Egypt

A Fragile Power

Eberhard Kienle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780429805400
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Focusing on authoritarian rule, unresolved economic challenges, and external dependency, the volume explains the salient political and economic features of contemporary Egypt against the backdrop of its history since the beginning of the 19th century. Presenting a comprehensive account of developments, it challenges common assumptions about secularists, Islamists, and revolutionaries, as well as 'modernization', 'economic reform', and political stability.

Discussing domestic politics, economic change, and external relations since 1945, the author argues that Egypt continued to draw a degree of strength from sustained state-building activities, which its pre-colonial rulers could pursue in a favourable international environment and the partly related emergence of the country as a focal point of collective identity. More consolidated than many other states in the global south, Arab and non-Arab alike, independent Egypt, despite changing economic strategies, remained a (lower) middle-income country and despite repeated political contestation, most recently in the Arab Spring, continued to suffer from autocratic rule. Such continuity reflects not only the interplay between political forces at home, dominated by the military, and inconclusive economic policies but also the external constraints under which governments and other actors in the global south have to act.

Based on numerous primary and secondary sources in various languages, including Arabic, and years of fieldwork, the book is a key resource for scholars of all levels, journalists, policymakers, and diplomats interested in comparative politics and the political economy of the Middle East and Egypt.

1 The formation of contemporary Egypt

DOI: 10.4324/9780429441233-2

The history of Egypt like all history is a contested area marked by disagreements over details as much as broader trends and their origins. Nonetheless, the most convincing reading of events locates the beginnings of the contemporary Egyptian state at the intersection of two long-term developments – the faltering geographical reach of the Sublime Porte, the central government of the Ottoman Empire, and the gradually expanding sway of Western European powers, in particular Britain and France. The twin processes temporarily created a power vacuum of sorts in the Eastern Mediterranean and thus a specific constellation in the ‘international system’ that allowed a new actor to emerge. Both trends in the early 19th century encouraged, the latter then arrested, the emergence of a political power in Egypt, formally still an Ottoman province (eyelet, later vilayet), that was able to sideline competitors, establish institutions associated with a state, and implement policies of its own choice; over time state-building and its ramifications favoured the emergence of solidarities among the ruled that finally constituted them as an ‘imagined community’ of Egyptians or Egyptian ‘nation’. After successfully exploiting the tailwinds of Ottoman difficulties, the successive rulers in Cairo from about 1840 faced the headwinds of European expansionism that in the 1870s and 1880s brought Egypt under European, in particular British, control and contributed to shape it well beyond decolonization.

The predicament of the Porte blatantly appeared in July 1798 when the Ottoman Empire failed to defend Egypt against the invasion by French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte, later Napoleon I. Nor were immediate Ottoman attempts to reconquer Egypt crowned with success. Conflicts among the Mamluk groups who de facto ruled the country and put up resistance further facilitated the Expédition d’Égypte. The invasion nonetheless failed to transform Egypt into a French possession, and its immediate contribution to the imperialist project remained limited to the production of knowledge about Egypt that was published in the meticulously researched and beautifully illustrated volumes of the famous Description de l’Égypte.¹ In August 1801, the French invaders were defeated by the British who could count on important Ottoman reinforcements; a few months later, French troops returned to France on British vessels. For a moment Egypt had become the theatre of the exacerbating competition among the major powers for influence in Europe, the Mediterranean, and worldwide. In Europe, the French Revolution had shaken the conservative political order that increasingly had to accommodate the rising forces of capitalism; in the Mediterranean, the Europeans sought to exploit the difficulties of the Ottoman Empire without precipitating its demise; what came to be known as the ‘Eastern Question’ obviously had vast implications for communications with Asia and Africa and imperialism at large. Though victorious, the British soon left Egypt as well and concentrated on Europe where the Napoleonic Wars challenged more immediately and fundamentally the balance of power among the major actors.

For the following seven to eight decades, Egypt escaped occupation by European forces; for some four decades, it also escaped other, more indirect, forms of European domination through unequal treaties and growing external debt. As conflictual as before the French invasion, the divisions among the various Mamluk and Ottoman forces on the ground gradually allowed a new contender, Mehmed Ali (Muhammad Ali), to strengthen his position. Born in Kavala in Macedonia, Mehmed Ali was a young officer in the Ottoman forces that in 1801 disembarked with the British; he rose rapidly through the ranks, became their commander, and in 1805, against many odds, managed to have himself appointed governor (wali) of Egypt. Over the following years, he marginalized other political forces, defeated his Mamluk opponents, and in 1811 almost theatrically massacred their survivors at the Cairo citadel. Though never a sovereign himself, he managed at great cost for his subjects to build the institutions of a state and generate the revenues to fund, maintain, and strengthen them; the latter in many ways served to maintain a strong army that only formally remained under the orders of the sultan in Constantinople. In their own ways, his successors continued to build on his legacy, with varying success, but especially in an international context that already towards the end of Mehmed Ali’s rule turned far less favourable.

If neither the international power vacuum in the Eastern Mediterranean nor the emergence of Mehmed Ali may be seen as the unavoidable results of the course of history, they nonetheless laid the ground for developments that have heavily contributed to mould Egypt socially, economically, culturally, and politically. They led to a succession of developments that – again without being preordained by some hidden hand of history – produced a degree of path dependency and therefore left a lasting imprint to this day. These developments cannot be said to have determined the shape of contemporary Egypt, but the latter can be understood far more easily in their light. In particular, they strongly contributed to the – relative and fragile – strength of Egypt as a state, an economy, and a community of solidarity. Ultimately, they go a long way in explaining the halfway location of Egypt on the continuum between consolidated nation-states in Europe (a term that applies to some European states more than to others) and less consolidated territorial states such as Syria, Iraq, or Libya.

Favourable external conditions

To a considerable extent, the trajectory of Egypt towards an increasingly independent and consolidated political entity was premised on the weakness of the central government in the peripheral parts of the Ottoman Empire.² The territory that corresponds to the contemporary state of Egypt became a province of the empire in the early 16th century when it expanded its reach from Asia into parts of North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Though represented by a governor, the sultan often remained a remote and lofty sovereign. The troops that the Porte maintained in Egypt, like the governor himself, were far more difficult to control than their counterparts in more easily accessible provinces in Western Asia or Eastern Europe. Nor were Ottoman troops as strong as the Mamluks, formally slaves, who remained the major military force in the land since they had taken de facto power in the 13th century.³ Without any particular ties of loyalty towards their Ottoman suzerains, they formed a variety of ‘households’ headed by beys that competed with each other; only temporarily did their conflicts result in the victory of one faction able to establish something like a dominant power. If these divisions indirectly strengthened the Ottoman suzerains, they also weakened their hold over the country; the infighting entailed human and material losses, incoherent policies, the failure to address public health issues like the plague, and heavy taxes to fund these predatory warriors, not to speak of the disastrous effects on the legitimacy of the Porte unable to guarantee the security and welfare of its subjects.

Most plausibly, the French intended to stay when they landed at Abu Qir close to Alexandria, even though the almost immediate destruction of their fleet by the British changed the game.⁴ As already in the past, Egypt was an enormous granary, conveniently located to control the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the movements of goods and persons between North Africa and Asia on the one hand and between Europe and Asia, Australia, and Eastern Africa on the other. The occupiers explicitly requested Egyptians to switch loyalty and support from the Ottomans and the Mamluks to themselves and harshly repressed any initiative that could work out in favour of Egyptian independence.

Indirectly, however, the occupation contributed to the later rise of a relatively strong central government in Cairo and the emergence of an increasingly independent and consolidated political entity. During their short presence, the French attempted to further reduce and crush what power and influence the Mamluks and the sultan still held. Having lost the Battle of the Pyramids, the surviving Mamluks largely withdrew to the southern parts of Nile Valley, generally referred to as Upper Egypt (or the Sa’id). Laws and regulations were amended or replaced with obvious effects on the population, not least with regard to property rights and taxation. Though heavily contested, the new rules largely reduced the Ottoman presence to a claim to sovereignty. As early as October 1798, a large rebellion erupted in Cairo, was violently repressed by the occupiers, and its leaders were summarily executed. Contestation further united the inhabitants, thus creating new or strengthening existing solidarities and a sense of ‘us’, the Egyptians, against ‘them’, the foreigners.

The chances for Egypt to emerge as an increasingly independent polity further improved when the British expelled the French without staying on themselves.⁵ Before occupying Egypt in earnest in 1882, the British only returned in 1807 when they briefly established a foothold in Alexandria. They left after their entreaties failed to establish the Mamluk faction of Alfi Bey as a client to run the country and guarantee their own supply with grain during the Napoleonic Wars.

As to the Porte, it was no doubt willing but unable to re-establish control over Egypt. On the ground, its representatives and troops were divided into different loyalty groups; frequently, the officers and soldiers were not paid. Though an Ottoman officer himself, Mehmed Ali was still one among others and probably already forged his own plans. Ottoman influence and capacities further declined in 1807 when the overthrow of Sultan Selim led to a succession crisis that dragged on for some ten years. If in 1810 the Porte was still strong enough to reject Mehmed Ali’s demand to declare Egypt a serbest and thus a politically largely independent province like Algeria, it had to turn to him to fight the Greek rebellion in the 1820s that later led to Greek independence. Though ultimately defeated by the British at Navarino in 1827, the Egyptian navy provided essential support for the Porte.⁶

To cut short a long story, Egypt could emerge and consolidate as an independent polity because the Ottomans and their allies were too weak to govern it effectively and defend it against the French; the French were too weak to prevail against the British; and the British subsequently were too busy fighting in Europe. Continued Ottoman inability to control the province combined with the attempts by Western European powers to control the Eastern Mediterranean worked out in ways that for several decades saved Egypt from direct occupation and, for a shorter period of time, from indirect forms of domination. The international power vacuum allowed a strong government to emerge in Cairo, to consolidate itself in spite of various vicissitudes, and to pursue state and, later, a degree of nation-building policies.

The situation in Egypt, therefore, differed considerably from that of other parts of the Ottoman Empire. Of the local appointees who enjoyed similar independence from the Porte, the Dey of Algiers was deposed by the French who occupied the country as early as 1830. The Bey of Tunis escaped French domination till 1881 but ruled over a rather limited territory. Those of Tripolitania, part of today’s Libya, and the Hijaz, part of today’s Saudi Arabia, did not dispose of sufficient human and material resources to assert themselves. In actual fact, it was Mehmed Ali who ultimately established Ottoman rule over the Hijaz. As one author pointed out, only ‘Egypt’s resources were sufficient to render the country independent’,⁷ an aspect we shall return to below. Conversely, in Western Asia and Eastern Europe, Ottoman rule was by and large exercised far more directly, leaving less room for the local representatives of the Porte to emancipate themselves.

The centralization of power domestically

In the early years, following the departure of the French, various political forces contended for power in Egypt. To an extent, the situation recalled the divisions and infighting that with some exceptions had torn apart the country prior to the invasion. In an uncertain environment, Mehmed Ali managed to navigate established interests and forces, including the then Ottoman governor. He first forged strong ties with civilian constituencies, in particular merchants and Muslim religious scholars (ulama) who financially and ideologically supported him, but also with some Mamluks. Not without reluctance and ambiguity, the Porte in 1805 created Mehmed Ali a pasha and appointed him governor of Egypt, first and for decades on an annual basis. As such he had to send to Constantinople annual financial tribute and upon request provide the sultan with Egyptian troops. Within a decade he marginalized, defeated, or massacred his opponents and thus established himself as the – domestically – uncontested ruler of Egypt. His relative popularity and his later – apocryphal – glorification as Egypt’s first and foremost nationalist leader led Arabic speakers to naturalize him as Muhammad Ali, even though he never expressed himself in Arabic.

Contrasting with earlier Mamluk infighting, the growing centralization of power – and repression – enabled Mehmed Ali to extract surplus from his subjects in the form of tax and labour, increase government revenues, build the institutions of a state, implement ‘public’ policies in various domains, and boost economic production. Most of his decisions served the creation of a large army and navy copied on the European, in particular French, model, in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Maps
• List of abbreviations
• Chronology
• Charts
• Introduction
• 1 The formation of contemporary Egypt
• 2 Political change
• 3 Economic policies and developments
• 4 External relations
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index