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

2. Restructuring after the Cotton Boom

37 2 Restructuring after the Cotton Boom ⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗⠖⠗ O my eye, why do you out of all eyes suffer—ha allah! All the eyes of the people see you—ha allah. I am calling out—o eye—complaining to Malik—ha allah. And Abu Hanifa will be our rightful judge—ha allah. And if I am wrong, love will chastise me—ha allah. And if you are wrong God will punish you—ha allah! (Boatman’s song, Egypt, 1900s) —N.G. Mavris, Contribution à l’étude de la chanson populaire Egyptienne n the wake of the cotton boom of the early 1860s, and after the accession of Khedive Ismail Pasha (1863–1879), the forms of restructuring and collective action among crafts and service workers under study here started to take definite shape. World economic integration was deepened and transformed by rapid commercial expansion and the galloping increases in Egypt’s foreign debt. After the 1860s, more than half of Egypt’s external trade started to be with Europe, and the transnational economy became for the first time an important overall force in shaping Egypt’s polity, economy, and society. British and French power, built on the economic strength of world capitalism, was increasingly projected into the region. And local self-strengthening entered a new phase with the vigorous efforts of the new Isma’il Pasha (1863–1879) to overcome Egypt’s increasingly evident subordination. Heavy taxation and deepening competition from imports and southern European migrant labor forced crafts and I service workers to adapt and restructure in new ways in order to survive. This chapter analyzes this restructuring, with particular reference to construction , garment making, textiles, and urban transport. Unequal World Economic Integration The early 1860s witnessed a wave of economic expansion which greatly increased Egypt’s commerce with Europe. The American civil war of the early 1860s drastically reduced supplies of New World cotton on international markets and thus drove up cotton prices. Egypt’s cotton growers were ready to take advantage of this development. Domestic political security was largely guaranteed. Cotton was already grown in some quantities, assisted by government canal dredging and irrigation schemes. Financial and commercial institutions were expanding in Alexandria and had appeared in Cairo by the 1860s. And Egypt’s communications infrastructure was developing with the arrival of the railway in 1856 and the expansion of harbor facilities in Alexandria from the 1830s onwards. Thus, with rising prices, the value of Egypt’s exports of ginned and pressed cotton roughly quadrupled during the early 1860s, and large-scale cotton ginning and pressing was rapidly developed in Lower Egypt. The nominal value of imports, purchased with cotton revenue, increased by about a factor of four during the early years of the 1860s and then fluctuated around an only slightly rising average value over the next two decades. Imports were valued at between one and two million LE in the 1850s, but in the 1860s and early 1870s were worth between five and six million LE, and thus came to be worth about one LE per head of population.1 Whereas imports in the pre-1860 period had been dominated by cotton cloth, a more diversified array of manufactured goods were purchased in Egypt from abroad after the cotton boom of 1861–65, although cotton cloth remained the single largest category of import by far.2 Arguably for the first time, the exchange of raw materials for manufactured goods became a genuinely important factor in shaping the economy. Cotton prices certainly went up and down, but without significant increases in productivity, the value added to the economies of northwest Europe from manufactured products was starting to outstrip the value added in Egypt’s economy from raw materials, for all the wealth that cotton brought to a small minority in that country.3 Commercial integration had an important impact on the composition of the ruling strata in Egypt. Members of the pasha’s family and their allies had received land grants from Mehmet Ali from the 1840s onwards. These grants seem to have been related to Mehmet Ali’s attempts to continue to 38 The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories secure his monopolies in agricultural production after they were officially outlawed in 1840. Hence the fact that “for most officeholders, Muhammad Ali’s land grants were a punishment, not a privilege.”4 However, from the later 1840s onwards, rising cotton...