is an underlying sense of urgency about such writing, coupled with a recognition that the difficulties ahead were too large to be overcome by individual enterprise and would have to be surmounted, if at all, by government planning on an extensive scale. With this the wheel of the arguments described in this chapter comes full circle. For Sornaga and those who agreed with him, Egypt’s future lay very much along

1 Sornaga, p. 13. 2 Ibid., pp. 19-20. 3 Ibid., p. 22.

4 Ibid., p. 25. 5 Ibid., p. 27. © Ibid., p. 7.

7 Ibid., p. 20. 8 Ibid., p. 3.

In Contemporary Thought 51 the lines suggested by Colin in 1836—a recognition of the interdependence of agriculture and industry, the establishment of new factories to process local raw materials, and the assumption by the state of a central role in the direction of the economy.

|

CONCLUSION URING the nineteenth century the rapid growth of the

—D Egyptian economy was based almost exclusively on an increase in the volume and value of agricultural production. Whereas in 1820 no long-staple cotton was grown

at all, just under a hundred years later production had

reached an annual average of 7,000,000 cantars, worth nearly £E28,000,000. Unfortunately, no reliable figures exist to illustrate the concomitant increase in the output of sugar and cereals,!

but something of the expansion which must have taken place where the latter were concerned can be seen from the fact that the country was able to continue to feed a population which rose from around 3,000,000 in 1798? to over 11,000,000 in 1907

without recourse to more than a small volume of imports at the end of the period.3 In addition, sufficient birsim was grown to provide fodder for an increasing animal population. This advance in output took place as a result of three other developments. Firstly, it required a series of improvements in the system of irrigation to allow the extension of the cultivated

area by something like a million feddans between 1798 and 1914. It also required measures to permit the more intensive use of existing land, particularly during the summer months.

Some cotton continued to be grown by the ball: method throughout almost all the period, on fields where no water was available between March and July. But as a general rule, its cultivation, as well as that of sugar, involved the construction and maintenance of many hundreds of miles of summer canals. It was the extension of the crop area which, throughout the 1 Figures for the production of most of the principal crops exist from at least as early as 1821. However, it is impossible to assess their accuracy, and there are none which inspire any great confidence before the 1880s. Again, such figures exist only for isolated years, and there is no way of telling whether they refer to an average or

an abnormal harvest. For a list of such sources see O’Brien, ‘The Long-Term Growth of Agricultural Production in Egypt’, pp. 5-7. 2 See p. 3 n. for the source of this figure. } 3 It might be argued that no allowance has been made for the export of cereals during the early part of the period. But, although it is true that Egypt did sell part or its harvest abroad in 1798, this was only a very small proportion of total pro-

Conclusion 953 century, was responsible for the major part of the increase in agricultural output. Secondly, during the period of the British Occupation it proved possible to raise the yields of all the principal crops by discovering new and more prolific strains

and by using extra water in their cultivation as it became available. Finally, there is the question of the growth of population and its relation to the increase in production. This is something about which it 1s difficult to be specific. Even in the case of a country like England, demographers and economic

historians continue to argue whether it was the increase in numbers which stimulated greater agricultural output or whether it was larger harvests which raised nutritional standards and kept people alive longer. In Egypt, where of course the figures are infinitely less good, either hypothesis might be = ° correct; there is no way of telling. Nevertheless, the question of causation aside, one can safely posit that without the rise in population which took place during the nineteenth century

Egypt would have been unable to expand its agricultural output at a steady rate. This was especially true of cotton, where cultivation was particularly labour-intensive. When long-staple cotton was first introduced it called upon hitherto under-utilized resources, men who had previously remained unemployed during most of the summer months, women and children who had rarely worked in the fields before. But later, the increase in the cotton area during the American Civil War, and again in the 1870s and 1890s, was possible only because of a rise in the amount of available manpower. This, in turn, was largely the result of the general growth of population, although mention should also be made of the introduction of various labour-

Saving measures such as the construction of steam gins, the improvements in the system of transport, and the use of publicworks contractors rather than the corvee to clean the canals.

It would seem likely that the increase in the volume of Egyptian agricultural production was accompanied by a more than proportionate rise in value. Once again no reliable figures exist for crops other than cotton. However, we may assume that Barnett’s estimate of £E7,500,000 for Egypt’s gross income from agriculture in 1844 represents an upper limit which was rarely, if ever, attained.! This should be compared with the

8216438 Aa

1 12 Dec. 1844: F.O. 78/583.

354 Conclusion estimates of £E60,000,000 and £E67,000,000 for the years just before the First World War. We lack any sort of price index by which these two sets of figures might be brought into line;

but in view of the fact that the barter terms of trade almost

certainly moved in favour of cotton and against manufactured goods as the century progressed, it would seem correct to assume that the real advance in income was even greater than these estimates indicate. The effects of the increase in agricultural production were felt throughout the economy. It encouraged successive govern-

ments to spend money on the construction of the railways necessary to carry export crops like sugar and cotton and cereals

to the coast and to open up new areas of the country to cultivation. It acted as a great incentive for foreign investors, who

were easily convinced by Isma‘il, and then again by the British officials during the Occupation, that Egyptian agriculture was going to have an even more prosperous future. It led to a great increase in the country’s foreign trade. It provided a sizeable proportion of government revenues by means of the land-tax and the duties on imports and exports, as well as placing great wealth in the hands of those who were skilful

or fortunate enough to obtain large estates. It promoted various legal changes designed to free trade and to establish

a system of private property in land.

At the centre of this process of economic growth stood cotton. Its influence was of quite exceptional importance. Even in the

years before the American Civil War when it was cultivated over only a ninth or a tenth of the Delta in any one season it often provided up to half of the country’s exports as well as acting as a magnet for foreign merchants who were attracted to Alexandria from all over Europe and the Levant. But it was during the 1860s that it really began to affect the whole of Egypt’s economic life. Four areas of influence are of particular significance. First, the extension of cotton throughout the Delta and then into Upper Egypt meant that a scarce resource, land,

could be used very much more intensively than had been possible before. This led to a great increase in agricultural production. It also led, in the short run, to considerable exhaustion of the soil. Second, the wider cultivation of cotton caused changes in agricultural technique which were later to

Conclusion 355 allow the more efficient production of other crops as well. Cereal yields, for example, were increased directly by the use of larger quantities of water, indirectly by the emphasis placed on

research into more prolific varieties. Third, the fact that cotton provided an assured cash income made it possible for foreign money-lenders to extend their activities throughout rural Egypt from the 1850s onwards. It also made it possible for landlords to ask for their rents in cash rather than in kind, and so to obtain extra benefits from the rise in agricultural incomes at the turn of the century. Fourth, cotton allowed some of those who cultivated it, and many of those who processed or exported it, to make quite considerable profits. A part of these profits was used for the purchase of imports, another part was remitted abroad, but it has also been argued that a sizeable proportion remained in Egypt, where it was often used to buy

land or houses, to develop new facilities inside the cotton sector, or, latterly, to promote other sorts of economic enterprise such as public utilities or factories. But if the increase in cotton-production in particular, and agricultural production in general, led to the further monetization of the rural sector, to growing foreign trade, to rising incomes, to the creation of an infra-structure, as well as to many

other manifestations of economic progress, it did not lead to the transition from an export-orientated economy to a more complex one based upon a wide variety of activities including factory industry. In other words, there was growth but not development; exports of agricultural commodities increased without any of the structural changes which are believed to pave the way for the creation of a modern sector of the economy.

At the time of the outbreak of the First World War, almost a century after the introduction of long-staple cotton, there were still few factories of a European type, the Government continued

to rely almost exclusively on revenue derived either directly or indirectly from the agricultural sector, and not more than 15 per cent of the population lived in towns of any size. The failure to develop a modern sector of the economy posed particular problems. For one thing, the population was increasing at such a rapid rate that it threatened soon to outrun the supplies of available land. For another, further progress in the agricultural sphere could be secured only with great

356 Conclusion difficulty. In part this was a question of money: extensive public investments in a new system of drainage and private ones in fertilizers were necessary to repair the damage done to soil fertility by the more intensive use of land which had begun

in the 1890s. Other difficulties were more intractable. ‘The spread of perennial irrigation had led to a situation in which perhaps half the population of Lower Egypt was suffering from bilharzia. Again, efforts to decrease the country’s reliance

on cotton and to diversify agricultural production were hampered by the fact that no other crop was so lucrative or provided such good security for the credit which all farmers require. Finally, there was the immense problem created by the unequal distribution of landed property. By 1914 population pressure was already raising rents to a level which made it difficult for peasants to make more than a minimal profit. Meanwhile, the fragmentation of most of the small holdings stood in the way of any real increase in agricultural efficiency. Some of these problems, but by no means all, were beginning to be discussed publicly in the years before the First World War. There were already those who were advocating rapid industrialization as the only means of ensuring a prosperous future. Not

surprisingly, thinking in government circles was less radical, but even there the widespread recognition that the adminis-

tration bore a direct responsibility for the situation inside the agricultural sector represented a distinct advance over previous positions. However, as yet, there was little sense of urgency. Few realized just how great were the difficulties which

lay ahead. The old notion that Egypt was a country of vast economic potential died hard. It remains to attempt the task of looking at the performance

of the Egyptian economy during the nineteenth century in wider perspective, and in particular to ask why it was that srowth should not have been accompanied by development. Three different approaches will be tried. First, a comparison will be made between the economic history of Egypt and that of Japan during the same period. Conditions in both countries were sufficiently similar to make such an exercise feasible; while the fact that the Japanese, unlike the Egyptians, were able to use a rapid increase in agricultural output between 1880 and 1920 as the basis for the creation of a modern industrial

Conclusion 357 sector means that the differences between the experiences of the two countries are particularly instructive. Second, there will be a brief analysis of the general economic theories of trade and development in an effort to see how they might assist our understanding of the subject. Finally, an attempt will be made to re-examine the special nature of Egypt’s own particular history in the light of the discussion which has gone before.

To begin with Japan. At the time of the Meiji Restoration

in 1868 it was a land of peasant cultivators. At least 75 to 80 per cent of the labour force was employed in agriculture;! and as late as 1893 only 16 per cent of the population lived in towns of 10,000 inhabitants or more.2 The greater part of the land was worked by peasants in units which were, if anything, smaller than those in Egypt (according to G. G. Allen half a cho, 1-225 acres, was consideréd a good average farm)3 and which were equally fragmented.+ There are no figures for the area of land held in estates of various sizes, but it has been estimated that in 1873 almost a third of it was rented out to tenants.5 Again, as in Egypt, agriculture was dominated by a single crop, rice, which supplied nearly two-

thirds of the value of total output. The fact that this crop required great quantities of water, and thus an extensive system of canals and dams, is given as one of the reasons why members

of each village community, like their Egyptian counterparts, had maintained a long tradition of mutual co-operation.? But the parallel does not end here. Both countries experienced two similar sorts of development during the thirty years before

1914. Firstly, each underwent something of an agricultural revolution. It has already been suggested that in Egypt the size of the cotton harvest more than doubled between 1885-9 and 1910-13, while cereal output may have risen by as much as a third during the same period. Japanese agriculture showed 1 Ohkawa, K. and Rosovsky, H., ‘A Century of Japanese Economic Growth’, in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), The State and Economic Enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965), Dp. 54-

2 Ishii, R., Population Pressure and Economic Life in Japan (London, 1937), p. 71. 3 A Short Economic History of Modern Japan, 1867-1937 (London, 1962), p. 63.

4 Johnston, B. K., ‘Agricultural Productivity and Economic Development in Japan’, Journal of Political Economy, vol. lix, no. 6 (Dec. 1951), p. 500. 5 Norman, E. H., Japan’s Emergence as a Modern State (New York, 1940), p. 148. 6 Ohkawa and Rosovsky, p. 56. 7 Smith, T. C., The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, 1959), pp. 208-9.

358 Conclusion a roughly similar advance, although the exact rate has been the subject of considerable controversy—Ohkawa and Rosovsky’s calculation that production rose by 100 per cent between 1878-82 and 1908-12 having been challenged as over-optimis-

tic by J. I. Nakamura.' In Japan, as in Egypt, the principal cause of the increase in agricultural output was not the extension of the cultivated area, but the more intensive use of land

and a considerable improvement in yields. Again, the whole process received considerable encouragement from a series of government measures taken almost immediately after the Meiji Restoration, aimed at reforming the land-tax, instituting a system of private property in land, and sweeping away a

variety of feudal regulations which, among other things, prevented a peasant from leaving his fields for work elsewhere.3 Secondly, both countries experienced a similar sort of develop-

ment as they were opened up to foreign trade. In Japan the arrival of European and American merchants to settle in the major ports acted as a major instrument of social transformation.

They served as a channel for European technology; they introduced Japanese consumers to new products; they exposed Japanese producers to the stimulating effects of foreign com-

petition. These merchants conducted the greater part of Japanese overseas trade until the end of the century. Their position was made easier by a number of international agreements which did not allow Japan to fix its own customs duties before 1899.4

The differences between the process of economic growth in each country are, however, as important as the similarities. In what follows, an attempt will be made to isolate those which seem to be the most significant. But before this is done it is necessary to give a brief general description of the development of the Japanese economy between 1868 and 1920. These were years of rapid growth marked by structural changes of great 1 Ohkawa, K., and Rosovsky, H., “The Role of Agriculture in Modern Japanese Economic Development’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. ix, no. 1,

pt. 2 (Oct. 1960), p. 45, and Nakamura, J. I., ‘Growth of Japanese Agriculture, 1875-1920’, in Lockwood, State and Economic Enterprise, pp. 249-57.

2 Okhawa and Rosovsky, ‘The Role of Agriculture’, p. 44. 3 Nakamura, ‘Meiji Land Reform’, p. 429. 4 Allen, G. C., “The Industrialization of the Far East’, in The Cambridge Economie History of Europe, iv, pt. 2 (Gambridge, 1965), 876-8.

Conclusion 259 consequence. To begin with, they saw the creation of a modern industrial sector. ‘his was based in the first instance on a four-

fold increase in the production and export of raw silk in the thirty years after the Meiji Restoration. The manufacture of

cotton cloth was another activity to undergo a technical revolution during this period. Heavy industry developed more slowly. Only small amounts of iron were produced in the 1890s, and it was not until the Government had founded an iron-andsteel works in 1901 that it made any serious contribution to economic growth. It was accompanied by progress in shipbuilding, coal-mining, the production of cement, glass, paper, and artificial fertilizers, and the refining of sugar.! Even so,

the predominance of textiles continued, supported by the discovery of new markets on the Asian mainland, and in 1913 the industry consisted of 600,000 workers or 60 per cent of all the labour employed in establishments of five persons and over.?

Other changes followed. The proportion of the population living in towns of more than 10,000 people rose from 16

per cent in 1893 to 28 per cent twenty years later.3 The Government became less dependent on the revenue obtained from the land-tax and began to rely more and more on excise duties and taxes on income, the great part of which were paid by people in the advanced industrial sector.4 Foreign trade increased eight times between 1880 and 1913.5 These changes are all characteristic of an economy which 1s entering a period of what Ohkawa and Rosovsky have called ‘Modern Economic Growth’—that is, one in which there is a sustained and rapid rise in real product per person sustained by high rates of population growth, the application of modern scientific thought and technology to industry, transport, and science, and high rates of transformation of the industrial sector.® How did this happen? It is now generally accepted that the development of the Japanese economy during the period is to be explained largely in terms of the increase in agricultural

1 Ibid., pp. 877-9. 2 Ibid., p. 879. 3 Ishii, p. 71.

4 Ranis, G., “The Financing of Japanese Economic Development’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, vol. xi, no. 3 (Apr. 1959), pp. 445-7. 5 Lockwood, W. W., The Economic Development of Japan: Growth and Structural Change, 1868-1938 (London, 1955), Table 26, p. 313. ® ‘A Century of Japanese Economic Growth’, p. 53. The authors have borrowed the term ‘Modern Economic Growth’ from S, Kuznets,

360 Conclusion production which took place after 1868, accompanied by asmall decline in the rural labour force.' According to an estimate by

Johnston, the number of farm workers was some 15,000,000

between I911t and 1920, or roughly 86 per cent of what it had been between 1881 and 1890.2? The sharp rise in the productivity of both land and labour is said to have had a number of important consequences. Firstly, it provided a large proportion of the capital used to build up a modern sector of the economy. As late as the 1890s Japan had made only two small foreign loans, and the remainder of the funds necessary to develop local industry had to come from domestic sources. Part of this money was transferred from the agricultural sector by means of the land-tax, part of it from the savings of the richer

landowners, who were the chief beneficiaries of the rise in output. Secondly, it was exports of tea, raw silk, and other

agricultural products which paid for the import of much needed raw materials. Thirdly, agriculture provided a large part of the labour force required by the country’s expanding industry. It also managed to produce all the food required by a rapidly growing population. Fourthly, the rural districts acted as a market for many of the simple articles manufactured in the first Japanese factories. Taken together, these four consequences of the increase in agricultural productivity are used to support the argument that Japan is a perfect example of an economy

which reached the stage of self-sustained growth with agriculture playing the role of the leading sector. This brief survey of Japanese development allows a more detailed analysis of the principal differences between Egypt’s experience and that of Japan. Five seem of particular importance. First, there was the attitude of the Japanese Government, which in the years after 1868 made economic development

a primary national objective.3 To this end, it began a farreaching programme of modernization which involved taking over and managing the country’s mines and shipyards, building and operating certain factories like silk filatures, cotton mills, breweries, engineering workshops, and chemical plants equipped

with the latest European machinery, and sending young 1 See, for example, Okhawa and Rosovsky, ‘The Role of Agriculture’, pp. 43-

67, and Johnston, pp. 498-504. 2 Johnston, p. 499. 3 Ohkawa and Rosovsky, ‘A Century of Japanese Economic Growth’, p. 53.

Conclusion 361 Japanese abroad for technical and commercial instruction. In addition, it provided subsidies for a number of entrepreneurs

anxious to establish businesses in important areas of the economy.! In recent years there has been a tendency among some economists to suggest that the role of government in promoting development was much less important than has often been supposed.? But, even should this be proved to everyone’s

satisfaction, the fact remains that, if nothing else, the Meiji Government made an invaluable contribution to growth by

creating an atmosphere in which economic advance was accepted as a natural and desirable end, and in which prospec-

tive entrepreneurs knew that they could expect help rather than hindrance from the administration. This was in marked

contrast to the state of affairs in Egypt. |

Secondly, Japan had a longer industrial tradition. Rice-

growing, the major agricultural occupation, was only seasonal, and at the beginning of the nineteenth century there were few villages in which people did not engage in some sort of handi-

crafts, while a more specialized manufacturing industry was carried on in the castle towns supported by the richer local notables. Among the articles produced were silk and cotton textiles, pottery, and metal-work. No power was used, but there was a high standard of craftsmanship.3 Activities of this kind proved a particularly suitable preparation for employment in

industry, and once the modern factories began to be constructed they were able to draw upon a large number of easily trained workers. It was also the case that many of the men who had organized the handicrafts in the castle towns used their experience to become some of the country’s first successful industrialists.4

Thirdly, Japan possessed a remarkably large number of educated people. According to E. S. Crawcour, the rate of

literacy was probably approaching 30 per cent in the 1860s, ‘if we define literacy as ability to read and write at a 1 See, for example, Allen, “The Industrialization of the Far East’, p. 876, and Horie, Y., ‘Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan’, in Lockwood, State and Economic Enterprise, pp. 201-4.

2 See, for example, Oshima, H. T., ‘Meiji Fiscal Policy and Agricultural Progress’, in Lockwood, State and Economic Enterprise, pp. 353—-81.

3 Allen, ‘The Industrialization of the Far East’, p. 875. 4 See, for example, Horie, pp. 184—5.

362 Conclusion fairly elementary level’.! While R. P. Dore estimates that, at the time of the Restoration, 40 to 50 per cent of the boys and perhaps 15 per cent of the girls were receiving some formal schooling outside their homes.2 What is more, the type of education given was related closely to the needs of the economy.

Mathematics, for example, was presented in the form of practical problems of measurement and accounting. ‘The numbers of literate Japanese continued to increase as the century pro-

gressed, for the Meyi Government introduced compulsory universal education, to which it and the various provincial administrations devoted 7-5 per cent of their total expenditure in 1880 and 10-9 per cent in 1910.4

Fourthly, Japan benefited not only from the increase in agricultural productivity in the second half of the nineteenth century but also from the way it was increased. In general terms the methods used did not vary much from those employed

in Egypt just before the First World War—improvements in the system of irrigation, the more intensive use of fertilizers, better seed-selection, and so on—but there was a great difference in the extra efforts taken in Japan to encourage local participation, and also in the attempts to use innovations which

had some connection with traditional practices. Government assistance to agriculture began soon after the Mei Restoration with the creation of a section inside the Ministry of the Interior which was given the specific task of promoting rural progress. During its short lifetime this section was responsible for the establishment of a number of experimental stations, which were largely devoted to testing seeds obtained from the West, for sending Japanese abroad to study European methods,

and for the employment in Japan of a number of foreign experts. However, as Dore points out, the initial enthusiasm for

Western practice did not last long—in 1881 Shingawa, the head of the Agricultural Promotion Bureau, was talking of the

danger ‘in leaping ahead to the new, of neglecting what is good in the old’—and from the 1880s onwards there was very much more emphasis on improvements which could be incort “The Tokugawa Heritage’, in Lockwood, The State and Economic Enterprise,

- Quoted in Crawcour, p. 34. 3 Ibid., p. 35. 4 Oshima, Table 2, p. 370,

Conclusion 3963 porated within the traditional system of Japanese agriculture.! This in turn led to experiments with innovations which could be applied to the smallest farms, and also to the organization of exhibitions, the creation of extension services, and the organization of local agricultural associations as a means of disseminat-

ing the new knowledge. But even an approach of this type would not have had much chance of ‘leavening the conservatism of some five million farming households’ if it had not

been matched by the enthusiastic response on the part of landlords, most of whom continued to live on their land, and on the part of certain so-called ‘old farmers’ who were able to use

their position of leadership in the village community to encourage others to follow their own example.? As a result, it was possible to effect a very much more extensive change in traditional practice than was managed in Egypt. It was also possible

to improve the productivity of labour in such a way that agricultural output could continue to increase at the same time as the rural sector was providing large numbers of workers for employment in the cities.

Fifthly, there are a whole group of differences between Japan and Egypt which are best discussed under the general heading of social attitudes. In particular, 1t would seem that the

Japanese attitude to both industry and land varied considerably from the Egyptian. One of the vital factors underlying Meiji development was the appearance of a number of entrepreneurs who were able and willing to perform the key functions of innovation, risk-taking, and management. Opinion 1s bound to vary as to why this should have happened, but in general economic historians seem to agree that it was closely connected with the socio-political changes which took place at the time of the Restoration. As J. Hirschmeier has put it: ‘Only men decisively uprooted from past traditions and occupations, and driven by a good deal of nationalistic emotion, could fulfil the preconditions for successful entrepreneurship in the new era.’3 Others have pointed to stimulus provided by the commercial and industrial activities before 1868,4 others 1 ‘Agricultural Improvement in Japan, 1870-1900’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. ix, no. 1, pt. 2 (Oct. 1960), p. 72.

2 Ibid., pp. 77-81. 3 ‘Shibusawa Eiichi: Industrial Pioneer’, in Lockwood, State and Economic

Enterprise, p. 246. + See, for example, Horie, p. 206.

364 Conclusion again to the fact that during the Tokugawa period, if not before, the Samurai and the other classes of notables which provided most of the early entrepreneurs had lost their close links with the land. For instance, Rosovsky has written: It seems to me that, compared to Europe, land carried rather less status. In the post-restoration period, for example, it is hard to find evidence of successful businessmen who attempted to abandon their

way of life in favour of land-ownership. In pre-modern Japan upper-social status was not directly related to land-ownership.?

But if the richer members of society were willing to break their links with the past, so too were many of the peasants. Only this

can account for the considerable migration out of the rural areas which took place during the last decades of the nineteenth century. Evidence from a later period would suggest that the bulk of the migrants were the younger sons of peasant families who went off to the cities to reduce the numbers of mouths to feed at home.? Given the system of inheritance by primogeniture, such young men could not hope to inherit their fathers’ land. Once in the city, it was rare that they returned to their native village.3 The differences in the attitude of government, the standard of education, and so on which have just been outlined are not, of course, sufficient by themselves to account for the fact that Japan was able to use an increase in agricultural production as a basis for the creation of the modern sector of the economy

while Egypt was not: any proper comparison between the history of the two countries would also have to draw attention to a whole variety of other important features such as Egypt’s close proximity to Europe and the disparity in its size of population and natural resources. Nevertheless, a discussion of these particular differences does serve to underline a number of the special problems which Egypt had to face. A second type of approach to the questions posed by Egypt’s economic performance during the nineteenth century is to see

what can be learned from a study of the orthodox theories concerning trade and development. To speak very generally, 1 Capital Formation in Japan, 1868-1940 (Glencoe, 1961), p. 83 n. 2 Namiki, M., “The Farm Population in the National Economy Before and After World War II’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. ix, no. 1, pt. 2 (Oct.

1960), p. 29. 3 Ibid., pp. 34-5.

Conclusion 365 these are of two kinds. On the one hand, there are those which

concentrate on the gains, both direct and indirect, to be obtained from trade. On the other, there is a second group of theories which seek to explain how it was that in many countries these gains were either limited or distorted in such a way as to

inhibit development. Let us take them in order.

According to the former theories, during the nineteenth century economic expansion was transmitted to the less developed areas of the world by a steep and steady increase in Britain’s demand for the primary commodities which those areas were well suited to produce.! Trade drew increments of capital

and labour into the lines in which they had a comparative advantage. Then, as exports rose and incomes increased, primary-producing countries were able to obtain larger supplies

of imported goods. Meanwhile, they received capital from abroad with which to exploit their resources and to build railways and harbour facilities. Other advantages followed. Trade provided the less-developed countries with access to the means of development—the raw materials, semi-manufactured and manufactured goods—needed for further growth. It also brought such countries into contact with European ideas as well as with technical knowledge and managerial skill. Again, as A. O. Hirschman points out, imports from the developed countries played an important role in indicating that a domes-

tic market existed for a wide variety of products.? Indirect benefits of this kind were likely to be much greater in the less advanced economies than they were in the advanced, and might well exceed the gains flowing from specialization as such.3

Much of this theory applies to Egypt’s own particular experience. It was the British demand for primary commodities

which completed the transformation of the economy from a subsistence to a monetary one by providing a market, first for Egyptian cereals, then for cotton. Income was increased by the extension of the area devoted to the higher-value cash crops. Rising exports paid for the import of iron and machinery for railway-construction and agricultural improvement. ‘Trade ‘ For an exposition of these theories see, for example, Harberler, G., International Trade and Economic Development (Cairo, 1959), pp. 10-15, and Nurkse, R., Patterns of Trade and Development (Oxford, 1961), pp. 13-19, 33. 2 The Strategy of Economic Development (New Haven, 1958), pp. 120-1.

3 Harberler, pp. 10-15.

366 Conclusion led to changes in traditional institutions, such as the system of ’ land tenure, which stood in the way of a more comprehensive exploitation of the soil; it introduced new ideas and experiences; it encouraged foreign financiers to place money in Egypt; it provided the impetus for the influx of Europeans with many of the skills necessary for a developing country. At the same time, imports of alcohol and cotton fabrics and building materials convinced Egyptian entrepreneurs that there was sufficient demand for such products to justify local production. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the impact of a century of ever-increasing trade was very much less than the theorists would

appear to suggest. It did not result in the automatic modernization of agricultural method. It did not guarantee that the widening domestic market which it created was, of itself, able to stimulate the expansion of local industry. It did little to alter traditional attitudes to the land as the major, often the only, source of prestige and wealth. Above all, by 1914, its spreadover effects had not been such as to lead to the development of those parts of the economy outside the cotton sector. It is at this stage that a consideration of the second group of theories, those concerned to qualify or amend the view that trade was ‘the engine of growth’,! becomes relevant. Theories of this type all begin with the concept of the ‘dual’ economy, that is of an economy in which an export or advanced sector exists side by side with a backward or traditional sector. Thereafter, there are some which concentrate on the obstacles to development posed by the character of the export sector itself, others which point to the absence of links between the two

sectors which would permit progress in one to be transmitted to the other, others again which are concerned with the backward, unresponsive nature of the traditional sector. Each set of arguments must now be analysed in turn. But before this is done one proviso is necessary. The concept of the dual economy presents little difficulty when it is employed in connection with

areas where production for export is carried on in certain enclaves which are physically isolated from the rest of the economy—such as the rubber plantations of Malaya or the copper mines in Rhodesia—and by workers and managers who specialize in this one activity. Problems arise, however, when 1 The phrase belongs to Sir Dennis Robertson. It is quoted in Nurkse, p. 14.

Conclusion 967 it is applied to a country like Egypt in which the great majority of ordinary cultivators were engaged in producing the principal

export crop and in which the foreigners who were largely responsible for financing the growth of cotton, processing it, and selling it in Europe were much more closely integrated into the economy than elsewhere. Neither group devoted its attention exclusively to cotton. The cultivators grew many other crops as well; the merchants were often engaged in creating business enterprises which had nothing to do with their main field of specialization. This is an important quallification which is relevant to much of the discussion which follows.

Arguments which concentrate on the obstacles posed by the character of the export sector can be grouped under three heads.

Firstly, there are those which direct attention towards the difficulties inherent in producing primary commodities for export. Some argue, on the basis of twentieth-century evidence,

that the terms of trade have a tendency to move in favour of manufactured goods and against raw materials.! ‘This was not the case in nineteenth-century Egypt, however. There, the evidence would seem to point to the fact that the terms of trade

between cotton and the country’s major imports became slightly more favourable between 1854 and 1914. Another argument concerns the problems created for a developing country by dependence on a single primary product.? Such commodities are said to be subject to particularly wide fluctu-

ations in value. This in turn raises peculiar difficulties, for receipts from their sale form so large a share of the national income that a sharp rise or fall in price will have marked repercussions throughout the economy. Planning becomes difficult in these circumstances; government revenues are unstable; potential entrepreneurs prefer speculative gains to the productive employment of their capital. This pessimistic view has recently been challenged by A. 1. MacBean, who maintains that specialization in primary production does not, of itself, lead to large year-to-year changes in returns. He also 1 See, for example, Singer, H. W., “The Distribution of Gains Between Investing and Borrowing Countries’, American Economic Review, Proceedings, xi, 1950. 2 See, for example, Cairncross, A. K., Factors in Economic Development (London, 1962), p. 213.

368 Conclusion suggests that short-term export fluctuations are not nearly so

damaging to the economy of a developing country as had previously been supposed.! Evidence from Egypt’s nineteenthcentury experience would seem to support MacBean’s side of

the argument, at least as far as the period 1880 to 1914 is concerned. As a rule, income from cotton did not vary widely from year to year. Nor is it possible to discern any very unfavourable effects on the economy on the few occasions when there was a large rise or fall in the value of cotton exports. In general, the country suffered a great deal more from its close financial links with Europe, which meant that movements in the international trade cycle were automatically transferred to Cairo and Alexandria by means of an expansion or contraction of credit. A second argument concerns relations between cultivators and merchants. According to Myint, the peasants in South-

East Asia and a number of African countries who grow primary products face two monopolies: they rely on middlemen

to purchase their crop; they also rely on other middlemen to provide them with the imported goods which they desire. Thus,

for both reasons, they are prevented from obtaining the full rewards of their labours, while the remainder of the profits go to foreigners who tend to spend them outside the country.? This argument has some relevance to Egyptian condition, but not a great deal. It is true that the poorer cultivators relied on foreign

merchants to purchase their cotton but there is not enough

evidence to make out a general case that they were consistently underpaid. Again, at least a third of the Egyptian crop was grown by large landowners who were powerful enough to see that they obtained a good price. A much more serious difficulty arose from the fact that cultivators of all kinds

required a continual supply of credit before they could plant and pick their cotton. Where this had to be obtained from a village money-lender, the rate of interest was generally high. However, it does not follow that even if the latter was a foreigner he would either remit his profits out of the country or spend 1 Export Instability and Economic Development (London, 1966), pp. 339-40.

2 The Economics of Developing Countries (London, 1964), p. 41, and ‘An Interpretation of Economic Backwardness’, Oxford Economic Papers, vol. vi, no. 2 (June, 1954), PP- 155-9:

Conclusion 369 them in their entirety on imports from abroad. Unlike the foreign merchants described by Myint, the majority of Greek

and Syrian money-lenders seem to have made Egypt their home, and we can assume that a considerable proportion of their purchases was spent on local goods and services. Thirdly, there are a group of arguments which call attention to the way in which the presence of a prosperous export sector exercises a distorting effect upon the economy as a whole.' A

profitable export trade, so it is maintained, will attract what domestic savings and what little entrepreneurial talent exist, leaving nothing for other sectors of the economy. Banks will be created solely to finance exports, not to serve as instruments of

industrial credit. Wealth will be devoted to the expansion of cities merely to provide living space for wealthy merchants and

traders. In such a situation the large returns to be obtained from finance and commerce will act as a magnet for investment

funds coming from abroad, so that money will be directed towards trade or towards speculative ventures, and not to those which are productive in the development sense. Some writers also stress the social barriers to successful development. Baran asserts that when there is government investment in an export

sector, most of the benefits accrue to those social groups, the merchants and landlords, whose major interest will be to preserve the status quo and to discourage development along new lines.2 And Hirschman points to the fact that, in such an

economy, the import trade often leads to the creation of powerful commercial interests bent on perpetuating their own highly profitable business.3

Many of these arguments are directly applicable to Egyptian experience, although always with some qualification. It would seem reasonable to suppose, for instance, that the profits which

could be obtained so easily from operations in cotton and, latterly, in land must have done something to discourage the growth of industry, even if this was not the most important factor. It is also true that the economic power of both merchants and landowners was constantly being augmented by government 1 See, for example, Singer and Baran, P., The Political Economy of Growth (London, 1957), Ch. 6. 2 Baran, pp. 194-8. 3 Hirschman, p. 125.

821643 Bb

370 Conclusion investments in the cotton sector, a power which, as a rule, they

used to ensure that it was the development of the country’s agricultural resources which took precedence over anything else. Again, importers tended to look unfavourably on the efforts of manufacturers inside Egypt to obtain a market for their own products, while consumers became so used to purchasing goods from abroad that they soon developed a strong prejudice against anything which did not carry a foreign label. In these and other ways, forces inside the export sector itself

tended to inhibit the emergence of a more diverse type of economic activity.

Let us now turn to the theories which concentrate attention on the reasons why progress in the export sector cannot be transmitted to other areas of the economy. Firstly, there are

those that add an important qualification to the theory of foreign trade by pointing to the fact that in a developing economy the full effects of the foreign-trade multiplier are often muffled by the absence of surplus productive capacity or of institutions to canalize savings.’ For this reason the general level of income and employment can expand only by a small multiple of any rise in export receipts. In such an economy, so the arguments run, only a small proportion of an increase in income will be used for the purchase of local goods and services, for these cannot be created fast enough (if, indeed, they can be created at all) to meet the new demand. Nor can much of the increase be spent on employing more local labour, for here too no surplus exists. Hence most of the extra income has to be spent on imports, in which case the main secondary-multiplier effect takes place abroad. The same result will be produced

where part of the profits from exporting a primary product accrue to resident foreigners who then remit them to their home

country. It is also pointed out that, even if a portion of the increase in income is spent locally, it may only bid up the price of items for which there is a limited supply, such as land, without

calling forth any addition to productive capacity. Secondly, many writers have called attention to various ways in which practices and techniques in the export sector are so specialized that they have little relevance to the type of economic activity 1 See, for example, Singer and Levin, J. V., The Export Economies (Cambridge,

Mass., 1960), pp. 4-15. ,

Conclusion 371 pursued in the remainder of the economy.' For this reason, production for export will have little educative effects; skills will not be transmitted; there will be little contribution to the supply of local entrepreneurs. Issawi has sought to apply some of these ideas to Egypt in his article ‘Egypt since 1800: A Study in Lop-sided Development’,

in which he argues that during the nineteenth century the transition from an export-orientated economy to a more complex one was hindered by the fact that there was no mechanism for transmitting the expansion generated by cotton to other areas of economic activity. This in turn was partly due to the fact that incomes earned by foreign capital were not reinvested in the country, partly because a large part of the rise in rents and other incomes of the richer classes

in Egypt was spent abroad and partly because of the growth in mass consumption due to rapidly increasing numbers and, until the 1920’s, a rise in the level of living.?

Once again, arguments of this type tend to distort the actual nature of Egypt’s experience. It is certainly true that a large proportion of the income from cotton did go to merchants and rich landowners. But it does not follow from this that all of it was either remitted abroad or spent on the purchase of imports. As it has been argued a number of times, the great majority of those who made large profits from cotton were permanently

resident in Egypt; it was there that they built a house for themselves, there that they purchased much of their food anda wide variety of services, there that they invested a large part of their savings. Against this it may be said that their houses were filled with European furniture, or that their local investments were mainly in ginning factories and land—that is, inside the export sector itself. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that from at least as early as the 1840s income from cotton provided a

great incentive to the local building industry, or that from the 1860s onwards merchants were willing to place their money

in public utilities, in works of land-reclamation, or, later, in companies which processed food products and manufactured building materials. It is, of course, impossible to put any figure to the sums expended in these various directions. But the ' See, for example, Meier, G. M., and Baldwin, R. E., Economic Development

(New York, 1957), Pp. 327. 2 ‘Egypt since 1800’, p. 22.

372 Conclusion arguments just given should be sufficient to show that there were

ways and means in which profits from cotton were used to develop other types of economic activity. Again, much of the investment inside the export sector was to the advantage of agriculture in general. Light railways encouraged the cultivation of cash crops other than cotton; the improvement of marginal land was a prerequisite of general agricultural progress. Finally, it 1s difficult to follow Issawi’s argument that the

growth of mass consumption had anything to do with the fact that progress was confined to the export sector. Many of the more well-to-do peasants certainly spent a part of their increasing income on imported goods such as cotton fabrics, butter, and oil during the first decade of the twentieth century. But the growth in the purchase of foreign goods of this type is not

sufficient to account for all of the rise in their receipts, and a portion of it, at least, must have been used to buy local goods and services. It was exactly by such means that Egypt’s agricultural prosperity was transmitted throughout the remainder of the economy. The same sort of reasoning can be used to show how techniques and abilities developed inside the export sector could be used elsewhere. Not only did cereal production benefit from the changes in agricultural practice promoted by cotton, but cotton merchants also played an important role in providing both the savings and the entrepreneurial skill necessary to

start a wide variety of financial and industrial enterprises between 1880 and 1914. A last group of theories 1s concerned with the unresponsive nature of the less advanced sector. As P. 'T. Ellsworth has put

it:

The existence or non-existence of an export industry in itself had little to do with growth or absence of growth in the domestic sector. The failure of that sector to expand and develop must be attributed to its own characteristics. An export industry could provide a stimulus

to growth where the domestic sector was responsive to such a stimulus. This occurred, for example, in such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Argentina and (Southern) Brazil, where the domestic

sector was formed in considerable part by European immigrants,

who brought with them laws, institutions, skills and customs favourable to commercial and industrial activity.

Conclusion 373 Elsewhere, he adds, the response to even the most vigorous export sector has been slight. And he concludes that, thus ‘we are forced to resort to a sociological explanation of dualism’.!

Other economists draw attention to the particular type of activity practised in the traditional sector. Hirschman argues that the appearance of advanced industrial methods may be seriously handicapped by the possibility of competition from the independent, small-scale, producers of such items as shoes and furniture.2 And K. Berrill writes that the building trade ‘by its nature remains a scattered, unstandardised and largely unmechanical industry. In most economies productivity in building lags and does not lead the rest of the economy, and the cost per square foot of building rises relative to other costs

as the economy advances.’3 |

Both sets of arguments are relevant to a discussion of Egyptian

nineteenth-century history. It is unfortunate that so little 1s

known about activities within the traditional sector, but Berrill’s observation about the building industry must surely be correct. The construction of large numbers of modern houses and offices in Cairo and Alexandria, often by firms using the latest European methods, seems to have made singularly little

impression on the economy. Some local materials were employed; many hundreds of craftsmen and mechanics must have been trained. Nevertheless it is difficult to think of any other industry of comparable size which would have made so small a contribution to economic progress. On the other hand, Ellsworth is right to suggest the need for a sociological explanation, even if this cannot provide a complete answer. The few writers

who have approached the subject so far have tended to be diverted into a relatively unproductive discussion of whether or not Islam as a religion was inimical to capitalism, and we still await a thorough examination of the whole question of society’s response to industry in Egypt. Until a work of this kind

appears, it is necessary to make do with a number of straightforward observations concerning such matters as the very low level of literacy and the desire of young, educated Egyptians to 1 *The Dual Economy: a New Approach’ (Review), Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. x, no. 4 (July 1962), p. 437. 2 Hirschman, p. 129.

3 ‘International Trade and the Rate of Economic Growth’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, vol. xii, no. 3 (Apr. 1960), pp. 353-4.

374 Conclusion enter government service rather than some commercial or industrial establishment. On the basis of the foregoing discussion it is now possible to

suggest which of the general theories concerning trade and development are relevant to the special nature of Egyptian experience. To begin with, even if trade was not the ‘engine’ of development, it was certainly the ‘engine’ of growth. Had it not been for the export of long-staple cotton it 1s difficult to see what other form of economic activity would have raised income by so large an amount, attracted the foreign capital necessary to establish the banks and other financial agencies the country required, or done so much to transform the social institutions which stood in the way of further progress. However, it 1s also true that some of the more optimistic implications of the theory

do not apply in an Egyptian context. Agricultural practices

were improved but not nearly in such a radical way as in Japan. The attitude to land remained almost unchanged. And most important of all, in the years before 1914, the country was not able to use the fund of capital and enterprise accumulated in the export sector to develop other parts of the economy. It 1s here that a number of arguments concerning the character of dual economies are useful. The mere presence of a vigorous export sector set up forces aimed at perpetuating the status quo. Again, for sociological and other reasons, the traditional sector

remained unresponsive to outside economic stimuli. The building industry, a major recipient of profits from cotton, was not fitted by its nature to act as a focus for development. Unlike Japan, Egypt possessed no system of compulsory education; its people had never been exposed to an assault on long-established social attitudes by something so disruptive as the Meiji Restora-

tion; what industrial tradition it had had was almost completely broken, first by Muhammad ‘Ali’s monopolies, then

by foreign competition. }

But theories of this type produce only a partial explanation

at best. Forone thing, Egypt’s export sector was very much more closely integrated into the rest of the economy than most argu-

ments about dual economies allow. For another, no theory can be expected to encompass all the special obstacles to development posed by the absence of certain vital raw materi-

als like iron and coal, the financial crisis of 1907, and the

Conclusion 375 foreign domination which prevented the imposition of a tariff high enough to protect infant Egyptian industry. And yet their importance cannot be over-emphasized. In the years immediately preceding the First World War there was a plentiful supply of capital in Egypt, as well as a number of energetic and enterprising entrepreneurs, both local and foreign, and a pool of European residents, mainly Italian and Greek, with a wide variety of mechanical skills. ‘There was also a market for such manufactured goods as building materials, food and drink, and cheap textiles. What was lacking, and here we have the word of the local businessmen themselves, was cheap fuel, raw materjals of the kind necessary to produce such things as high-quality

cement, and protection from foreign competition. One of the most difficult historical tasks is to explain why something did not

happen. This is where a study of the actual problems faced by Egypt’s first factories is of particular importance. It avoids

much of the uncertainty involved in having to argue backwards from the country’s failure to develop a modern sector to a set of hypothetical reasons.

To conclude: the major theme of this work has been the contribution made by the cultivation and export of cotton to the growth of the Egyptian economy during the nineteenth century. It raised income, it attracted foreign capital, it was responsible for a great expansion in trade. It did not, however, lead to the development of a modern sector in the economy. Progress of this kind was inhibited, in part by the unresponsive nature of the traditional sector, in part by certain physical and political obstacles. It was also inhibited, to some small extent, by the presence of a prosperous export sector itself. But, in the final analysis, the advantages Egypt gained from cotton far outweighed the disadvantages. Only after 1914 did the latter begin to be of overwhelming significance. But that is a story which would require another book.

APPENDIX I The Method of Valuing Egyptian Exports and Imports, 1873-1911 1. Exports

From 1873 until August 1911 the customs administration officially undervalued all Egyptian exports by 10 per cent. The reasons for this practice are obscure, but it seems to have had its origin in the

method by which, for the purpose of paying duty, the prices of goods about to be exported were established at monthly meetings between customs officers and leading merchants. A British dispatch of 1859 mentions that in the course of these negotiations a reduction

of 16 per cent was made in the agreed price, ‘for expenses’.! Later, a government circular of 1873 explained that a 10 per cent reduction was then being made “a ttre d’escompte’ .* On account of this practice all export figures used in this thesis for

the years 1873 to 1911 have been raised by one-ninth unless there is a specific note to the contrary. However, as noted in Chapter VII, there is reason to suppose that cotton, the major Egyptian export, was undervalued still further. According to Crouchley, even after allowance had been made for

the 10 per cent reduction, as well as for the cost of freight and insurance and for British re-exports, British trade figures for 1mports of cotton from Egypt showed that the Egyptian figures undervalued cotton exports by 8:3 per cent in the period 1g06—10 and 16°1 per cent in the years 1911-15.3 He suggests that this difference

can be accounted for by the fact that the cotton actually exported was of a higher average grade than that allowed for in the customs’ statistics.4 ‘This hypothesis can be tested by looking at the figures provided by the Alexandria General Produce Association, which were based on the grade F.G.F. (Fully Good Fair) rather than the lower grade G.F. (Good Fair) used by the customs. According to the General Produce Association, the value of cotton exports was in fact 11-7 per cent higher than the official estimates for the period 1 Ayrton, 30 July 1859: F.O. 141/39. 2 Enclosed in Vivian, 18 July 1873: F.O. 78/2286. 3 “The Visible Balance of Trade since 1884’, p. 506. 4 Ibid., pp. 498-9.

Appendix 1: Egyptian Exports and Imports, 1873-1911 377 1905-6 to 1909-10.' This would suggest that the grade used by the customs was, in fact, somewhat too low. 2. Imports.

The British dispatch of 1859 already quoted would suggest that at this time the practice was also to reduce the value of imports by a fixed amount.” There is, however, no evidence that this was continued after 1873. ™ Calculations based on figures in A.S. 1914, pp. 356, 398. 2 Ayrton, 30 July 1859: F.O. 78/39.

APPENDIX 2 Note on Alternative Statistical Sources, 1820-1879 1. Cotton Exports—Volume and Value

FicuRres for the volume and value of cotton exports before 1879 present three particular difficulties: A. Years. At least three different calendars were used in the production of statistics during the period—the Gregorian, the Muslim, and the Coptic. The situation was often made more difficult by the fact that figures for one kind of year were transferred to another kind of year without the fact being noted. This was particularly the case with many European authors who tended to convert the series they were given from the original

Muslim or Coptic year to the nearest Gregorian year. B. Weights. The weights used for measuring cotton exports varied

considerably. Not only was there the official change in the

weight of the cantar in 1836 but different authors would sometimes use cantars of other weights as well. C. Original sources. Authors of books on Egypt seem to have ob-

tained their statistics from two main sources—the customs administration and merchant houses like Carpi et Vivante et Cie. In neither case do they inspire any great confidence. It is difficult to believe that the customs officials possessed adequate

methods of accounting before the reform of the customs statistical service in 1873, while this must have been even more true of private houses. In addition, we must suppose that, from

1859 onwards, cotton exports were deliberately undervalued by the customs in the way described in Appendix 1. These are major qualifications and throw doubt on every statistic produced. Confidence is further decreased by the fact that for much of the period a number of alternative figures exist for each year. Such considerations should be borne in mind in the brief discussion which follows.

I have used two main sources for the years 1820 to 1859, de Cadal-

vene and de Breuvery (1820-34) and Fowler (1835-59).! Some of

the difficulties attached to the former series have already been discussed on p. 34 (notes a and b). Fowler does not mention his * For references see p. 34.

Appendix 2: Alternative Statistical Sources, 1820-1879 379 own sources apart from saying that they are ‘official’.! There is also the problem of weights.?, Nevertheless, Fowler does have the advantage of providing a continuous series for twenty-five years. And in some cases his figures agree with those provided by the American Consul-General. After 1860 the position is complicated by the existence of a variety

of different statistics all claiming to be official. I have used those figures which correspond most closely to the British figures for imports from Egypt. Figures for Egyptian exports to all countries which are smaller than those for British imports from Egypt have automatically been ruled out. So have the figures for the volume of Egyptian cotton exports between 1861 and 1866, which exceed the British figures by too large an amount.

following sources: .

Alternative figures for Egyptian cotton exports will be found in the Cotton exports

(volume) 1822-41, Gliddon, pp. 45-7. 1831-40, McCulloch, p. 16. 1849-50 to 1874~—5, Landes, p. 332.

1857-68, J. Pender and Co., Table XI, p. 3. 1866-9, Statement 1865-1875 (US).

(value) 1860-75, Rabino, p. 427. 1862-3 to 1874-5, Landes, p. 332. 1866-9, Statement 1865-1875 (US). 2. Exports and imports

Egyptian foreign-trade statistics present many of the same problems as those for cotton exports: they may be in any of three different

calendars and the efficiency with which they were collected must always be suspect. In addition, there are a number of reasons why they must certainly have undervalued the total amount of trade in the years before 1880. In so far as imports were concerned, goods brought into the country on government account or by members of the royal family can rarely have passed through the customs, while Europeans were adept at evading payment of duty, by one means or another.* There is also the question of the Turkish rafteh, the system by which commodities on which duty had been paid on either entering or leaving one part of the Ottoman Empire were

|,

1 Fowler, pp. 8-11. 2 See p. 34 n.

3 The figures provided by the American Consul-General agree with Fowler’s for the years 1848, 1849, and 1855-9. They disagree for 1850 and 1852. Macaulay, 22 Mar. 1849, Deacon, 1 May 1856, U.S. Egypt, ii; Thayer, 20 July 1861, U.S.

Egypt, iii. + For references see pp. 168-9.

380 Aphendix 2: Alternative Statistical Sources, 1820-1879 admitted free on entering another. For this reason most of Egypt’s

“ imports from Turkey did not pass through the Egyptian customs, and thus, so we must suppose, do not appear in the official trade statistics before 1879. It was only then that, according to the evidence of the Government’s Le Commerce extérieur de l’ Egypte 1884-1889, note

was taken of such imports for the first time.! Goods imported from Turkey in 1879 were valued at £E1,049,771, out of total imports of £,E5,700,922.” As for exports, they were consistently undervalued in the official figures on account of the procedure for estimating their worth described in Appendix 1. Finally, the values of both imports and exports was diminished by the fact that, until 1873, almost all the available figures refer only to the port of Alexandria. And yet,

for the ten years from 1862-3 to 1871-2, just over 6 per cent of Egypt’s exports were sent out of the country via Damietta, Port Said, and four other ports.” Figures do not exist for imports through these same ports, but it would not be unreasonable to suppose that they were roughly of the same order of magnitude. In so far as the choice of figures used in this present work is concerned, I have been guided by the following sorts of considerations. Prior to 1860 I have used the series to be found in the Statzstique de l’ Heypte, 1873 (p. 166) for both imports and exports. This gives as its Own sources:

1841-52, Annales du Commerce extérieur published by the French government.

1853-9, ‘données particuli¢res’; a source which is, in fact, the merchant house of Carpi et Vivante.

The situation is confused by the fact that, two pages earlier, the same work gives an entirely different series of figures for the years 1853-9. These I rejected on the rather weak assumption that it was

better to use the larger of any two series of figures, as trade was

almost certain to have been undervalued. After 1860 I have used the figures which seem to correspond most closely both to those for cotton exports and to those for British imports from Egypt. Alternative foreign-trade statistics will be found in the following SOUrCeS :

Exports (1853-72), Statistique de I’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 164.

Imports/exports (1866-9) and imports (1870-2), Statement 18651875 (US). 1 See pp. xii—xili. 2 Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Eg.), p. 165.

APPENDIX 3 Egyptian Weights, Measures, and Coins WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Feddan

THE feddan is a unit of land measurement. In 1798 its area varied widely from one district of Egypt to another, but the French were

able to identify two feddans which were more or less generally recognized, one measuring 5,929 square metres and the other 5,353.

They used the latter in their own cadastral survey. The next cadastral survey, that of 1813-23, was based on a smaller feddan, one of 4,416°533 square metres.? According to Artin this figure was probably taken as an average of all the different feddans still in use.4

Clot asserts that by 1840 the feddan had shrunk still further, to 4,083 333 square metres, but this is not substantiated by any other source.> The size of feddan was officially defined for the first time in 1861. In a decree of May of that year it was fixed at 4,200°833 square metres.® This was equivalent to 1-038 acres. It remained at this figure throughout the rest of the period.’ Ardabb

The ardabb is a unit of capacity. At the time of the French Expedition no one ardabb was in common use, but according to Girard the one employed in Cairo was generally accepted elsewhere.® This was equivalent to 184 litres® or just over five and a half bushels. Artin asserts that a standard ardabb came into use during Muhammad ‘Ali’s reign as a result of the requirements to deliver produce to the government storehouses, but he does not say what it was.? However, Clot maintains that in 1840 it was still 184 litres.5 Thirty years later this figure had risen to 197-7477 litres.?° A similar figure appears in

|.

1 Girard, p. 30. 2 Jacotin, ‘Tableau de la superficie de l’Egypte’, in Description de l’Egypte, 2nd edn., vol. xviii, pt. 2 (Paris, 1822), pp. 104-5. 3 Artin, Landed Property, pp. 208 n., 213.

4 Ibid., p. arin. 5 Clot, 1i. 560. 6 Egypt, La Législation en matiére immobiliére en Egypte (Cairo, 1893), p. 254.

7 See, for instance, A.S. 1974, p. 609. 8 Girard, p. 31.

9 Artin, Landed Property, p. 222.

‘0 Artin, Landed Property, p. 222. Artin gives his own sources as Mahmoud el

Falaki, Le Systeme métrique actuel de l’Egypte (Copenhagen, 1872).

|

382 Appendix 3: Egyptian Weights the official Statistique de ’ Egypte, 1873.1 The Annuaire statistique for 1914 gives 198 litres or 5-444 bushels.” The weight of an ardabb clearly depended on the commodity being measured. In 1798 an ardabb of wheat weighed about 125 kilograms. By 1873 this had increased to 133°6374 kilograms.4 A year earlier,

other agricultural commodities were said to weigh the following: Barley 340 rails or 151-276 kilograms. Beans 320 ratls or 142°378 kilograms. Cotton seed 270 ratls or 120°131 kilograms.‘ Rice was also sometimes measured in ardabbs. According to Girard

the ardabb of Damietta was 2°7 times as large as that of Cairo (or 496°8 litres).®

Rail

The ratl was one of the smaller Egyptian weights. Like other measures it seems to have varied widely from one part of the country

to another during the French Expedition. Girard is unable to give one single figure, although at one stage he makes 275 ratls the equivalent of ‘about’ 125 kilograms.” This would make one rail equal to 0°4545 kilograms, or 1-002! Ib. Yates, writing in the 1840s, gives

an almost identical figure—15? oz.’ The official figure for the rail was 0°44496 kilograms in 18739 and 0:-44928 kilograms (0°990493

Ib.) in 1914.0 Cantar

The cantar was the largest Egyptian weight. The members of the

French Expedition were unable to provide an equivalent in anything but other Egyptian weights (which themselves varied widely). However, Shaw (quoting Hinz, Islamische Masse, pp. 34-5) gives a

figure of 120 lb. for 1798.1! In the early 1820s a cantar of cotton weighed approximately 1224 lb.!* This was officially reduced to 100 ratls on 1 January 1836, a figure which, according to Gliddon, was

equivalent to 99 lb.!3 Later estimates of the weight of the cantar seem to vary with differences in the rat]. Lane puts it at between just

under 98 and 983 lb.,'4 while in 1872 Mahmoud el Falaki gave a figure of 44:493 kilograms.'5 A year later the Statistique de I’ Egypte,

1873 laid down that a cantar was the equivalent of 44°5458 kiloI Statistique de Egypte, 1879 (Eg.), p. 2. 2 AS. 1914, p. 609. 3 Girard, p. 51. 4 Statistique de l Egypte, 18793 (Eg.), p. 2.

Mahmoud el Falak: in Artin, p. 223. 6 Girard, p. 312. 795 Statistique Thid., p. 51. 8 Yates, 1. 460. de l Egypte 1879 (Eg.), p. 2. 10 4,S. 1914, p. 610.

1 Financial and Administrative Organization, p. 273 n. 12 Gliddon, p. 11.

13 Thid., p. 54. 14 Lane, il. 372. 1S Artin, Landed Property, p. 223.

Measures, and Coins 383 grams,’ while the Annuaire statistique of 1914 made it 44:928 kilograms or 99049 lb.? But, whatever the official weight, during most of the nineteenth

century European writers tended to assume that a cantar was the equivalent either of a hundredweight or of a quintal. EGYPTIAN MONEY

The standard coin in Ottoman Egypt was the silver para. In addition, piastres worth 40 paras each, were struck in the 1760s.3 Meanwhile, the main unit of account was the kise (purse), which in Egypt was taken to be equal to 25,000 paras.‘

Due to continual debasement the value of the para declined steadily in terms of European currency throughout the three centuries of Ottoman rule. In 1773, for instance, one French franc exchanged for just over 18 paras, whereas by 17098 this had increased

to 28°5 paras.’ It was partly in an attempt to stabilize this situation that, during the French Expedition, Bonaparte established a commission to reform the monetary system. As a result of its deliber-

ations it was decided to coin a new para, to be the equivalent of 0°035 francs, and a new piastre.® A few years later the size of the purse was reduced from 625 piastres to 500.7

The French reforms did not halt the decline in value of the

principal Egyptian coins, however. The following table shows the reduction of the piastre in terms of the French franc and the pound sterling:

French franc Pound sterling

1821 6o 1822 2°5 1830 2°9 80

Value in piastres®’ = Value in piastres®

1798-1801 O°7

1833 3°33

In these circumstances, foreign traders anxious to price their goods

in coins which could be relied upon to remain constant in value

I Statistique de l’Egypte (Eg.), p. 2. 2 A.S. 1914, p. 609. 3 Shaw, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, p. 168.

4 Gibb and Bowen, 1, pt. 2, 45 n. 5 Calculated on the basis of Boislecomte’s figures in Douin, Mission, p. 130. 6 Shaw, Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution, pp. 168-9.

7 According to figures given by Al-Jabarti, quoted in Gibb and Bowen (1, pt. 2, 62 n.), the purse was still equal to 625 piastres in 1801. But information given by Boislecomte about the size of the Turkish Tribute, ‘aprés l’expulsion des Francais’, would seem to indicate that it was then made equal to 500 piastres, Douin, Mission,

Pp. 133. 8 Based on Boislecomte’s figures 1n ibid., p. 130.

, 9 Based on figures in St. John, ii. 468-71.

|

384 Appendix 3: Egyptian Weights tended to use Austrian thalers (talaris) as a unit of account, or Spanish piastres, commonly called rials.! A second attempt to impose some order on the Egyptian monetary system was made by Muhammad ‘Ali with his. reform of December 1835 (in force May 1836). His aim was to give the country a stable

currency with Egyptian coins exchanging for European ones at fixed rates. To this end he introduced a new coin, a silver piece worth Pt. 20 which was made the equivalent of the Austrian thaler. In addition, a tariff was drawn up giving the rate of exchange with eight other foreign coins. The English sovereign (then circulating at Pt. 100) was to be equal to Pt. 974, the French Louis d’Or (20 francs) to Pt. 77-4, and the Turkish Ighirmilak to Pt. 194. All three coins were, in fact, undervalued, the English sovereign being the least so.3 Meanwhile, the American dollar was to be the equivalent of Pt. 19.4 Other new Egyptian coins, including silver pieces worth 10, 5, and 1 piastres, and gold pieces worth 100, 20, 10, and 5 piastres, were also struck.5 Foreign coins were allowed to circulate.°®

Muhammad ‘Ali’s reform brought little improvement. The chronic shortage of Egyptian coins, especially those of small denomi-

nations, remained, while many of those which did exist were of an uneven quality, as a result of the lack of precision instruments in the mint.” At the same time, foreign coins circulated much above the tariff rate, their value often fluctuating greatly from one part of the country to another. According to the author A. Tedesco, writing in the 1850s, he had seen the arrival in Alexandria of various small foreign coins called quart-de-florin which, though possessing an intrinsic value of two piastres, were bought up by the sarrafs at three piastres and five paras, with the aim of making a good speculation by sending them into the interior.’ The situation was made even more

difficult by the fact that each foreign consulate and post office demanded payment in its own national currency. These problems persisted until the monetary reform of 1885. The decree of 14 November that year contained the following important provisions:

1. An Egyptian gold pound was to be struck worth a hundred piastres. 1 Crouchley, Economic Development, p. 99. 2 Arminjon, pp. 355-6. 3 Crouchley, Economic Development, pp. 100-1. 4 La Réforme monétaire en Egypte 1885 (Eg.), Annexe XXXII. 5 Crouchley, Economic Development, p. 100.

6 Arminjon, p. 356. 7 Sultan, pp. 56~7. 8 ‘Tedesco, p. 8.

9 Ibid., p. 11.

| Measures, and Coins 385

2. The piastre was to be divided into ten muilliémes (rather than

forty paras). 3. The rates of exchange with the six principal foreign coins then in circulation were to be the same as those established in 1835.!

Later, by a decree of March 1887, only three foreign coins, the English pound, the French twenty-franc piece, and the Turkish

pound, were allowed to circulate inside the country.” This provision assumed great importance in the years which followed, for so few Egyptian pounds were actually minted that the country continued to have to rely on foreign coins. The English pound, the least under-

valued of the three and thus the weakest, drove out the other two and became almost the sole gold piece.3 It remained the equivalent

of Pt. 974; while the Egyptian pound, when one could be found, was worth £1. os. 6:154d.4 This system remained in operation through-

out the remainder of the period until 1914. |

t Arminjon, pp. 361-6. 2 Ibid., p. 370. 3 Ibid., pp. 371-6.

+ A.S. 1914, p. 607.

|

821648 cc |

:

ae

, APPENDIX 4

List of Alexandria Cotton-Exporters, 1911-1912 Exports (bales)

Great Britain All countries

Choremi Benachi & Co. 98,752 140,141 Carver Bros. & Co. Ltd. 101,027 128,343

R. and O. Lindemann 42,094 108,564

Peel & Co. Ltd. 79,300 106,719 J. Planta &&Co. 21,118 57,086 G. Frauger Co. 24,222 53,837 F. Andres & Co. 13,400 4.53;995 Mohr and Fender! 11,392 42,293 G. Pilvachi & Co. Ltd. 34,578 37,841

Reinhart & Co. Ltd. 16,596 30,661

E. Mallison & Co. 4,073 26,397 29,702 H. Bindernagel 22,819 Andritsakis Barsoum & Co. 15,169 19,872 Hahnloser & Co. 8,184 18,943

G. Riecken 4,672 155134 W. Getty & Co. 7,982 14,448 J. M. Mezger 10,272 10,292 N. G. Casulli 9,865 10,107 Behar Barki & Co. 4,649 8,217 Moursi Brothers 4,382 73787 Seeger Bros. & Co. 3,961 7,486 N. Huri & Co. 5,070 7,437 Hess and Carcas 4,213 6,497 The Duckworth Co. 3,841 3,999 G. Tilche M. Coury & Co.2,998 351 3,271 B. and Figh 3,230 G. Petracchi & Co. 485 3,130 Pinto & Co. 416 2,646

Rodocanachi & Co. 2,487 2,487 Sasson Israel & Co. 1,542 2,410

Anglo-Egyptian 1,4891,292 1,489 Moise Tilche Bank Fils 419

Wm. Trapp & Co. 1,279 Deutsche Orient Bank37600 839

Credit Franco-Egyptien 487 487

Others 1,887 3,883 Total 566,229 964,301

Source: Int. Fed., Official Report of the Visit of the Delegation .. . to Egypt, p. 185.

GLOSSARY OF ARABIC AND TECHNICAL TERMS ab‘adiya: uncultivated land excluded from the cadastral registers. Also applied to an estate granted from such land. Abiad: type of cotton grown during the 1870s and 1880s. ardabb: unit of capacity used to measure cereals and cotton sced. Its size varied from one crop to another, and also from one period to another. For its European equivalent, see Appendix 3. ard al-wasiya: portion of land in an dltzzam (usually about a tenth) set aside

for the personal use of the multazim. .

Ashmouni: type of cotton which evolved during or after the AmericanCivil-War boom.

Bahmiah: short-lived type of cotton discovered and introduced on a commercial basis during the 1870s.

balli: method of cultivating cotton used on land which could not easily be supplied with summer water. The fields were flooded in February or

March, and then allowed to remain unwatered until the Nile began to rise in July and August. barrani: a tax imposed by a multazim on the cultivators in his tltizzam. It was

originally levied only in extraordinary circumstances; but later it was collected annually, with the remainder of the land-tax. basin irrigation: type of irrigation by which the land was divided up into basins separated by dykes into which the flood waters were admitted in the autumn. After the water had penetrated the dry earth it was allowed , to run back into the river. No crops could be grown during the summer

: months.

Al-bayadi: winter crop which was sown on basin land with little or no preparation of the soil. birsim: Egyptian clover; generally used for animal fodder. cantar (gintar): a unit of weight used to measure cotton and rice. After 1836 it was generally assumed to be the equivalent of 98 to gg lb. For further information about European equivalents, see Appendix 3. courbash (kurbaj): leather whip, usually made of hippopotamus hide. daira: estate. Daira Saniya: estate belonging to the Khedive Isma‘il which was pledged as

security for a foreign loan and then, in 1877, administered on behalf of

| its creditors by an international commission until its sale to a private

388 Glossary of Arabic and company in 1898. During the late 1870s it consisted of over 400,000 feddans, most of which were in Upper Egypt. dhura: Indian corn, maize, or sometimes a variety of millet. dulab: hand-operated machine consisting of two wooden rollers for ginning cotton. fa‘iz: the portion of the land-tax which a multazim was allowed to keep for his own profit. feddan ( faddan): a unit of land measurement. From 1861 onwards it was the equivalent of about an acre. For further information, see Appendix 3. fellah (fallah), pl. fellaheen: peasant, tiller of the soil. halaga: enclosed space to which cotton could be brought for sale or storage. hod (haud): an area of some 100 feddans of land of the same quality. iltizam: tax farm consisting of state land granted to a tax-farmer (multazim). jiflik: estate granted to members of the royal family in return for the duty of collecting the land-tax on behalf of the state.

Joannovitch: type of cotton introduced during the first decade of the twentieth century. kaum: mound of decaying matter standing on the site of some ancient town or village. kKharaj: land-tax paid on kharajiya land. Kharajiya: land over which the Government exercised some rights of ownership.

Mako (of Maho): type of cotton discovered by Jumel and exploited by

Muhammad ‘Ali. Mamluk: member of a corps of slaves or former slaves which occupied most

of the leading positions in the Egyptian hierarchy in the eighteenth century. Mit Afifi: type of cotton discovered and introduced on a commercial basis in the early 1890s.

mudir: governor of several provinces grouped together into a larger unit known as a mudiriya.

multazim: tax-farmer, holder of an iltizam granted by the Government. muqabala: law of August 1871 by which anyone who paid six years’ landtax in advance was to be freed from half of his tax liability in perpetuity. Where the land in question was kharajiya, such a procedure also meant that the holder obtained full rights of ownership. muta‘ahhid: man to whom land was granted as an ‘uhda in return for the duty of collecting the land-tax on behalf of the Government. nazir: supervisor, overseer. nilt (crop): type of crop grown in autumn at the time of the Nile flood. norag (nawraj): a bullock-drawn chair used for threshing.

Technical Terms 389 Nubari: type of cotton first cultivated just before the First World War. perennial irrigation: type of irrigation by which the land was kept watered throughout the year. ratl: unit of weight. Roughly equivalent to 1 lb. for most of the period. For further information, see Appendix 3. ' sabakh: refuse with fertilizing properties to be found on kaums.

Sakel: type of cotton discovered by John Sakellarides during the first decade of the twentieth century. sakiya: water-wheel turned by animal power. sarraf: agent of the multazim responsible for collecting taxes. Later, taxcollector or money-changer. shaduf: bucket on the arm of a long pole used for watering land beside the Nile or a canal. shaykh al-balad: headman of a village or part of a village. shirk: type of land-tenancy involving payment in both cash and kind.

shitwi (crop): type of crop grown during the winter months. Unlike albayadi crops, shitwi crops were grown on land which had been subject to some sort of preliminary preparation. ‘They might also be watered during cultivation. shuna: warehouse for storing crops. ‘uhda: estate granted to a muta‘ahhid in return for the obligation to collect the land-tax on behalf of the Government.

‘umda: village headman. (This term came into general use only during the second half of the nineteenth century.) ‘ushr: tithe levied on “ushuriya land. “ushuriya: land held in full private ownership. wekil (wakil): assistant, agent of some kind.

wagf: property the income from which was endowed by its owner in favour of some religious or charitable institution. zawat (dhawat): literally ‘aristocracy’; but used to designate a high-grade cotton grown on large estates.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Unpublished Sources Cromer Papers, Public Records Office, F.O./633. Egypt, Archives Européennes, Période Ismail, Abdin Palace, Cairo. Austria, Consular Reports from Egypt, 1842-60 (copies found in Abdin Palace, Cairo).

Great Britain, Foreign Office Drafts and Dispatches, Public Records Office. Extracts from the following series were used: F.O./78, F.O./141, F.O./142, F.0./368, F.0./371, and F.O./847. Hekekyan Papers, British Museum, Add. 37448-71. Kitchener Papers, Public Records Office, London. Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Proceedings, Central Library, Manchester.

Manzaloui Family Records, 1880-2 and 1907-10 (in Arabic). Milner Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford. Moberly Bell Papers, Times Publishing Co., London.

Oldham Incorporated Chamber of Commerce, Minutes and Annual Reports. United States, Department of State, Dispatches from United States Consuls in Alexandria, National Archives, Washington.

2. Unpublished Papers presented to Conferences Barr, G., ‘Urbanization in Egypt, 1820-1907’, Conference on the Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago, Oct. 1966. Issawl, C., ‘Assymetrical development and transport in Egypt’, Conference on the Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century, University of Chicago, Oct. 1966. Owen, E. R. J., “The attitude of British officials to the development of the Egyptian economy, 1882—1922’, Conference on the Economic History of the Middle East, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, July 1967. ‘The uneven increase in Egyptian agricultural production, 18901939’, Conference on Egypt since 1952, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Sept. 1966.

3. Newspapers and Periodicals African World, Annuals, London, 1905, 1906, 1911. The Agricultural Journal of Egypt, Cairo, 1911-14.

, Bibliography 391 Anglo-Egyptian Mail and Le Financier égyptien, London, 1907-14. The Bankers’ Magazine, London. La Bourse égyptienne, Alexandria. Bulletin du Comité agricole, Cairo, 1884. Bulletin de Institut égyptien, Cairo. Bulletin de la Société égyptienne d’ Agriculture, Cairo, 1880-1. ‘ « ° Bulletin de la Société khédiviale de Géographie, Cairo, 1876-1914.

The Cairo Scientific Journal, Cairo, 1906-14. (Known as Survey Notes for its first year.) The Cotton Supply Reporter, Manchester, 1858-72. Cotton—The Journal of the Cotton Trade and its allied and auxilliary industries,

London. Cotton— The Official Fournal of the Manchester Cotton Association, Manchester. The Economist, London. L’Economiste frangais, Paris.

L’ Egypte contemporaine, Cairo, 1910— .

L’ Egypte — Revue bi-mensuelle, Alexandria, 1894-5. . The Egyptian Gazette, Alexandria, 1882— . Egyptian Trade Journal and Sudan Gazette, London, 1906-10. The Financial Times, London. The Journal of the Khediwial Agricultural Society and the School of Agriculture, Cairo, 1899-1904. Manchester Guardian, Manchester. The Times, London.

4. Company Reports and Statutes Compagnie égyptienne de Navigation a vapeur, Firman de concessions et statuts (Alexandria, 1863).

Société agricole et industrielle d’Egypte, Statuts (Alexandria, 1864). : Rapport du Conseil d’administration, 23 April 1865 (Alexandria, 1865). : Société égyptienne d’Agriculture, Statuts (Cairo, n.d.). |

5. Government publications BELGIUM

Ministére des Affaires Etrangéres, Recueil consulaire. EGYPT

Législation agricole et vétérinaire (Cairo, 1920). Législation en matiére immobiliére en Egypte (Cairo, 1893). Observations sur I’ état actuel de l’agriculture en Egypte, by A. Behmer (1868) (a

copy of which can be found in A.E.P.J. Doss. 12/1). Rapport de la Commission du commerce et de lindustrie (Cairo, 1918).

| Statistical returns, 1880-1899 (Cairo, 1900). Commission moneétaire, La Réforme monétaire en Egypte (Cairo, 1886).

| Commission supérieure d’Enquéte, : Rapport préliminaire adressé ad S. A. le Khédive (Cairo, 1878).

392 Bibliography Direction générale des Douanes, Le Commerce extérieur de l Egypte. Statistique comparée, 1884-1889 (Cairo, 1891). Commerce extérieur de l’ Egypte. Statistique comparée, 1884-1903 (Cairo, 1904).

Institute of National Planning, Memo. no. 259, A production function for Egyptian agriculture, by Dr. M. EI-

Iman (Cairo, 31 Dec. 1962). Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Products, Gossypium spp., Egyptian cotton (Qotn in Egypt). History, development, and botanical relationship of Egyptian cotton, by G. C. Dudgeon (Cairo, 1917). Cotton and cotton statistics in Egypt (Cairo, 1948). The pink boll-worm in Egypt in 1916-1917, by H. A. Ballou (Cairo, 1920).

Cotton Research Board, Second Annual Report, 1921 (Cairo, 1922). Technical and Scientific Service, Bulletin no. 31, Sozl temperatures during the Sharaqui period and their agricultural significance, by E. McKenzie Taylor and A. Chamley Burns (Cairo, 1924). Ministry of Finance/Ministére des Finances, Almanac for 1930 (Cairo, 1930). The census of Egypt taken in 1907 (Cairo, 1909). The census of Egypt taken in 1917, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1920-1).

Rapport sur organisation de la comptabilité dans les provinces, by G. Fitzgerald (Cairo, n.d.). Cotton Bureau, Technical Bulletin no. 1, A statistical study of some of the factors affecting the price of Egyptiancotton, by M.A. Zahraand M. El-Darwish (Cairo, 1930). Technical Bulletin no. 3, Index numbers of agricultural production in Egypt

1913-1929, by M. El-Darwish (Cairo, 1932). Department of General Statistics, Annuaire statistique de I’ Egypte, 1910 (Cairo, 1910). Annuaire statistique de l’Egypte, 1914 (Cairo, 1914). Annuaire statistique de l’Egypte, 1938-39 (Cairo, 1940). Monthly return showing the state and prospects of the Egyptian cotton crop (Cairo,

1913-14). Statistical Yearbook for 1909 (Cairo, 1909). Statistiques des valeurs mobiliéres traitées d la Bourse .. . pendant les années 1906-7 (Cairo, 1908).

Survey Department, Collection of statistics of the areas planted 1n cotton in 1909, by E. M. Dowson

and J. I. Craig (Cairo, 1910). The cadastral survey of Egypt, 1892-1907, by H. G. Lyons (Cairo, 1908).

Ministry of the Interior/Ministére de |’Intérieur, Rapport général de la Commission du coton, r9ro (Cairo, 1910). Recensement général de l’Egypte, 1882, 3 vols. (Cairo, 1884-5). Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1873 (Cairo, 1873). Bureau de la Statistique, Essai de statistique générale de I’ Egypte, années 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1879).

Ministry of Justice, Annual reports.

Bibliography 393 Ministry of Public Works, Annual reports. State Domains/Administration des Domaines de I’Etat égyptien, Rapport... a Vappui du compte général des recettes et des dépenses de l’exercice

1880 (Cairo/Alexandria, 1881). Supplies Commission,

‘Situation in Egypt with regard to supply of cereals’, by Lord E. Cecil (a copy of which can be found in Wingate, 31 Jan. 1917, F.O. 368/ I71Q).

War Trade Department: “Report on the policy adopted in restraint and liquidation of enemy trade’ (1917) (a copy of which can be found in Wingate, 15 July 1917, F.O. 368/1720). FRANCE

Ministére du Commerce et de l’Industrie, Rapports commerciaux des agents

diplomatiques et consulaires de France. .

GREAT BRITAIN

Parliament, Accounts and Papers. Department of Overseas ‘Trade, Report on the economic and financial situation of Egypt for 1919, by E. H.

, Mulock, P.P., 1920, vol. xlil, p. 233. | Intelligence Branch, Quarter Master General’s Department, War Office, : Report on Egypt (London, 1882). | Bowrinc, J., ‘Report on Egypt and Candia’, P.P., 1840, vol. xxi, p. I. | CAMERON, D. A., ‘Memorandum on the interim report of the Inter-Depart-

, mental Committee on the Protection of British Companies Abroad’, 14 July 1913, F.O. 891/26/3. CAvE, S., ‘Report by Mr. Cave on the financial condition of Egypt’, P.P.,

3 1876, vol. Ixxxill, p. 29. : DurrFerin, Lord, ‘Report on the reorganization of Egypt’ (Feb. 1883), P.P.,

| 1883, vol. Ixxxiii, p. 86.

Gipson, J., ‘State of expenses and receipts of exploiting 100 feddans in Lower Egypt for one year’, in Egerton, 8 June 1884 P.P., 1884, vol. Ixxxix, p. 529. HARVEY, Sir P., ‘Memorandum regarding the Agricultural Bank of Egypt’, in Gorst, 20 Mar. 1909, F.O. 368/284.

NorTHBROOK, Lorp, ‘Report’ (Nov. 1884), P.P., 1884-5, vol. Ixxxviu, p. 700.

Suarts, R., ‘De lagriculture en Egypte telle qu’elle est pratiquée de nos jours’, in Dufferin, 28 Apr. 1883, P.P., 1883, vol. Ixxxiil, p. 241. THomas, Sir O., Agricultural and economic position of Egypt (26 Apr. 1920) (a

| copy of which can be found in Milner Papers, Box 164).

VincENT, E., ‘Memorandum respecting the cotton statistics of Egypt’, in Drummond Wolff, 25 Oct. 1886, P.P., 1887, vol. xcii, p. 286.

| WEL.Ls, S., “Tarbush-making in Egypt’, 17 Oct. 1914, in R. Grey (for

| Cheetham), 19 Oct. 1914, F.O. 368/957).

| ,

394 Bibliography UNITED STATES

Annual reports on the commercial relations of the United States with foreign countries: executive documents published by the House of Representatives. Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1914 (Washington, 1914). Office of Experimental Stations, Bulletin no. 42, Cotton Culture in Egypt, by G. P. Foaden (Washington, 1897).

6. Books and Articles Apams, E. D., Great Britain and the American Civil War, 2 vols. (New York 1925).

S. A. Agricole et Industrielle d’Egypte, Etudes sur la question cotonniére et l’organisation agricole en Egypte, by W. E. Medewar (Cairo, 1910). ALLEN, G. C., A short economic history of modern Japan, 1867-1937 (London, 1962).

— “The industrialization of the Far East’, in The Cambridge modern history of Europe, vol. iv, pt. 2 (Gambridge, 1965). ALLEN, W. A. T., “The commerce, industry, and engineering progress in Egypt, 1905’, in African world annual, 1905 (London, 8 Dec. 1905). ‘Un Ancien Juge Mixte’, L’Egypte et ’Europe, 2 vols. (Leiden, n.d.—preface written in 1881). ANHOURY, J., ‘Le blé en Egypte’, E.C., no. 85 (Mar. 1925). Anon., The finances of Egypt (London, 1874). Arminjon, P., La Situation économique et financiére de I’ Egypte (Paris, 1911).

Artin, Y., The right of landed property in Egypt, trans. (London, 1885). ——— ‘Essai sur les causes du renchérissement de la vie matérielle au Caire dans le courant du XIX¢ siécle (1800—1907)’, Mémoires présentés a 0’ Institut

Egyptien, vol. v (Cairo, 1907). —— L’ Instruction publique en Egypte (Paris, 1890).

, AUDEBEAU, C., and Mossér1, V., ‘Le labourage en Egypte’, B.I.E., vol. x (1916). Barr, G., Egyptian guilds in modern times (Jerusalem, 1964).

— ‘The village shaykh in modern Egypt’, Studies in Islamic history and civilization, vol. ix (Jerusalem, 1961). —— A history of landownership in modern Egypt, 1800~1950 (London, 1962). Barnes, E., A history of cotton manufacture in Great Britain (London, 18935).

Batts, W. L., Egypt of the Egyptians (London, 1915).

—— ‘Cotton investigations in 1908’, C.S.7., vol. ii, no. 29 (Feb. 1909). —— The cotton plant in Egypt (London, 1912). Bally Fréres, Le Coton égyptien et la Bourse des marchandises a Alexandrie (Alex-

andria, 1912). Baran, P., The political economy of growth (London, 1957). Barker, E. E. B., Syria and Egypt under the last five Sultans of Turkey, 2 vols. (London, 1876).

Bibliography 395 BasTER, A., ‘The origins of British banking expansion in the Near East’, Economic history review, vol. v, no. 1 (Oct. 1934).

BERRILL, K., ‘International trade and the rate of economic growth’, Economic history review, 2nd Series, vol. xii, no. 3 (Apr. 1960). Biunt, W. S., Secret history of the English occupation of Egypt (New York, 1922). BorELLI, O., Choses politiques d’Egypte, 1883-1895 (Paris, n.d.). - Bousrant, H. S., L’ Agriculture et la mise en valeur des terres en Egypte (Cairo,

IQII). —— Pour l’agriculture égyptienne (Cairo, 1920). BrinTON, J. Y., The mixed courts of Egypt (New Haven, 1930).

British Chamber of Commerce of Egypt, Annual report for rg00 (Alexandria, 1gO!). ——— Annual report for 1902 (Alexandria, 1903). —— List of financial, manufacturing, transport and other companies established in

Egypt (Alexandria, 1901). British Cotton Growing Association, Cotton cultivation in Egypt and the Sudan

and other agricultural matters (Manchester, Apr. 1906). . British Cotton Industry Research Association, Shirley Institute memoirs, vol. xx: The production and characteristics of the world’s cotton crops, 11, pt. 2,

‘Egypt’, by E. Lord (Feb. 1946). Brown, R. H., History of the barrage at the head of the delta of Egypt (Cairo, 1896). Burn, R., Statistics of the cotton trade (London, 1847). De CapALvEneE, E., and pE BREUVERY, J., ‘L’Eeypte et la Turquie de 1829 a 1836, 2 vols. (Paris, 1836). Carrnecross, A. K., Factors in economic development (London, 1962). Carpi et Vivente et Cie., (1) Goods exported from the port of Alexandria in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 (Alexandria, 9 Apr. 1866). —— (2) Goods exported from the port of Alexandria in 1863, 1864, 1865, 1866

(Alexandria, 17 Mar. 1867). CARTWRIGHT, W., ‘Notes on rent, labour and joint-ownership in Egyptian agriculture’ C.S.7., vol. iv, no. 41 (Feb. 1910). CaTrTaut, J., Le Khédive Isma‘il et la dette de ’ Egypte (Cairo, 1935). Carraul, R., Le Régne de Mohammad Aly d’apres les archives russes en Egypte, vol. i (Cairo, 1931), vol. i, pt. 1 (Rome, 1933), vol. 11, pt. 2 (Rome, 1934), vol. 111 (Rome, 1936). Dr CHABROL DE VOLvICc, ‘Essai sur les moeurs des habitants modernes de lV Egypte’, in Description del’ Egypte, 2nd edn., vol. xviii, pt. 2 (Paris, 1824.) Dre CHAMBERET, R., Enquéte sur la condition du fellah égyptien (Dijon, 1909). CHARLES Roux, F., La Production du coton en Egypte (Paris, 1908).

—— ‘Le capital francais en Egypte’, £.C., no. 8 (Nov. 1911). Cué.v, A., Le Nil, le Soudan, Egypte (Paris, 1891). J.C. (J. Craupy), Histoire financiére de l’Egypte depuis Said Pasha, 1854-1876 (Paris, 1878). CiecG, T., Report of a journey to the East and the cultivation of cotton (Manchester, 1856). CLELAND, W., ‘A population plan for Egypt’, £.C., no. 185 (May 1939). —— The population problem in Egypt (Lancaster, Pa., 1936).

396 Bibliography Ciercet, M., Le Caire. Etude de géographie urbaine et d’histoire économique, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1934). Crort, A. B., Apergu général sur l’ Egypte, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1840).

Coss, B. F., ‘Egypt: its commercial changes and aspects’, The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. xxvi (1878).

Coun, A., ‘Lettres sur Egypte’: ‘Budget et administration’, R.D.M., vol. xu, 4th Series, 1 Jan. 1838; ‘Industrie manufacturiére’, R.D.M., vol. xiv, 4th Series, 15 May 1838; ‘Commerce’, R.D.M., vol. xvii, 4th Series, 1 Jan. 1839. Cotton Supply Association, Manchester, Annual Reports 1858-68. Couvivou, Dr. H., Etude sur l’ Egypte contemporaine (Cairo, 1873). Cozzika, M. P., ‘La distillerie de ‘Tourah’, £.C., vol. viii, no. 29 (Jan. 1917). CRABITES, R., [smazl, the maligned Khedive (London, 1933).

Craic, J. I., “Notes on the cotton statistics of Egypt’, £.C., vol. ii, no. 6 (Mar. 1911). Crawcovr, E. S8., “The Tokugawa heritage’, in Lockwood, W. W. (ed)., The state and economic development in Japan (Princeton, 1965).

Crédit Foncier Egyptien, Crédit Foncier Egyptien, 1880-1930 (Cairo, n.d.). Cressaty, Comte, L’Feypte d’aujourd’hui (Paris, 1912). CROMER, Ear or, Modern Egypt, 2 vols. (London, 1908). —— Speeches and miscellaneous writings, 1882-1911, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1912). —— Political and literary essays, 1st Series (London, 1913). CROUCHLEY, A. E., “The development of commerce in the reign of Mohamed Ali’, £.C., nos. 168-9 (Feb.—Mar. 1937). —— The economic development of modern Egypt (London, 1938).

—— The investment of foreign capital in Egyptian companies and Public debt,

Ministry of Finance, Technical Paper no. 12 (Cairo, 1936). — “The visible balance of trade since 1884’, £.C., nos. 155-6 (Mar.— Apr. 1935). DALvEN, R. (trans.), The complete poems of C. P. Cavafy (London, 1961).

DarpbAvuD, G., ‘Un ingénieur francais au service de Mohamed Ali, Louis Alexis Jumel (1785-1823)’, B.LE., vol. xxii (1939-40). Description de UV Egypte, ou recueil des observations et des recherches . . . faites... pendant Vexpédition de lV’ armée frangaise, 24 vols., 2nd edn. (Paris, 1821-9).

DyaBarTi, El-, (al-Jabarti), Abd-el-Rahman, Merveilles biographiques et historiques ou chroniques du Abd-el-Rahman El Djabarti, trans. Chefik Mansour

Bey e¢ al., 9 vols. (Cairo, 1888-96).

Dorez, R. P., ‘Agricultural improvement in Japan, 1870-1900’, Economic development and cultural change, vol. ix, no. 1, pt. 2 (Oct. 1960). Doum, G., La Mission du baron de Boislecomte. L’Egypte et la Syrie en 1893 (Cairo, 1927). —— La Premiére Guerre de Syrie, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1931). —— Fistoire du régne du Khédive Ismail, vol. i (Rome, 1933), vol. 11 (Rome, 1934.), vol. 111 (Cairo, 1937).

— L’Egypte de 1828 a 1830 (Rome, 1935). DriauctT, E., Mohamed Aly et Napoléon, 1807-1814 (Cairo, 1925). —— La Formation de l’empire de Mohamed Aly de P Arabte au Soudan, 18141823 (Cairo, 1927).

Bibliography 397 DriAuLT, E., L’ Expédition de Crete et de Morée, 1823-1828 (Cairo, 1930).

Dupceon, G. C., “The Department of Agriculture and an indication of some of the agricultural problems of Egypt’, The agricultural journal of Egypt, vol. i, pt. 1 (1911). Durr Gorpon, Lapy L., Letters from Egypt (London, 1902). EARLE, E. M., ‘Egyptian cotton and the American Civil War’, Political science quarterly, vol. xli, no. 4 (Dec. 1926). Economipés, J. G., ‘Essai sur les valeurs mobiliéres en Egypte’, E.C., no. 132 (Jan. 1932). The Economist’s guide to weights and measures, 2nd edn. (London, 1962). Epmonp, P. (pseud.), L’ Egypte a I’ Exposition universelle de 1867 (Paris, 1867). Egyptian Congress, Minutes of the proceedings of the First Egyptian Congress assembled at Heliopolis (29 April-4 May 1grr) (Alexandria, 1911).

Excoop, P. G., ‘Egyptian agriculture’, C.S.7., vol. iv, no. 41 (Feb. 1910). Erp, A., La Fortune immobiliére de ’ Egypte et sa dette hypothécaire (Paris, 1907). Evuison, T., The cotton trade of Great Britain (London, 1886).

EvtswortH, P. T., ‘The dual economy: a new approach’ (Review), Economic development and cultural change, vol. x, no. 4 (July 1962).

Estive, Comte, ‘Mémoire sur les finances de l’Egypte’, in Description de l’Egypte, 2nd edn., vol. xii (Paris, 1822). Faumy, I., ‘Cotton cultivation in Upper Egypt’, The agricultural journal of Egypt, vol. 1, pt. I (1gtr). Faumy, M., La Révolution de Vindustrie en Egypte et ses conséquences sociales au 19° stécle, t800—1850 (Leiden, 1954).

FEDDEN, R., ‘Notes on the British consulate in Egypt in the XVIIth and XVIIth centuries, 1580-1775’, B.LLE., vol. xxvii (1944-5). Fercuson, A. R., ‘Bilharzis’, C.S.7., vol. iv, no. 45 (June 1gio). FoapEN, G. P., and FLETCHER, F., Textbook of Egyptian agriculture, vol. i, (Cairo, 1908), vol. 11 (Cairo, 1910).

Fowter, T. K., Report on the cultivation of cotton in Egypt (Manchester, 1861).

Mon., n.d.). ,

FRANCOIS-LEVERNAY, Guide-Annuaire d’ Egypte. Année 1872-1873 (Cairo, n.d.).

Gaut, K., Essai sur Pagriculture de l Egypte (Paris, 1889). Garwoop, A. E., Forty years of an engineer’s life at home and abroad (Newport,

GexatT, P. G., Répertoire de la législation et de l’administration égyptiennes, 1888-

1892 (Alexandria, 1893). GreMaYAL, P., Un Régime qui meurt: les capitulations en Egypte (Paris, 1938).

Grips, H. A. R., and Bowen, H., Islamic society and the West, vol. i, pt. 1 (London, 1950), pt. 2 (London, 1957).

Grrarp, P. S., ‘Mémoire sur lagriculture, l'industrie et le commerce de VEgypte’, in Description de l’ Egypte, 2nd edn., vol. xvii (Paris, 1824). Guippon, G. R., A memoir on the cotton of Egypt (London, 1841).

Grecorre, ‘De la culture du coton en Egypte’, in Mémoires et travaux originaux présentés et lus aT’ Institut Egyptien, vol. i (Paris, 1861).

AL-Giritui, A., Parikh al-sina‘a fi Misr (Cairo, 1952). —— (El-Gritley, A. A. I.), “The structure of industry in modern Egypt’, E.C., nos. 241-2 (Nov.—Dec. 1947).

398 Bibliography GuémarD, G., Les Réformes en Egypte (Cairo, 1936). GuinpI, G., and TAGHER, J., Ismail d’aprés les documents officiels (Cairo, 1946). Hamza, A.-M., The public debt of Egypt, 1854-1876 (Cairo 1944). HARBERLER, G., International trade and economic development (Cairo, 1959). HENDERSON, W. O., The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861-1865 (Manchester, 1934). HErRtTSLET, L., A complete collection of treaties and conventions at present subsisting

between Great Britain and foreign powers, vol. 2 (London, 1827). HrywortTH-Dwunneg, J., An introduction to the history of education in modern Egypt

(London, n.d.). HirscuMan, A. O., The strategy of economic development (New Haven, 1958).

HIRSCHMEIER, J., ‘Shibusawa Elichi: industrial pioneer’, in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), The state and economic enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965).

Hoxuines, M. A. (ed.), The life of Colonel Colin Scott Moncrieff (London, 1917).

Hortg, Y., ‘Entrepreneurship in Meiji Japan’, in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), The state and economic enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965). Horn, J. E., La Crise cotonniére et les textiles indigenes (Paris, 1863).

Houranl, A. H., A vision of history (Beirut, 1961). Hucues, J. T. L., Fluctuations in trade and industry, 1850-60 (Oxford, 1960). ImLAyH, A. H., Economic elements in the Pax Britannica (Cambridge, Mass., 1958).

International Federation of Master Cotton Spinners’ and Manufacturers’ Associations, La Culture du coton en Egypte, by A. Schmidt (Manchester, IQI2). —— Official report of the visit of the delegation of the I.F. of M.C.S. and M.A. to Eeypt (Oct.-Nov. 1912) and a report of the secretary on his subsequent tour in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Nov.—Dec. 1912) (Manchester, 1913). —— Official report of the International Cotton Congress held in Egypt, 1927 (Man-

chester, n.d.). —— Result of a special enquiry regarding Egyptian cotton (Manchester, 30 Sept. 1913). Iso, R., Population pressure and economic enterprise in Japan (London, 1937). IssAwl, C., Egypt at mid-century (London, 1954).

——— ‘Egypt since 1800: a study in lop-sided development’, Journal of economic history, vol. xxi, no. 1 (Mar. 1961).

Jacorin, ‘Tableau de la superficie de Egypte’ in Description de I’ Egypte, and edn., vol. xviii (Paris, 1822). Jenks, L. H., The migration of British capital to 1875 (London, 1938). JoaNnovicu-Bey, Description de Vinsecte ravageur du coton en Egypte (Cairo, 1873).

Jounston, B. K., ‘Agricultural productivity and economic development in Japan’, Fournal of political economy, vol. lix, no. 6 (Dec. 1961). Jomarn, E., Coup d’eil impartiel sur l'état présent de I’ Egypte (Paris, 1836). JULLIANY, J., Essai sur le commerce de Marseille, 2nd edn., 3 vols. (Paris, 1843).

Juuten, L., ‘Chronique agricole de l’année 1923’, E.C., no. 76 (Jan. 1924). Khedivial Agricultural Society, Yearbook, 1905 (Cairo, 1906). —— Yearbook, 1906 (Cairo, 1907).

Bibliography 399 R. H. L., The financial position of Egypt (London, 1874).

LACKANY, S., ‘Cotton: estimation of the crop and measurement of its elasticity’, E.C., nos. 93-4 (Apr.-May 1926). LanaitTa, M., Tarikh misr al-igtisadt (Cairo, 1944). LAMBERT, A., ‘Les salariés dans l’Entreprise agricole égyptienne’, £.C., no. 211 (Mar. 1943). LANDAU, J. M., Parliaments and parties in Egypt (New York, 1954). LANDES, D. S., Bankers and pashas (Cambridge, Mass., 1958). LANE, E. W., The manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, 2 vols. (London, 1836).

Lattis, J., ‘Le fellah et Vindividualisme au point de vue du progrés agricole en Egypte’, B.I.E., 1st Series, vol. i, no. 8 (1862-3). Lecomte, H., Le Coton (Paris, 1900). LéGRAND, F., Les Fluctuations de prix et les crises de 1907 et 1908 en Egypte (Nancy, 1909). Levin, J. V. The export economies (Cambridge, Mass., 1960). LINANT DE BELLEFONDS, M. A., Mémoire sur les principaux travaux d’utiltté publique exécutés en Egypte (Paris, 1872-3). Livanos, C. N., John Sakellaridis and Egyptian cotton (Alexandria, 1939). Locxwoop, W. W., The economic development of Japan: Growth and structural change, 1868-1938 (London, 1955). —— (ed.), The State and economic enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965).

Lyons, H. G., ‘Some agricultural statistics of Egypt’, C.S.7., vol. i1, no. 20 (May 1908). H.G.M., ‘Collection of crop statistics’, Survey Notes, no. 5 (Feb. 1907).

/. MacBeav, A. I., Export instability and economic development (London, 1966).

Mackay, A., Western India (London, 1853).

Manifeste du Parti National Egyptien (Cairo, 4. Nov. 1879). Mann, J. A., The cotton trade of Great Britain (Manchester, 1850). MattTHews, R. C. O., A study in trade-cycle history (Gambridge, 1954). MazukE1, J., L’CGuvre géographique de Linant de Bellefonds (Cairo, 1937).

— Le Sucre en Egypte (Cairo, 1937). McCoan, J. C., Egypt as it 1s (London, 1877). —— Egypt under Ismail (London, 1889). McCuttocn, J. R., A dictionary of commerce (London, 1844).

—— M’Culloch’s commercial dictionary, ed. H. G. Reid (London, 1869).

McHarrir, M. J., Was it a cotton famine? (London, 1865). Mer, G. M., and Batpwin, R. E., Economic development (New York, 1957).

Meno, F., Histoire de l’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Mohammed-Aly, 2 vols.

(Paris, 1823).

1838 (Paris, 1839).

—— Histoire sommaire de l’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Mohamed-Ali, 1823-

Merruvau, P., ‘L’Egypte sous le gouvernement de Said Pacha’, R.D.M., and Period, vol. xi (15 Sept. 1857). Métin, A., La Transformation de I’ Egypte (Paris, 1903).

Micue, B., ‘Etudes sur les recettes de l’Etat égyptien’, E.C., no. 72 (Apr. 1923).

Miu, J. S., Political economy, 2 vols. (London, 1848).

.

400 Bibliography Asp Ex-Motaat, M. Z., Les Bourses en Egypte (Paris, 1930). Myint, H., ‘An interpretation of economic backwardness’, Oxford economic papers, vol. 6, no. 2 (June 1954). —— The economics of developing countries (London, 1964). NAHAS, J. F., Situation économique et sociale du fellah égyptien (Paris, 1901).

NAKAMURA, J. I., ‘Growth of Japanese agriculture, 1875-1920’, in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), Zhe state and economic enterprise in Japan (Princeton, 1965).

——- ‘Meiji land reform, redistribution of income and savings from agriculture’, Economic development and cultural change, vol. xiv, no. 4 (July 1966).

Namiki, M., “The farm population in the national economy before and after World War IT’, Economic development and cultural change, vol. 1x, no. 1, pt. 2

(Oct. 1960). National Bank of Egypt, The National Bank of Egypt, 1898-1948 (Cairo, n.d.—

for private circulation).

NineT, J., ‘La culture du coton en Egypte’, R.D.M., 3rd Series, vol. xii (1 Dec. 1875).

——— ‘La question du coton en Angleterre depuis la crise américaine’, R.D.M., and Period, vol. xxxii (1 Mar. 1861). —— ‘La culture du coton en Egypte et aux Indes’, R.D.M., 2nd Period, vol. Ixiv (15 July 1866). NorMaAN, E. H., JZapan’s emergence as a modern state (New York, 1940). NourksE, R., Patterns of trade and development (Oxford, 1961).

O’Brien, P. K., “The long-term growth of agricultural production in Egypt, 1821-1962’ (to be published in P. Holt (ed.), Political and social change in Modern Egypt).

OxnKkawa, K., and Rosovsky, H., ‘A century of Japanese economic growth’,

in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), Zhe state and economic enterprise in Fapan (Princeton, 1965). —— ‘The role of agriculture in modern Japanese economic development’, Economic Development and Cultural Change, vol. ix, no. 1, pt. 2 (Oct. 1960).

Osuma, H. T., ‘Meiji fiscal policy and agricultural progress’, in Lockwood, W. W. (ed.), The state and economic enterprise in Fapan (Princeton, 1965).

OwEn, E. R. J., ‘Lord Cromer and the development of Egyptian industry’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 11, no. 4 (July 1966).

—— ‘The Influence of Lord Cromer’s Indian experience on British policy in Egypt, 1883-1907’, St. Antony’s Papers, no. 17 (Oxford, 1965). PapaNnoT, F., L’ Egypte, son avenir agricole et financiére (Paris, 1884). Papasan, E., L’Egypte économique et financiére (Cairo, 1926).

Paton, A. A., A history of the Egyptian revolution, 2nd edn., 2 vols. (London, 1870). PENDER, J., & Co., Statistics of the trade of the United Kingdom with foreign countries (London, 1869). Pensa, H., L’Egypte et le Soudan égyptien (Paris, 1895).

Le Pére, G., ‘Mémoire sur la ville d’Alexandrie’, Description de l’Egypte, and edn., vol. xviii (Paris, 1824). PorTER, G. R., Progress of the nation (London, 1847).

Bibliography 401 Prot, J. B., ‘Causerie ethnographique sur le fellah’, B.S.K.G., 5th Series, no. 4 (1899).

Rasino, J., ‘Some statistics of Egypt’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society of London, vol. xlvii, pt. 3 (Sept. 1884).

Ranis, G., “The financing of Japanese economic development’, Economic history review, 2nd Series, vol. xi, no. 3 (Apr. 1959). De Reeny, E. (ed.), Statistique de l’ Egypte, 1870 (Alexandria, 1870). ReyYnigR, J. T. L., State of Egypt after the Battle of Heliopolis, trans. (London, 1802).

RreaaT, M. A., The monetary system of Egypt (London, 1935). RicauttT, G., Le Général Abdallah Menou et la derniére phase de ? Expédition d’Egypte 1799-1801 (Paris, 1911). Rivuin, H. A. B., The agricultural policy of Muhammad ‘Ali in Egypt (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).

Ropkey, F. S., “The attempt of Briggs and Co. to guide British policy in the Levant in the interests of Mohamed Ali Pasha, 1821-1841’, Journal

of modern history, vol. v, no. 3 (Sept. 1933).

Rosovsky, H., Capital formation in Japan, 1868-1940 (Glencoe, 1961). Rossi, Dr. E., La Population et les finances: question égyptienne (Paris, 1878). RussEL., Sir T., Egyptian service (London, 1949).

RussELL, W. H., A diary in the East (London, 1869). SAaB, G., The Egyptian agrarian reform, 1952-1962 (London, 1967). Sacré, A., and Ourreson, L., L’Egypte et Ismail Pasha (Paris, 1865). ScHanz, M., Cotton in Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Manchester, 1913). ScHATZ, J., ‘Apergu général sur les principales cultures égyptiennes’, £.C., no. 138 (Dec. 1932). SCHLOTE, W., British overseas trade from 1700 to the 1930s, trans. Henderson,

W. O., and Challenor, W. H. (Oxford, 1952). Scuu.tz, T. W., Transforming traditional agriculture (New Haven, 1964). Scott, J. H., The law affecting foreigners in Egypt (Edinburgh, 1907). Seti, H. K., Twenty years of agricultural development in Egypt, 1919-1939 (Cairo, 1940). SENIOR, N. W., Conversations and journals in Egypt and Malia, 2 vols. (London, 1882).

SERPELL, D. R., ‘American consular activities in Egypt, 1849-1863’, Fournal of modern history, vol. x, no. 3 (Sept. 1938). SHaw, S. J., Ottoman Egypt in the age of the French Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1964). —— The financial and administrative organization and development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798 (Princeton, 1962). SmncER, H. W., “The distribution of gains between investing and borrowing countries’, American economic review, Proceedings, vol. xl, 1950. Situ, S., Zhe cotton trade of India (London, 1863). Smiru, T. C., The agrarian origins of modern Fapan (Stanford, 1959).

Société sultanienne d’Agriculture (previously Khedivial Agricultural Society), Almanach, 1336H (1918) (Cairo, 1918). ——— Mémento agricole égyptien, 3rd edn. (Cairo, 1920).

821648 pd

Sornaca, S., l’Industrie en Egypte (Cairo, 1916).

402 Bibliography Str. Joun, J. A., Heypt and Mohammed Alt, 2 vols. (London, 1834).

Suttan, F., La Monnaie égyptienne (Paris, 1914). ,

Ta.uien, L., ‘Mémoire sur l’administration de Egypte a l’époque de arrivée des Francais’, in Mémoires sur I’ Egypte publiés pendant les campagnes du général Bonaparte, vol. 111 (Paris, an X). ‘TAYtor, B., Egypt and Iceland in the year 1874 (London, 1875). Tepesco, A., De la situation monétaire en Egypte (Alexandria, 1858). THéDENAT-DuvENT, P. P., L’Egypte sous Mehemed-Ali (Paris, 1822).

Ticnor, R. L., ‘British agricultural and hydraulic policy in Egypt, 18821892’, Agricultural History, vol. 37, no. 2. ——Modernization and British colonial rule in Egypt, 1882-1914 (Princeton, 1966). Toop, J. A., Political economy (Glasgow and Edinburgh, 1910).

—— “The demand for Egyptian cotton’, £.C., vol. 1, no. 2 (Mar. 1910). —— ‘The market for Egyptian cotton in 1909-1910’, £.C., vol. i, no. 5 (Jan. 1911). —— ‘The uses of Egyptian cotton seed’, £.C., vol. 11, no. 6 (Mar. 1911). —— ‘Further notes on the Egyptian cotton market’, C.S.7., vol. vi, no. 64 (Jan. 1912). —— The world’s cotton crops, 1st edn. (London, 1915), 2nd edn. (London, 1923). ——— The marketing of cotton (London, 1934). Tooke, T., A history of prices, vol. 1 (London, 1838), vol. 5, with NEWMARCH,

W. (London, 1857). L’Union de la Jeunesse Egyptienne, Projet de réformes présenté a Son Altesse Tewfick Ier (Alexandria, Sept. 1879). Ure, A., The cotton manufacture of Great Britain, 2 vols. (London, 1861). VIESsSE DE Marmont, A. F. L., Voyage du maréchal, duc de Raguse, en Hongrie, en Transylvanie ... a Constantinople, dans quelques parties de l’ Aste-Mineure, en Syrie, en Palestine, et en Egypte, 5 vols. (Paris, 1837-8).

Vouney, C. F., Travels in Egypt and Syria, trans., 2 vols. (London, 1787). —— Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte, 2 vols. (Paris, 1787).

Wattace, D. M., Egypt and the Egyptian question (London, 1883). Wiener, L., L’Egypte et ses chemins de fer (Brussels, 1932). WILKINSON, Sir G., Topography of Thebes and a general view of Egypt (London, 1835).

Wixucocks, F. C., “The insect pests of cotton’, C.S.7., vol. iv, no. 42 (Mar. IQIO).

Witicocks, W., Report on perennial irrigation and flood protection for Egypt (Cairo, 1894). —— Egyptian irrigation, 2nd edn. (London, 1899). —— and Craic, J. I., Egyptian irrigation, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (London, 1913). WituiaMs, De Broe & Co., Sugar in Egypt and elsewhere (London, 1903). Wiis, M., Seven years’ history of the cotton trade in Europe (Liverpool, 1868). Wortinsky, W. S. and E. 8., World population and production (New York, 1953). Wricut, A. (ed.), Twentieth-century impressions of Egypt (London, 1909). Yates, W. H., The modern history and conditions of Egypt, 2 vols. (London, 1843). ZETLAND, Margusss oF, Lord Cromer (London, 1932).

INDEX ab‘adiya(s) (estates), 61. Alexandria Cotton Pressing Co., 221. ab‘adiya land, 61, 68, 387 Glossary. Alexandria General Produce Associa‘Abbas Pasha: presides at agricultural tion (formerly Assoc. Cotonniére

assembly, 52. d’Alexandrie), 225, 321, 376—7.

— imports steam plough, 64. Alexandria Waterworks, 287. — policy towards monopolies, 67-8, 75. Alfi Bey, 17.

— policy towards ‘uhdahs, 68. ‘Ali Bey, 15.

— grows cotton, 75. Allen, F., 280.

— financial policy, 84. American Civil War boom, 89 f., 167,

— and Europeans, 86-7. 170, 172, 225.

Abdal-Halim Pasha, 104, 115. ‘Ancien Juge Mixte’, 145, 151 n., 158. Aboukir Co., 266, 279-80, 292-3 FF. Andres & Co., 386.

Table. Andritsakis Barsoum & Co., 386.

absentee landlords, 151. Anglo-Egyptian Bank, 114, 117, 120-1,

agents, brokers (cotton), 69-70, 130, 386. 208, 210, 227-30 Tables, 274. Anglo-Egyptian Coal, Iron and Mach-

Aghion, Israel, 279, 289. ine Co., 277.

Agra and Masterman’s Bank, 114. Anglo-Egyptian Land Allotment Co., Agricultural Bank, 240 n., 271-3, 315, 292 Table.

345. Anglo-Egyptian Spinning and Weaving

368. 323. 254-5, 352-3. 316, 319.

agricultural credit, 60, 70, 97-8, 105-6, Co. (later fFuilature Nationale 130-1, 243, 257, 270-3, 338-9, 356, d’Egypte), 222-4, 300-2, 310, 319,

agricultural production, 250-2 Table, Anglo-French Agreement 1904, 282,

— value, 260-4 Tables, 353-4. Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Co., 300. Agriculture, Dept. (later Min.), 194, Anglo-Turkish Convention 1838, 65, 71.

202, 206, 217-18, 259-60, 338-9, Anhoury, J., 252.

346-7. animals, agricultural, 9-10, 21, 29, 35,

Ahmad Pasha, 85. 44-5, 61-2, 72, 82-3, 99, I0I-—5, alcohol, see industry, sugar. IIO-I1, 117-18, 120, 142-3, 145,

Alderson, G. R., 280. 148, 254, 257, 330, 340.

Alexandria, 105, I1I-12, 120, 132-4, — oxen, 8-9, 50, 99, IOI, 110, 142, 206. 138, 201, 208-9, 220-1, 227-8, 323, | — bullocks, 12.

380. — horses and donkeys, 99, 264.

— in early 19th century, 22. — camels, 264.

— under Muhammad ‘Ah, 54-5. — buffaloes, 266.

— in 1850s, 85-6. Arabi, Hajj Ahmad, 133.

158-0. 387 Glossary.

— under Isma‘il, 113, 127-8,141 Table, ardabb, 15n., 256n., 381-2 Appendix, — 1880-1914, 225, 268-9, 280-2, 284, ard al-wasiya, 4, 18, 68, 387 Glossary.

320. armed forces, 17, 20, 26, 35, 46, 59-

— harbour, 110~-12, 127, 141-2 Table, Arminjon, P., 296.

315, 316n., 319. Artin, Y., 71, 140n., 267n., 381.

Alexandria and Ramleh Railway Co., Assembly of Representatives, 139, 146.

279, 287. assignations, 32-3, 44.

280, 321. Ltd., 219.

Alexandria Bonded Warehouse Co., Associated Cotton Ginners of Egypt

404 Index

282, 337. 132,

Aswan Dam, 187, 191, 194-5, 213, 215, Basili and Hanafouri & Co. (Messrs.),

Asyut barrage, 213. basin irrigation, 8—9, 387 Glossary. Atherton, Giles, 303. al-bayadi (see also Winter crops), 8, Austria-Hungary: Austrians, 113. 387 Glossary.

— trade with Egypt, 161 Table, 199 Bayerlé, C., 323.

Table, 299. Bazley, Thomas, 97.

— cereal yields, 256 Table. beans: cultivation of, 7, 9, 249, 253-5, 258-9.

Baer, G., 3n., 35 n., 68, 147, 268n., —trade in, 15, 25, 52, 103 Table,

2g1. 126—7 Tables, 169~71 Tables, 176-8

Baghus Bey, Yusuf, 36, 66. Tables, 308 Table. bale, 28 n., 106, 221. — production of, 102, 250-2 Table, balli cultivation, 73-4, 76, 101, 129, 260-4 Tables.

135, 138, 150, 257, 352, 387 Glossary. — price of, 126 Table, 178 Table,

Balls, W. L., 255. 262-3 Table.

Bally Fréres, 286. — sale by Manzalawi, 132.

Bank of Egypt, 71, 83-4, 119, 286. — income from, 235 Fig., 260-4 bankruptcies, liquidations, 120, 284-5, Tables, 267.

288, 293, 296, 304. — area under, 247-9 Table, 252, 262.

banks, bankers: in Egypt, 84, 98, — yield, 250-2 Tables, 256, 262-3. 105-6, 113-15, 119, 145-6, 157, 208, — weight of an ardabb, 382.

211, 222, 227, 278-80 Table, 283, beduin, 11, 149. 285-6, 288-9 Table, 294, 302, 321, Behar Barki & Co., 386.

338, 374. Behera Land Co., 212n., 281, 289,

— in Europe, 83-4, 114, 157, 211, 222, 292-3 Table.

284, 288, 294. Behmer, A., 125, 142-3, 151, 330-1.

Banque Grecque d’Alexandrie, 157n. Benachi, E. A., 113, 321-2. Banque Hypothécaire Franco-Egyp- _ Berrill, K., 373.

tienne, 260. Bija, Mr., 133. 37-8. H. Bindernagel, 222, 386.

Barker, John B. B., Consul-General, bilharzia, 256-7, 267, 356. barley: cultivation of, 7-9, 249, 253-4, birsim, 387 Glossary.

258. — cultivation of, 7-9, 76, 193, 206, 240, 42 Table, 52. — area under, 247-8, 249 n.

— Muhammad ‘Ali’s monopoly of, 21, 252-4, 258.

— trade in, 52, 103 Table, 127 Table, — production of, 260-1, 352. 170-1 Tables, 176 Table, 308 Table. — income from, 260-1 Table, 266, 271.

— quality of, 149, 255. — on Manzalwi estates, 274. — income from, 235 Fig., 260-4 Blunt, W.5S., 149.

Tables, 267. boats (Nile), 22, 36, 55, 65-6, 77, 85,

— area under, 247-9 Table, 252, 262. IOI, 209, 229 Table. — yield, 250-2 Tables, 255-6 Table, Bockty, Joseph, 23.

260, 262-3. Boislecomte, Baron de, 29 n., 47 n., 55;

— production, 250-2 Table, 260-4 383 n.

Tables. boll-worm, 134-5, 192-3, 195, 206-7, — price, 262-3 Table. 257. — weight of an ardabb, 382. bonds, government, 71, 84, 157, 279. Barnett, Colonel C. J., Consul-General, Bonfort Bey, 64.

66, 353. Borelli, A., 261 n.

Barrage (Delta), 50, 57, 185, 187, 190, La Bourse égyptienne, 344.

| 194, 212-13, 215, 252, 337. Bowring, J., 31, 46, 49, 72, 169, 172,

barrani, 5, 387 Glossary. 326~9.

Index 405 Brazil: cotton production in, 92, 125. — French, 277, 281, 291, 294.

De Breuvery, J., 34.n., 379. — Belgian, 281.

Briggs & Co., 22 n., 37. carthame, 21.

Briggs, Samuel, 22, 37, 54-5. Cavafy and Sons, 128 n.

Bright, John, 97. Cave, S., 140, 145, 157.

British Occupation, British officials: census, population, 236—7.

irrigation policy, 212-13, 253. cereals, grain, see also barley, beans, —— transport policy, 213-15, 319, 324. wheat and imports, cereals, 214, 265,

— agricultural policy, 215-18, 259-60. 267. — industrial policy, 223, 296, 302-4, — trade in, 19-20, 25, 81, 102-3 Table,

318. 150, 170-1 Table, 174-6, 308-9

— currency reform, 225-7. Table, 354-5, 365.

— reform of tax system, 245-7. — production of, 49-50, 71, 96, 250-2

— financial policy, 311-16. Tables, 352, 372. — Capitulations, 313-14. — relative price of, 125.

— development of economy, 315-20, — quality, 255-6.

324, 333-4. C. G. des Chemins de fer économiques,

— influence of Indian experience on, 214.

316-17, 333-6, 340~-1. De Chabrol De Volvic, 3 n.

— and business community, 317-19, chick-peas, 7, 21.

324. cigarettes, see industry, tobacco.

Brown, R. H., 50 n. Capitulations, 86—7, 118, 158-9, 313-

Bryn, James, 75-6, 134 n. 14, 317. Buhaira: province, 12, 186-7, 195, Carpiet Vivante et Cie., 378, 380. 213-14, 238, 241. Cartwright, W., 244. — canal, 212. Carver Brothers and Gill (later Carver building industry, 85, 107, 113, 156, Brothers & Co.), 113, 210-I1, 221-2,

269, 284-5, 300, 371, 373-4. 274, 280, 321-2, 386.

bushel, 256 n., 381-2. Carver, Percy, 321.

Cassa di Sconti e di Risparmi, 284.

De Cadalvene E., 34. n., 379. Cassel, Sir Ernest, 281, 290-1.

cadastral survey, 334. N. G. Casulli, 386. — 1813-21, 18, 381. Cattaui family, 303-4, 322-3. — French expedition, 381. J. M. Cattaui et Cie., 281. — 1898-1907, 183, 238, 246. — Jacob, 322.

Cairo, 201. De Chamberet, R., 266.

— population, 3. Charles Roux, F., 151-2 n., 190 n., 223, — in 18th century economy, 12-14. 294.

— under Isma‘il, 113, 153, 156, 159. Cheikh Fadl Co., 292 Table.

— 1880-1914, 268-9, 282-4, 320. Chélu, A., 219-20, 231, 279.

Cairo Manure Co., 254. Choremi Benachi & Co. (formerly Cairo Sand Brick Co., 299. Choremi, Mellor & Co.), 211, 221-2, Caisse de la Dette Publique, 315. 321, 386. Campbell, Colonel Patrick, Consul- Clegg, ‘Thomas, 75.

General, 51, 60. Cleland, W., 236, 237 n., 240 n.

canals see irrigation system, canals. Clot, A. B., 381. cantar, 9 n., 31 n., 378, 382 Appendix, coal see also, imports, raw materials,

387 Glossary. 155, 374-5-

capital, Egyptian, 269, 276-90 Tables. J. and P. Coats, 210. capital, foreign, 83-5, 113-17, 156-7, | Cobb, B. F., 137-8. 242, 276-94 Tables, 324, 329, 331-2, Colin, A., 45, 326-9, 350-1.

366, 374. Colquhoun, Consul-General, 100, 102,

— British, 277, 281, 290-1, 294. 10g—10, 118,

406 Index

Colvin, Sir A., 334. Table, 197 Table, 205, 262-3, 311

Comité Agricole, 339. Table.

Commerce, Ministry, 155. — used for sowing, 139-40, 189, 194,

Commission monétaire (Eg.), 226. 205-6, 208, 217-18, 222, 260, 338. Commission of Inquiry, 146-7. — production of, 196-7 Table, 260-4 Compagnie Agricole du Nil, 292 Table. Tables. companies, Egyptian, 85, 113-21, 157- — income from, 93-4, 260-4 Tables.

8, 219-25, 276-304. — yield, 262-3.

consuls, European: and Muhammad — weight of an ardabé, 382.

‘Ali, 26, 39, 54, 65-7, 71. cotton seed oil and cake: manufacture, — and ‘Abbas and Sa‘id, 86-8. 78-9, 106, 152, 224, 280, 295.

— and Isma‘il, 139, 143. —- trade in, 224, 307-9.

contractors, public-works, 212, 266-7, | Cotton Commission, 1909-10, 192, 194,

280, 325, 353- 218, 347.

conversion economies, 315-16. Cotton Research Board, 192.

corn, 170 Table. Cotton Supply Association, Mancorvée, labour: in 18th century, 4. chester, 70, 79, 97-9.

— under Muhammad ‘Ali, 21, 47-8. Cotton Supply Reporter, 97.

—under Isma‘il, 117, 144-5, 148-9. cotton-worm, 135-6, 152, 189, 193-5,

— abolition, 212, 266-7, 280, 353. 215-16, 218, 342.

costs, agricultural, 79-81, 104-5 Table, countervailing duty, 223, 302-4, 319,

230-2, 264-5. 343.

cotton, American, 89-92, 98, 200-1. courbash (kurbaj), 329, 387 Glossary.

— price, 91 Table, 162-5 Table and G.M. Coury & Co., 386.

Fig., 200-4 Table. Craig, J. I., 188, 194, 232 n.

cotton, Egyptian, short-staple, 8-9, 21, Crawcour, E. S., 361.

29, 42 Table, 309-10. Crédit Foncier Egyptien, 230, 2309,

cotton, Egyptian, varieties, 194. 241-2, 273, 277, 279, 290-1, 322-3. — Maho, Jumel, 30 f., 387 Glossary. Crédit Franco-Egyptien, 386. — Sea Island, 33, 34 Table, 35, 75. Cressaty, Comte, 230, 260-2.

— New Orleans, 75, 98. Crimean War boom, 70-1, 170. — Pernambuco, 75. Cromer, Lord (Baring, E.), 239, 268.

— Ashmouni, 129, 138, 150n., 166, — and decline in cotton yield, 190,

188-90, 194, 387 Glossary. 341.

— Bahmiah, 129, 138, 150n., 188-9, — and development of economy, 215,

387 Glossary. 317-19, 334-47.

— Abiad, 166, 188, 387 Glossary. — on hoarding, 271.

— Gallini, 189. — and industry, 302-4, 319, 342-4. — Mit Afifi, 189—90, 193-4, 201-2, 388 — Indian policies, 336, 343.

Glossary. Crouchley, A. E., 197-8, 280, 284,

— Sakel, 189, 222, 389 Glossary. 288-9, 293 n., 306-7, 318 n., 376.

— Abbasi, 180. cultivated area: in 18th century, 3-4. — Joannovitch, 189, 201, 274, 388 — under Isma‘il, 117, 125, 140.

Glossary. — 1880-1914, 237-8.

— Nubari, 189, 201, 388 Glossary. currency and coinage, 29 n., 42-4, 106,

cotton seed, 145, 214. 383-5 Appendix.

, — trade in, 78-9, 93-4 Table, 106, —reform of 1835, 44, 226, 384 123-4 Table, 126 Table, 132-3, 167 Appendix.

Table, 170-1, 176-8 Tables, 198 —reform of 1885, 225-7, 384-5 Table, 204-5, 271, 307-8, 311 Table. Appendix.

— ginning, 78, 137, 271. customs see also tariffs, 223.

— industrial use, 78-9, 205, 224. — protective duties, 24, 25 n., 46-7, — price, 126 Table, 167 Table, 178 343-4.

Index 407 — receipts from, 116-17, 143, 312-13 Egyptian Commercial and Trading

Table, 354. Co., 114-15, 118, 121.

— administration, 168-9, 196-8, 262, Egyptian Cotton Mills Co., 222-4,

376-7, 379-80. 302-3, 310, 319, 344.

— method of valuing exports and Egyptian Delta Light Railways Co., imports, 168-9, 196-8, 376~-7 Ap- 214. pendix, 379~80 Appendix. Egyptian Enterprise and Development Co., 292 Table, 324-5. Daira Saniya, 239-40, 268, 291, 295-7, Egyptian Estates Co., 292 Table.

314, 387-8 Glossary. Egyptian Gazette, 344.

Daira Sanieh Co., 268-9, 290-1, 322. Egyptian Land Investment Co., 292

Damietta, 380. Table.

Daqahliya province, 183, 185-7, 213- Egyptian National Congress, 348-9.

14, 241. Egyptian National Party, 332-3.

Dardaud, G., 29 n. Egyptian Public Works Co., 277. Denmark, 256 ‘Table. Egyptian Shoe Co., 286.

Dervieu, Edward, 106, 113-18. Egyptian Steam Towing Co., 85. Deutsche Orient Bank, 211, 286, 386. Egyptian Syndicate, 281.

dhura (maize), 388 Glossary. Egyptische Egrenir-Fabriken, 286. — cultivation of, 7, 9, 11-12, 76, 104, Eid, A., 269, 272, 294. 192-3, 205-6, 249, 252-4, 258-9. Elgood, P. G., 244, 265-6. — trade in, 52, 103 Table, 127 Table, Ellsworth, P. T., 372-3.

171 Table, 308 Table. England, Great Britain: cotton imports, — production of, 102, 260—4. 30, 160-6 Table.

— consumption of, 107. — trade with Egypt, 81-2, 107-9 — area under, 247-9 Table. Table, 160, 169, 174f., 198-9 — yield, 251-2 Table, 254-5. Table, 204-5. — income from, 260-4 Tables, 266. — Englishmen, 113.

— on Manzalawi estates, 274. — cotton industry in, 162-5, 199-202.

— quality, 309. — cereal] yields in, 256 Table. Direction Générale de Commerce, 36. — mill-owners in, 319, 343-4.

dollar (thaler), 34 n. — trade figures, 160, 376-7, 379. Dowson, E. M., 188. ‘exploitation’ area, 249.

Dore, R. P., 362. experimental farms, 259. drainage system, 191-5, 212, 218, 253, ‘exploitation’ rate, 249. 255, 315-16, 356.

Drovetti, Consul-General, 16, 20n., Fahmy, M., 45.

23, 30 N., 32. Fakhri, Yahya, 133.

Drummond Wolff, Sir Henry, 230. fa‘iz, 5, 388 Glossary.

The Duckworth Co., 386. fallow period, 192, 249, 253, 258. Duff Gordon, Lady L., 149. Fattuha, al-Sayyid, 133.

Dufferin, Lord, 334. Fayoum Light Railways Ltd., 214-15, Duhamel, Consul-General, 53, 82. 280, 324.

Fayyum Province, 185, 214-15.

East India Co., 83. feddan, 4n., 381 Appendix, 388 economic crises: 1866, 120. Glossary.

— 1870s, 165. fellah (peasant), 3 f., 388 Glossary.

— 1907-8, 223, 269, 271-2, 275, 283-7, fenugreek, 7, 255. 2QI-2, 312, 316-17, 344-5, 374-5. —_fermage (sharecropping) system, 243-5,

education, 56, 143, 155-6, 374. 257, 265-7.

— agricultural, 143, 259, 317. fertiliser, manure, see also sabakh and

— technical, 342-3. kom, 152, 214, 218, 253-5, 257-8, Education, Ministry, 313 Table, 315. 264-5, 281, 297, 356.

408 Index Filature nationale d’Egypte see Anglo- Gliddon, G. R., 9n., 34n., 38, 164, Egyptian Spinning and Weaving Co. 382. Fine Cotton Spinners’ and Doublers’ gold and bullion, specie, 106—7, 175,

Assoc., 210. 226-7, 271, 306-7 Table.

Fitzgerald, G., 145-6. Gorst, Sir E., 246.

Five Feddan Law, 272-3, 345-6. — and industry, 223, 344. flax, 7, 9, 11, 42 Table, 74, 149, 176 — and stock exchanges, 318.

Table, 327. — and crisis of 1907, 318.

flour, milling, see also imports, flour, — and agricultural credit, 345-6.

107, 158, 255. — and development of economy, 346-7. Foaden, G. P., 230. Greeks, 69, 107, 113, 320, 375.

foreign community, 85-6, 113, 156-9, Greenfield & Co., 127.

320-5, 328-9. Grégoire, 76-7, 79, 93 N., 95, 329-31.

Fowler, T. K., 78-9, 378-9. guilds, 13. France: Frenchmen, 113.

— trade with Egypt, 161 Table, 199 Hahnloser & Co., 386.

Table, 297, 299. halaga, 208, 218, 388 Glossary.

— cereal yields, 256 Table. Hale, Consul-General, 136.

G. Frauger & Co., 386. Harvey, Sir Paul, 240 n., 345-6.

Free Trade, 302, 319, 343. Hawamdiya (sugar) refinery, 277, 297, French Expedition, 13, 16, 18, 326, 323.

381-3. Haywood, G. R., 97-8.

fruit, 247-50 Table, 261 Table. Hekekyan, Y., 46, 49, 62-4, 67, 70, 82-3.

Garwood, A. E., 277. hemp, 21. Gastinel, W. L., 142. henna, 7.

General Credit and Finance Co., 114. Hess and Carcas, 386. Germany: trade with Egypt, 199-200 Hirschman, A. O., 365, 369, 373.

Table, 205, 297, 299. Hirschmeier, J., 363. — cereal yields, 256. hod (haud), 246, 388 Glossary.

— Germans, 320. Howarth, W., 200 n. W. Getty & Co., 386. N. Huri & Co., 386.

Gharbieh Land Co., 292-3 Table, Husain Kamil, Prince, 324, 339-40.

324-5. Huseyn Efendi, 5.

Gharbiya province, 186-7, 195, 214,

241. Ibrahim Pasha, 63.

Gianaclis, Nester, 158, 298. — presides at agricultural assembly, 53.

Gibbara, Messrs., 28. — his estates, 64, 74-5. Gibson, J., 230, 334. — trend to break-up of monopolies

Gill, Charles, 113. under, 67, 75.

ginners, ginning factories, 353, 371. -—— builds in Alexandria, 85.

— 1820-79, 78, 92-3, 106, 121, 129, Ibrahimiya canal, 154, 213.

131, 137-40, 150, 159, 184. Iihami Pasha, 68, 75.

— 1880-1914, 193-4, 208-9, 217, 219- __ illiteracy, 256, 373-4. 20, 222, 227-30 Tables, 270-1, 280, _iltizam, 16, 18, 60, 388 Glossary.

287, 295, 325. El-Imam, Dr. M., 249, 261-2.

— business with Manzalawi, 133, 275. Imlah, A. H., 178. gins (cotton), 29, 31, 64, 77-8, 98, 121, implements, agricultural, 142-3, 257-8,

208, 219-20, 270. 330, 340.

— dulab, 9, 76, 78, 388 Glossary. — norag (nawraj), 12, 256, 388 Glos-

— McCarthy, 78, 110, 219-20. Sary.

381-2. 340.

Girard, P. S., 6, 7, 9-12, 15n., 49, — plough, 12, 142, 206, 257-8, 330-1,

Index 409 ~~ saqiya, 8-9, 21, 29, 47; 59; 76, 1ol, 82-3, 154-5, 224, 283, 295, 300-2,

104, 389 Glossary. 310, 319, 343-4, 375— hoe, 206. — soap and oil, 13, 106, 224, 275, 295. — shaduf, 8, 101, 389 Glossary. — military equipment, 13, 55, 154-5.

imports, 14-15, 107-10 Table, 172-9 — sugar (including alcohol, molasses),

Tables, 270, 285, 300-2, 304-11 23, 141 Table, 153-5, 171, 277, 283, Fig. and Tables, 321, 365-6, 371-2. 295-7, 300-1, 303-4, 309, 318-19.

—— agricultural machinery, see machin- — silk, 23, 55, 143. ,

ery, agricultural. — paper, 55, 155, 299.

— animals see animals. — tarbush, 154, 299-300.

— cotton, silk, 13, 300-1, 309-10. — tobacco, 158, 283, 295, 298, 300. — textiles, 14, 47, 83, 107-9 Table, — cattle cake, 224, 295. 172-9 Tables, 270, 285, 301-2. — food processing, 283, 295, 371, 375. — tobacco, 14, 173 Table, 309-10. — building materials (cement, bricks, —-raw materials (lead, iron, copper, tiles), 295, 298-9, 371, 375. coal, wood, etc.), 14, 105, 107-8 — amylique oil, carbonic acid, 297. Table, 110-11, 172-3 Tables, 175-8 inheritance, 4, 240. Tables, 214, 298-300, 309-11 Table, Institut Egyptien, 330.

319. insurance companies, 294.

Table. 340.

— cereals, 15, 102-3 Table, 308-9 Interior, Ministry: Section d’Elevage,

— sugar, 173, 297, 309. Int. Fed. of Master Cotton Spinners and

— flour, 173, 309. Manufacturers’ Assoc., 201-2, 220. — luxuries (motor cars etc.), 269-70, Ionian Bank, Chief Inspector, 294.

285, Irrigation, Dept., 187, 194, 249. 301-2. irrigation system, canals, 352.

import substitution, 23-4, 55-6, 155, irrigation engineers, 212-13, 253, 334.

income, agricultural, 79-81, 104-5, — in 18th century, 8n., Io. 227-32, 243, 260-71 Tables, 276, — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 29, 47-50,

312, 355, 365. 64.

— distribution, 265-8. — under Isma‘il, 116, 129, 141 Table, — fluctuations in, 232-5 Figs., 271. 150.

indebtedness, 59, 61-2, 71, 144-9, 267, — 1880-1914, 185, 187, 212-13, 215,

271-3, 345-6. 230, 238, 252-3, 255, 264, 267, 280,

India: cotton production in, 92-3, 97; 315-17, 336-7.

125. Isma‘il Assam Pasha, 299.

— cotton seed, 205. Ismailia, 320.

— trade with Egypt, 224. Isma‘il Pasha (Khedive), 110, 114, 127, — influence on British officials, 316-17, 132, 272, 276-7, 325, 330-2.

333-6, 340-1. — introduces post office, 70.

— cotton duties, 319, 343. — plants, markets, cotton, 95-6, 1r19—-

—- Cromer’s policies in, 336. 20, 129, 131~2, 145.

indigo: cultivation of, 7, Q-I1, 49. — known as ‘model farmer’, 98. — trade in, 21, 173 Table, 310. — and development of economy, 98-9, — Muhammad ‘Ali’s monopoly of, 42 116-18, 140f., 153 f., 173, 354.

Table. — and cattle murrain and Nile flood,

— production of, 143, 328. 99-102.

industry, Egyptian, 12-13, 23, 55-6, — and railways and harbours, 111-12. 82~-3, 153-5, 158, 224, 278 Table, — and development companies, 114-

283, 288 Table, 294-304, 326-9, 18.

343-45 348-51, 355> 369, 371-2, ~ private estates (Daira), 117, 134,

374-5. I41, 151-2, 168 n., 268, 388 Glossary.

— textile, 12-13, 23-4, 35, 44-7, 55, — and collapse of boom, 119-21,

410 Index Isma‘il Pasha (Khedive) (cont.): Land Bank of Egypt, 289. — raises land tax, 121, 143-9. land companies: rural, 240, 242, 254, — and deterioration of cotton, 136, 269, 271-3, 278 Table, 279, 281-3,

139-40. 285, 288 Table, 290-3 Table, 302,

— agricultural policy, 140-3. 320, 323.

— builds sugar industry, 153-4, 295-6. — urban, 278 Table, 282-3, 285, 288

Issawi, C., 371-2. Table, 293.

Italy: trade with Egypt, 198-9 Table. Landes, D. S., 88, 115-16.

— Italians, 320, 375. landless peasants, 4, 148, 240. landownership: in 18th century, 4—5.

al-Jabarti, ‘Abd al-Rahman (El-Dja- — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 18-19, 60-

barti), 16, 19, 21, 383 n. I, 72.

Japan: rural investment, 270. — under ‘Abbas and Sa‘id, 68. — development in, 1868-1914, 356-64. — under Isma‘il, 117, 128-9, 151.

Jardin d’Acclimatation, 142. — 1880-1914, 238-41, 246-7, 268. jiflik(s), 61-4, 68, 388 Glossary. land purchases, 239-41, 268-73, 282,

Joanovich Bey, 134~-5. 285, 292-3, 371.

John Birch, Messrs., 214. land reclamation, 140, 187, 280-2,

Jomard, E., 175. 292-3, 371.

C. Joyce & Co., 119. land use, 12, 49, 192, 247-50 Table,

Joyce, Turburn & Co., 65. 252-3, 258. judicial fees, 312. land, value, 241-2, 280, 282. judicial system, 86-7. Lane, E. W., 44-5, 382.

Julliany, J., 14. Lattis, J., 330.

Jumel, Louis A., 28-9, 388. Lavison, Consul-General, 40-1.

jute, 152. Law of Liquidation 1880, 314-15. lentils, 9, 15, 25.

kaums, 142, 254, 388 Glossary. De Leon, E., 81.

Khaleel, Gabriel, 349. Linant de Bellefonds, 48.

Glossary. 321, 386.

kharaj tax, 145, 230, 239n., 246, 388 R. and O. Lindemann, 210-11, 221-2, kharajtya land, 69, 145, 147-8 Table, Lindemann, Hugo, 211, 286, 321-2.

246, 388 Glossary. linen, 12, 14, 169-70 Table.

Khedivial Agricultural Society, 193 n., _‘ linseed, 79.

194, 217, 258-9, 338-42. Liverpool, 30, 37, 128, 139, 160-3, 166,

Khuri, Messrs., 133. 209.

Khurshid Pasha, 64. —- cotton prices in, 89-91, 163-5 Fig.

Kirby, L. D., 130-1. and Table, 200-4 Table.

Kitchener, Lord, 208, 218, 243, 253. loans, Governmental, 84, 116, 144,

— and agricultural credit, 345-6. 156-7.

— and development of economy, 346-7. Lockwood, Henry, 92.

Kom al-Akhdar Co., 279. locusts, 216, 342.

Kom Ombo Co., 292 Table. London Agreement 1885, 314-15. Koubbeh Gardens Building Land Co., London and Westminster Bank, 83.

324-5. Lower Egypt (Delta): system of land-

Krehmer, Consul-General, 62 n. holding in, 4, 18-19, 61, 240—1.

Krupser & Co., 78. — tax system in, 5-6, 18-19, 59.

— cultivation in, 9-12, 92-3, 103-4,

Lathat zira‘at al-fallah, 30, 53. 124-5, 184-96, 206, 238, 248-9, 354.

Lake Aboukir, 280. — crops monopolized in, 20-1.

Lambert, A., 266 n. —— irrigation system in, 47-50, 212-13, Land and Mortgage Co., 239, 241, 277, 253, 356.

27Q, 290. — cattle murrain in, 99.

Index Alt ——- transport in, 111, 127-8, 213-14. — under ‘Abbas and Sa‘id, 68-70, 77,

—- becomes export sector, 127-9. 84, 92-3. — system of rents in, 243. — under Isma‘il, 100, 105-7, 111-12,

— income in, 266-8. 118, 129-34, 136-7, 150, 159.

Lucovitch, Antoine, 115-16. — 1880-1914, 184, 207-11, 218~22,

lupins, 7. 227-30 Table, 280, 287, 289, 294, 320-5, 329, 386.

MacBean, A. I., 367-8. métayer system (rents), 243-5, 265-6. machines (agricultural), 105, 110, 115, J. M. Mezger, 386.

151. Miniat al-Bassal (Alexandria), 127, 209,

-—— imports of, 64, 71, 98, 100-1 Table, 228,

117-18, 143, 258, 270, 331. Minufiya province, 186-7, 238. — steam ploughs, 64, 98, 100-1, 117, | Mixed Courts, 128-30, 134, 158, 344.

143, 206. — Mixed Court of Appeal, 284, 318,

— steam pumps, 7I, 100, I1I5~I7, 344. 151-2, 154, 231, 275. Moberly Bell, C. F., 128, 145 n., 150 n.

Mackay, A., 93 n. model farms, 258-9, 339. Mahmoud el Falaki, 382. Mohr and Fenderl, 386.

Mahmudiya Canal, 22, 92, 128. money-lenders (usurers), 355, 368-9.

maize, see dhura. —- under Sa‘id, 69-70, 95-8.

al-Majlub, Hajj Muhammad, 133. —- under Isma‘il, 105, 107, 130, 147—

E. Mallison & Co., 386. 50.

Maltese, 23, 107, 320 n. — 1880-1914, 271-3, 345-6.

Mamluk(s), 15-18, 388 Glossary. monoculture, 341, 345-6, 348-9. Manchester, Chamber of Commerce, monopolies: in 18th century, 15-16.

96. — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 19-21,

Mansur Shakur Pasha, 324-5. 23-5, 32, 36f., 42 Table, 65-7, 374. Mansura (town and district), 104-5 |— under ‘Abbas, 67-8.

Table, 119, 131. — abolished by Sa‘id, 68.

Manzalawi, Mustafa, 132-4, 266, Monson, J. H., 243 n.

273-5. mortgage companies, 271-3, 278 Table,

Manzalawi, Shaykh ‘Ali, 132-3. 282, 286, 288 Table, 290-1, 302, 318,

markets, fairs, 6, 16, ro1—2. 323. Marseilles, 160-1. Mortgage Company of Egypt, 291.

Matthews, R. C. O., 175. mortgage law 1876, 128-9, 241, 271. Mazuel, J., 8n., 50, 154, 296. mortgages, 128-9, 241, 271-3, 283,

McCoan, J. C., 154. 290, 294.

Medewar, W. E., 347-8. Moss, R. J., 113.

Medjidiah, Egyptian Steam Navigation Mosséri, Moses, 259.

Co., 114, 118. Mosséri, Victor M., 259.

De Menasce family, 303-4, 322-3. Moursi Brothers, 386.

— Jacoub, 322. mudir, 70, 215, 388 Glossary. — Bohor, 322. Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha, 78, 96, 113, — Jacques Levi, 322. 145, 153, 155, 322.

J. L. Menasce Figlio & Co., 281. — introduces long-staple cotton, 12,

Mengin, F., 3 n., 26, 28, 45. 27-9, 33, 388.

mercerizing, 199-201. —— list of villages drawn up for, 17.

72. 71-2, 326-9.

merchants, merchant houses, 354, 368- — economic policy, 17f., 28f. 58f,

— in 18th century, 13, 14-16. — agricultural policy, 30, 35-6, 47-53, — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 20-2, 25- 58 f., 74, 76.

7h. 36-9, 71-2, 161.

6, 37-40, 43-4, 52-5, 60, 64-7, 72, .— commercial policy, 19, 21-2, 25-6,

412 Index Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha (cont.): P. and O. Co., 84. — industrial policy, 23-4, 44-7, 55-6, para, 383-5 Appendix.

82-3, 374. Pastré (Fréres), 39, 114.

——- monopolies, 19, 23, 40-2, 52, 58-9, _-Pastré, Jules, 113.

65-7, 71-2, 174, 374. Peel & Co. Ltd., 128, 221, 321, 386.

— reforms currency, 29 n., 44, 226, 384. Pensa, H., 244. }

— income, 20, 26, 40-3 Tables, 59. perennial irrigation, 7-9, 47-9, 248-0, — and Europeans, 21-2, 53-5, 86. 252-3, 258, 389 Glossary. — and family estates, 61-4, 71-2. G. Petracchi & Co., 386.

— failing health, 62, 67 n. Pezzoni, Consul-General, 39 n.

—— introduces system of cash transfers, piastre, 29 n., 383-5 Appendix.

69-70. G. Pilvachi & Co., 386.

— establishes mixed court, 86. pink boll-worm, 1998.

mulberry trees, 21, 64, 143. Pinto & Co., 386. multazim(s), 4-7, 18, 60, 388 Glossary. Piott, J. B., 266.

muqabala tax, 144-5, 388 Glossary. J. & P. Planta (later J. Planta & Co.),

Murad Bey, 15. 128, 386.

murrain (cattle): 1842-3, 61, 64. plough, see implements, agricultural.

— 1863, 99-103, 148. population, 332, 352-3, 355. muta‘ahhid, 60—1, 63, 66, 388 Glossary. — in 18th century, 3. Myint, H., 368—9. — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 35 n. — under Isma‘il, 148, 150-1. Nahas, J. F., 267. — 1880-1914, 236-8, 240, 294-5, 309,

Nakamura, J. I., 358. 340-2.

National Bank of Egypt, 287, 289-90, — European, 113, 156-7, 282, 320, 350.

322, 338. Port Said, 320, 380.

National Insurance Co., 289. Post Office, 70, 128, 311-13 Table. nazir, 5; 132-3, 274-5, 388 Glossary. press (cotton), pressing, 29, 98, 113, New Egyptian Co., 281, 292 Table. 117, 209, 220-1, 229 Table, 270, 280, Nile, 8-10, 14, 22, 29, 49-50, 65, 74, 77, 287, 295, 323.

85, 114-15, 249. prices: land, 85, 241-2, 285, 290, 292,

— annual floods, 93n., 100-2, 111, 318,

124, 144, 191-2, 213, 315, 337. — staple commodities, 109—~I10.

— tolls on, 144, 217, 314. — agricultural products, 247-8, 260-4 Nile Land and Development Co., 292 Tables, 338.

Table. Public Debt, 156-7, 306~—7 Table, 314-

Nili crops, 7-8, 10-11, 193, 253, 258, 15.

388 Glossary. public utilities, 85-6, 283, 323, 371.

Ninet, J., 77, 92, 105, 137-8, 149. public works, 48, 140-1 Table, 144-5, norag (nawraj), see implements, agricul- 238, 315-16, 346.

tural. Public Works and Agriculture, Ministry

Northbrook, Lord, 340. (later Public Works only), 142, 313 Notables, 239. Table, 315, 337, 340. Nubar Pasha, 114, 158. purse (Kise), 43 n., 383 Appendix.

Ohkawa, K., 358-9. Qalubiya province, 186-7, 214, 2938, oil refinery, 300. 247. Oldham Chamber of Commerce, 200.

olives, 64. rachat mihtaire, 314.

onions, 261 Table. raftieh, 379-80.

opium, 7, 42 Table, 328. Raghib Pasha, 112, 114.

Oppenheim, Henry, 113-15, 117. railways, 105, I10-12, 172, 209, 213, Oriental Banking Corporation, 83. 215, 238, 277.

Index 413 264. 16-17. 12, — under Isma‘il, 145-51.

— cost of transport by, 77, 229 Table, rural conditions: in 18th century, 11,

— Alexandria—Cairo, 77,92, 101, 111- — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 35-6, 58-90.

— extension of system, 92, 140-1 — 1880-1914, 264-73, 338-9.

Table, 150, 315-16, 319, 354. Russell, W. H., 143 n.

Table. Table, 297.

— receipts from, 116-17, 143, 311-13 Russia: trade with Egypt, 99, 198-9 — agricultural, 154, 214-15, 264, 281, — cereal yields, 256 Table. 295-6, 315, 318-19, 372.

— passengers on, 270. Saab, G., 257 n.

— workers on, 295-6. S. A. Agricole et Industrielle, 281, 292

Ralli, A., 279. Table. Randome, G., 263 n. S. A. de la Bourse, 225.

ratl, 10 n., 382 Appendix, 389 Glossary. S. A. de la Bourse khédiviale d’Alex-

Reinhart & Co. Ltd., 386. andrie, 225.

rents, renting, see also, fermage, métayer, S. A. des Chemins de fer de la Basse

shirk, 10, 188, 205, 232, 234, 242-5, Egypte, 214-15. 257, 265-7, 274, 203, 341, 355- S. A. des Ciments d’Egypte, 299.

revenue (Government), 354-5. sabakh, 12, 389 Glossary.

— in 18th century, 15. Sacré, A. and Outrebon, L., 112-13,

— French Expedition, 16. 169 n. — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 20, 26, Sadik, Isma‘il, 146. 40-2 ‘Tables. S. A. E. des Presses allemandes, 221-2.

— under Isma‘til, 116-17, 143-6, 157. S.A. E. des Presses Libres Egypiennes,

— 1880-1914, 311-16 Table. 221-2, Reynier, J. T. L., General, 11. safflower, 7, 9. rials, 383-4 Glossary. Sa‘id Pasha, 84, 118, 155, 238, 325. rice: cultivation of, 8-10, 49, 79, — dams Khatatba canal, 64.

249. — abolishes monopolies, 68.

— trade in, 15, 169-71 Tables, 308 — reforms tax system, 68-9, 71, 245.

Table, 310—11 Table. — and contracts with peasants, 70.

42 Table. 84-5, 172.

— Muhammad ‘AIli’s monopoly of, 20, _—-economic and_ financial policy,

— quality of, 149. — and Europeans, 86-7.

— area under, 247-9 Table. — promotes cotton cultivation, 95-8.

— value of, 261 Table. — visits England 1862, 96-7.

— price, 263 Table. St. John, J. A., 45-6. G. Riecken, 386. St. Mark’s Building Assoc., 280.

— weight of an ardabb, 382. Saint-Marcel, Consul-General, 19 n.

Rifaat, M. A., 188 n. Sakellarides, John, 222.

Rivlin, H. A. B., 4.n., 49, 59, 62. salination, 192, 195, 253. roads, agricultural, 213-15, 264. Salvago family, 322-3.

Rodocanachi & Co., 386. — C. M. Salvago, 279, 289, 322-3. Rogers, Consul, 144 n. C.. M. Salvago & Co., 287.

Rolo, Jacob, 323. sagiya, see implements, agricultural.

Rosovsky, H., 358-9, 364. sarraf, 5, 146, 183, 384, 389 Glossary.

Rossi, Dr. E., 145, 332. sarrafs’ returns, 183, 247-8.

rotation of crops, 188, 252-3, 257-8. Sasson Israel & Co., 386. — cotton, 31, 75-6, 129, 185-6, 188, Saunders, Consul, 93 n. 192, 194, 205-6, 218, 248, 252-3, Schanz, M., 229n., 232, 242-3, 258-9.

258, 265. J. P. Schilizzi & Co., 113.

Roussel, Consul-General, 24-5. Schmidt, Arno, 220.

414 Index

250. 144, 168 n.

School (College) of Agriculture, 255, Stanley, Consul, 103, 120n., 137n.,,

Schrienering, 201. Stanton, Consul-General, 130. Schultz, T. W., 11 n. State Domains, 239. Scott, Sir J. H., 86. — methods of cultivation, 152.

Scott Moncrieff, Sir C., 340. — yields of crops grown, 190-1 Table, S. E. de la Bourse Commerciale de 192 n., 230, 250-2 Tables, 262.

Minet-el-Bassel, 225. —— provision of seed, 217. Seeger Bros. & Co., 386. — cost of cotton ginning, 220. Senior, Nassau, 70-1. — value of crops, 230-1 Table, 234-5

sesame, 9, 21, 49, 79. Fig., 263-4 Table, 265.

S. G. de Pressage et de Dépdt, 221, 289. — develop new wheat strain, 252. S. G. des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie — sell land, 269, 281. d’Egypte, 295-7, 303-4, 318-19, 343. state land, 61, 239, 269-9, 290, 312,

shaduf, see implements, agricultural. 314, 320. shares in Egyptian companies, 268-9, Statistical Dept., 124, 155.

272, 275-93 Tables. Suarés Fréres & Co., 281, 287. Sharif Pasha, 114. — Raphael, 232, 277, 279, 290, 322-3.

— founders’ shares, 284, 317~-18. Suarés family, 303-4, 322-3.

241. —212. Sudanese, 320. — canal, Suez, 320. Shaw, S. J., 5, 9 n., 382. Suez Canal, 84, 116, 141 Table. shaykh al-balad, 6, 62-3, 70, 389 sugar, cane, see also imports, sugar and Glossary. industry, sugar, 354. shirk system (rents), 244, 389 Glossary. — cultivation of, 7-10. Sharqiya: province, 35, 186—7, 213-14, Sudan, 282, 312.

Glossary. 42 Table.

shitwi, see also Winter crops, 8, 389 — Muhammad ‘Ali’s monopoly of, 21, shuna (warehouse), 32, 36, 389 Glossary. .— grown by Royal Family, 64, 74, 141,

Sidi Salem Co. of Egypt, 292 Table. 152, 154. silk, see also imports, silk: commerce in, — industrial use, 154, 295-7, 327.

15. — trade in, 126 Table, 150, 171 Table,

— industry, 23, 55, 143. 308-9.

— consumption of, 107. — price of, 126 Table, 187, 296. E. Sinadino & Co., 114. — area under, 247-9 Table, 296.

Sinadino, Jules, 113. — value of, 261 Table, 295-6. Soc. Agricole de Kafr-el-Dawar, 292 — production of, 328, 352.

Table. Summer crops, 8-12, 191, 252-3, 258,

Soc. Agricole et Industrielle, 114-16, 328.

118, 121. Survey Dept., 230, 347.

Soc. d’Entreprises et de Travaux Switzerland, 199 Table.

Publiques, 277, 279. Syria, 29-30, 282.

Soc. des Immeubles d’Egypte, 289. — trade with Egypt, 13, 15. Société Egyptienne d’Agriculture, 152, | — Syrians, 219, 360. 339:

Soc. Egyptienne d’Irrigation, 281. talari (thaler), 34.n., 383-4 Appendix. Soc. Fonciére d’Egypte, 281,292 Table. Tanta, 6, 102. Soc. Immobili¢re d’Alexandrie, 280. Taufiq, Khedive, 332-3. soil exhaustion, 120, 192, 253-5. tax-collector(s), 70, 149, 150-1, 245.

Sornaga, S., 299, 349-50. taxes (land), 183, 217, 354.

spinners, cotton: European, 136, 138, — in 18th century, 4—7, 15-16.

164-5, 193, 198-202, 209-10. — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 18-20, 27,

~—— Lancashire, 319, 343-4. 43 Table, 58-60.

. Index 415 — under Sa‘id, 68-9. Wm. Trapp & Co., 386.

| —- under Isma‘il, 117, 121, 143-9, 158. Treasury (British), 83. — 1880-1914, 230-2, 239, 245-7, 260, ‘Trieste, 46, 160-1.

, 311-14 Table, 337-8. Turkey (Asia Minor), 29-30, 282.

| — on Manzalawi estates, 274-5. — Egyptian Tribute, 42.

| taxes (other than land), 144-5, 158, — currency, 43, 384-5 Appendix.

: 311-14 Table. — trade with Egypt, 46, 175, 224, 379-

| — house, 143, 269, 314. 80.

| — professional, 145, 314.

Taylor & Co., 111. ‘uhda(s), 60-1, 68, 389 Glossary.

| Technical Education, Dept., 342, 347. ‘umda, 215, 239 n., 389 Glossary.

. techniques (agricultural), 7-9, 12, Union de la Jeunesse Egyptienne, 142-3, 152, 205-7, 252-9, 330-1, 332-3.

354-5, 363, 374. Union Fonciére d’Egypte, 282 Table,

—~ cotton, 9, 30-1, 73-7, 104, 129, 135, 323.

: 149-50, 205~7. United Egyptian Lands Ltd., 292 ~~ wheat, 125. Table.

Tedesco, A., 384. United States (America): cotton protelegraph, 137, 141 Table, 165, 311-13 duction in, 89~—92, 97, 119, 125.

Table, 316. — trade with Egypt, 198-200 Table.

Thayer, Consul-General, 93-5, 98, — cotton seed, 205. IOI n., 102 n., 104-5 n., 106. — ginning factories in, 220. theories of trade and development, — cereal, cotton yields, 256 Table.

359-60, 364-75. Upper, Middle Egypt: system of land-

Thomas, Sir Owen, 237 n. holding in, 4, 18-19, 238, 240-1. B. ‘Tilche and Sons (later B. Tilche and — tax system in, 5-6, 18—-19.

Figli), 128, 386. — cultivation in, 9-10, 19-20, 95,

Mosie Tilche Fils, 386. 153-4, 184-90, 192-6, 206, 248, 354. The Times, 65-7, 77, 85, 102, 112, 128, | — crops monopolized in, 19-21. | 137. — irrigation system in, 48, 213. tobacco, see also imports, tobacco and — migration of workers from, 266-7. industry, tobacco: cultivation, 7,249, — agricultural income in, 267. 298. ‘Urabi rebellion, 184, 241. — government revenue from, 42 Table, urban property, 85, 156, 268-9, 272,

313-14 Table. 280.

— trade in, 298, 300, 308-11 Table. ‘ushr (tithe), 75, 389 Glossary.

Todd, J. A., 201, 226, 244, 347. — under Sa‘id, 68-9.

Tozzizzia (Messrs.), 66. — 1880-1914, 239 n., 312. trade, foreign, see also imports, 160f., ‘ushurtya land, 69, 145, 147-8 Table,

354, 365-6, 374, 376, 380. 230, 246, 312, 389 Glossary.

| —— in 18th century, 14-15.

| — under Muhammad ‘Ali, 19, 21, vegetables, 12, 110, 247-50 Table, 261

| 25-6, 30, 36-40, 65-6. Table.

| — under ‘Abbas and Sa‘id, 81-3. Verschoyle, H., 267. | under Isma‘il, 107~10 Table, 124 village community, 4.

, Table. ‘village debts’, 119-20. — 1880-1914, 196-205, 269-71, 304— Violer and Graban, 37.

11 Fig., Tables, 319. Volney, C,. F., 14. _ — 1854~79, 177-9. wages: agricultural, 7, 110, 232, 264, — 1880-1913, 310-11 Table. 266-7. trade, terms of, 354.

| 353. — urban, 285.

transport, system of, 22, 213-15, 319, — on Manzalawi estates, 266-7, 274-5.

416 Index Wallace, D. M., 96, 130, 257 n. — new Strain developed, 252. wagqf(s), 15-16, 18, 274, 389 Glossary. — on Manzalawi estates, 274-5.

Wardan Estate Co., 292 Table. — weight of an ardabb, 382. water-table, Delta, 192, 195, 218. B. Whitworth, 130-1. wekil (wakil), 131, 389 Glossary. Wilkinson, Sir G., 31, 53.

wheat, 102, 308. Willcocks, Sir William, 213, 232n.,

— cultivation of, 7, 9, 104, 125, 152, 246, 260, 312.

249, 253-4, 258-0. Winter crops, 7-8, 10-11, 252-3, 258.

— trade in, 15, 25, 52, 67, 74, 80-1 workshops, foundries, 158, 299. Table, 103 Table, 123, 126 Table,

127 Table, 169-71 ‘Tables, 174 Yates, W. H., 382. Table, 176-8 Tables, 308 Table. yields, agricultural, 242, 262-3, 353.

— quality, 29, 125, 149, 308. 355-

— production of, 74, 93, 102, 250-2 —cotton, 9, 31, 105 Table, 120, 123.

Tables, 260-4 ‘Tables. 130 Table, 190-6 Table, 341-2, 344-

— income from, 79-81, 235 Fig., 260-4 5.

Tables, 266-7. — cereals, 80 n., 250-2 Tables, 255.

— price of, 80 Table, 109, 123, 126 Table, 178 Table, 262-3 Table. zawat, cotton, 76, 389 Glossary.

— consumption of, 107. Zervudachi family, 322-3.

— sale by Manzalawi, 132. — C. G. Zervudachi, 279, 289, 322-3. — area under, 188 n., 247-8, 262. Zervudachi et fils, 286. — yield, 250-2 Tables, 255-6 Table, Zogheb, A., 261 n. 260, 262-3.

BRI 3

2 “er92-13-01 5004=E| 09/00 E

|