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Egypt Economy and Society under Occupation
By 1914 cotton constituted 90 percent of Egypt's exports. To
the British, who controlled Egypt's financial and economic life,
ensuring Egypt's prosperity and its ability to service its debt
meant expanding Egypt's reliance on cotton production. Some
British officials had more personal reasons for their interest in
the production and export of cotton. Some were landowners; some
were involved in the marketing of the crop; and some, like Lord
Cromer, made huge fortunes from cotton speculation.
Trade policy was based on free trade, which favored the more
industrialized nations whose products undersold those produced
locally. Lord Cromer himself described the effects of the import
of European manufactures on local craft production. He noted that
quarters of the city that had been "hives of busy workmen" had
shrunk or been eliminated entirely. Cafés and small stores
selling European goods replaced productive workshops. Egyptian
industrialization would have required protective tariffs that the
British would not allow. Thus, although Egypt had a solid
infrastructure, a sizeable local market, and an indigenous supply
of capital, industrial development was stymied by a British trade
policy that sought to protect the Egyptian market for British
products and to maintain Britain's near monopoly on Egyptian
cotton.
In spite of these formidable obstacles, a small industrial
sector did develop, devoted primarily to processing raw materials
and producing perishable or bulky goods. Industrialization gave
rise to a modern working class engaged in factory labor. By 1916
there were 30,000 to 35,000 workers employed in modern factories.
Pay in the industrial sector was low and working conditions
sometimes unsafe. Just as it maintained a hands-off policy
concerning trade, the state refused to intervene to regulate
working conditions. Between 1899 and 1907, at least seven
workers' associations were formed, focusing on conditions and
pay. Strikes were organized among cigarette wrappers; warehouse,
port, and railroad workers; and spinners in factories. The
working-class movement received considerable support from Mustafa
Kamil's National Party (Al Hizb al Watani), which set up schools
in working-class areas and assisted unions with publicity and
legal counsel during strikes. The unions, like the nationalist
movement, were severely repressed by the government.
In 1906 the Dinshawi Incident occurred, which intensified
nationalist and anti-British sentiments. A fight broke out
between the villagers of Dinshawi, near Tanta in the Delta, and a
group of British officers who were shooting pigeons nearby. In
the course of the shooting, the wife of the local imam (religious
leader) was shot and wounded. Villagers surrounded the officers,
and in the ensuing fracas, two British officers were wounded. The
officers in turn panicked and opened fire on the villagers. One
of the British officers died of his wounds as he attempted to
march back to camp a few miles away. British soldiers who found
the dead officer beat a peasant to death. Fifty-two Egyptians
were arrested and brought before a special court convened in
Shibin al Kawm. Four peasants were sentenced to death, many to
terms of imprisonment at hard labor, and others to public
flogging. The sentences were executed swiftly, publicly, and
brutally. This event heightened Egyptian political consciousness
and led to the organization of political parties.
In 1907 two political parties were formed, which served as
vehicles for expressing nationalist ideas and actions. They were
Kamil's National Party (also seen as the Watani Party) and the
People's Party (Al Hizb al Umma or Umma Party). The Umma Party
was founded by Mahmud Sulayman Pasha, a former leader of the
assembly and ally of Colonel Urabi, and Hasan Abd ar Raziq, among
others. The most prominent member of the Umma Party was Ahmad
Lutfi as Sayyid, editor of the party's newspaper, Al
Jaridah (The Newspaper). The National Party's newspaper was
Al Liwa (The Standard). Kamil and Lutfi as Sayyid were
Egyptian rather than Turco-Circassian in origin and represented
the increasing political strength of Egyptians in national life.
Kamil's party called for the British to evacuate Egypt
immediately. Although Kamil agreed that Egypt needed reform, he
argued that the British presence was not necessary to achieve it.
Because Islam played a larger role in his thought and in the
party ideology than in the Umma Party, Kamil and the National
Party attracted to it anti-European conservatives and religious
traditionalists.
The leaders of the Umma Party had been disciples of the
influential Islamic reformer Muhammad Abduh. Unlike Abduh,
however, who was concerned with the reform of Islam to
accommodate it to the modern world, Lutfi as Sayyid was concerned
with progress and the reform of society. The aim of the Umma
Party was independence. Lutfi as Sayyid believed, however, that
Egypt would attain self-rule not by attacking the British or the
khedive but through reform of Egyptian laws and institutions and
the participation of Egyptians in public life.
Lutfi as Sayyid believed Egypt should cooperate in any
measures that would limit the autocracy of the khedive and expand
constitutional government, which could only strengthen the
nation. Implicit in the Umma program was the idea of tactical
cooperation and eventual negotiation with the British on the
future of Egypt, an idea that Kamil and the National Party
rejected. The National Party was described as "extremist" because
of its demand for the immediate withdrawal of the British, while
the Umma Party was called "moderate" because of its gradualist
approach to independence from British domination.
Kamil died in 1908; the party never recovered from his death
although it continued to play a role in national political life
until 1952. It was the only political group that refused to take
part in negotiations for the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936. The
Umma Party participated in Egyptian party politics until World
War I, and its newspaper ceased publication in 1915. The party's
influence was long-lasting, however, because Saad Zaghlul, who
emerged as leader of the nationalist movement after the war, was
part of the Umma/Al-Jaridah circle.
Data as of December 1990
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