The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: Crafts and Guilds in Egypt, 1863-1914

4. Restructuring under Colonial Rule

105 4 Restructuring under Colonial Rule ⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗ After the midday meal, the work begins again, God help us to the end of the labor. The day will last a long time yet, God help us to the end of the labor. —Construction workers’ song, Upper Egypt, 1900s smail’s regime was plunged into crisis between 1876 and 1879 because it could no longer meet all interest payments on the debt to European financiers. Egypt’s economy had not been able to deliver the resources which could have saved self-strengthening projects, which as a result not only failed to deliver independence, but even acted as a beachhead for European imperialism by plunging Egypt into debt. Ismail was too independent for the European Debt Commission, which was convened in 1876 to take charge of Egypt’s finances, and pressure from Britain and France led to Ismail ’s replacement by his son, the more pliable Tawfiq (1879–1892). At this point, in a bid to save Egypt from European control and khedivial autocracy, elements from the army, the constitutionalist provincial notables, certain merchants, ulama, and popular groups combined to mount a major rebellion , led by Ahmad ’Urabi, a colonel of peasant origins.1 While Tawfiq attempted to hang on to his battered authority from his refuge on a British frigate off the coast at Alexandria, ’Urabi’s forces controlled much of the Egyptian government and territory during 1881 and 1882. The British could not tolerate the threat they perceived to bondholders’ interests, and invaded the country in the fall of 1882, crushing ’Urabi’s forces at Tal al-Kabir. I With these events, the looming asymmetries that imperialism had imposed on Egypt from at least 1840 onwards were written into the local government itself with the construction of a colonial state which seized de facto control of the centralized bureaucracy built up by Ismail and his predecessors , while continuing the fiction of Ottoman sovereignty. State building, which had sought to strengthen Egypt in the face of European military and economic power, was now replaced by a colonial program directly serving that power, and seeking not to strengthen Egyptian society and economy against Europe, but to parsimoniously secure her territory and population for the bondholders and the British Empire. Under this kind of rule, world economic integration deepened radically, particularly during the boom years of 1897–1907, when direct investment was added to existing financial and growing commercial ties. During these decades of rapid change, crafts and service workers continued to multiply their numbers at least in line with rapid population growth. In order to forge livelihoods under conditions which were now remote from those of even the early nineteenth century, they had little choice but to restructure in ever more far-reaching ways, and the patterns of adaptation , self-exploitation, and labor squeezing which had become visible after the cotton boom were deepened. Although crafts and service workers continued vigorously to engage in collective action to protect themselves, and although substantial strikes were joined in 1907 and afterwards, and new organizations such as syndicates and unions were formed with the abandoning of the guilds and the rise of nationalism, crafts and service workers were still unable to substantially change the terms of their restructuring or achieve anything close to popular participation in the colonial state. The Colonial State and World Economic Integration Whether or not the British remained vague in defining their presence in Egypt, only abrogating Ottoman sovereignty in 1914, and whether or not colonial officials, with an eye on French opposition, continued to give the impression that Britain was about to leave at any moment, the first two decades of British policy in Egypt were dominated by the mantra of “sound finance.” The invasion had been in the interests of metropolitan bondholders , who owned approximately 100 million LE in Egyptian government bonds; and under Lord Cromer (1883–1907), “sound finance” was about effectively repaying the debt to this colonial bourgeoisie. As Cromer himself put it in one of his annual reports, it is “incumbent on those who are responsible for the administration of Egyptian finance to bear constantly in 106 The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories mind that the secure maintenance of financial equilibrium constitutes the first and most important interest of the country, and that both the execution of fiscal reforms, however desireable, as well as the expenditure of money on the...