Tutorial 4B

Supplementary Readings:

An alternative path: the case of Egypt, Muhammed Ali and modernization

Ahmad, Women and Gender in Islam, Chs. 8 "Social and Intellectual Change" and 9 "Discourse of the Veil"

Armajani and Ricks, Middle East: past and present, Ch.17 "Imperialism and Arabic Speaking Peoples", pp.176-85 (especially 177-9)

Stavrianos, Global Rift, "Middle East enters the Third World" (expecially pp.220-4)

[In the wake of successful janissary opposition to reform in Instanbul...] It was left to Muhammad Ali Pasha, who emerged as ruler in Egypt in the aftermath of the French invasion, to carry out the Middle East's first intensive program of modernization. An Ottoman soldier and former tobacco merchant born in Macedonia of Albanian or possibly Turkish extraction, he succeeded to the command of an Albanian regiment sent against the French. A clever, ruthless man of unexcelled cunning (he later had a translation of Machiavelli's writings prepared, only to find out that he had nothing to learn from the seemingly overrated Florentine), Muhammad Ali adeptly played off the rival mamluk factions against one another and the Ottoman governor. He gained the support of the populace and their leaders from among the ulama. In 1805, they proclaimed him governor, a position that the sultan soon formalized.... [He] established his virtual independence in a personal empire centred in Egypt. With no loyalty to Egypt as such, he maintained autocratic control until 1848 and started a dynasty that survived until 1953.

{As you read through the next few pieces, keep in mind the question, how was he able to survive the reformist movements destroying autocracy elsewhere in the empire? What, if any, of his actions differentiated his path of modernization from that of the Sultan's of Istanbul?}

Before long, the British suspected that they had saved Egypt from France only to put it into the hands of Muhammad Ali, the French on the other hand, felt that perhaps Muhammad Ali could accomplish what they had failed to do and gave him every assistance. [He] was shrewd enough to see the supremacy of European arms, technical knowledge and education. He asked the French to teach his followers. Bringing French naval and military experts to Egypt, he created a new army and navy with the latest weapons.

{Here again we see European rivalry playing itself out in 'aid' policies, a very modern phenomenon.}

Mohammed Ali's central concern was the development of a powerful army. Depending at first on his Albanian force and other heterogeneous troops, his army invaded the Sudan [the country of Sudan today] in the early 1820s. It went primarily to find recruits for a new slave army, otherwise organized along Western lines, following Salim III's example. The beginnings of modern education emerged in the form of a school for officers, a medical school to provide necessary medical care fore the troops and the like, all staffed by French instructors. When the enslaved blacks succumbed to disease, Mohammed Ali sought another source of military manpower and finally fell upon an option that no one seemed to have thought of before -- Egyptian peasants.

{Comment on this seemingly radical move. Why do you think peasants had not previously been part of the military? What difficulties can you foresee with this move?}

Using cruel means that resembled the capture of wild animals, the governor's agents conscripted large numbers of Egyptian villagers. Many fled their villages or mutilated their bodies to avoid this fate, but those who were conscripted were moulded into the most effective military force in the Middle East.

Muhammed Ali gradually abolished the existing tax-farms and pious foundations, thus restoring central control over agriculture. The peasants, in turn, continued to have customary rights to, but not freehold ownership of, particular pieces of land. They could be punished and forced to return if they fled their villages,... In a pattern of monopoly, the peasants had to sell their produce to the government at artificially low prices that left them ever deeper in debt and impoverishment, while the rule was able to get handsome profits to pay for his military adventures.

A new pattern of landlordism eventually emerged as Muhammad Ali granted land to members of his family and to other important people around him. All land remained technically under state ownership at first, with the grants again often in the form of tax-farms, but the emergence of private ownership eventually was formalized.... New crops, notably long-staple cotton helped enable Egypt to become increasingly dependent on the sale of agricultural products to Europe. After centuries of deterioration, the irrigation system was greatly improved. Ruthless measures succeeded in settling most of the relatively small bedouin population.

Muhammad Ali opened schools on the French model, he also had French books translated into Arabic. He brought in agricultural experts and by 1815 had monopolized trade in cotton, hemp, indigo, and sesame. And he built ships and harbours.... He organized state monopolies for the export of cotton, tobacco and other products. The government bought all products at low prices and sold them at great profit. In nearly forty years of his rule, the cultivated area of Egypt rose from 3,200,000 acres to 4,150,000; revenue rose from 1,203,500 pounds sterling to 4,200,000 P.S., and exports from 200,000 to 2,000,000 P.S. .

He also built factories, but these generally failed because of a lack of trained technicians, fuel and spare parts. The financial loss was staggering, but the iron determination of Muhammad Ali kept these factories going despite the loss. What spelled the doom of Muhammad Ali's industrial empire was the Anglo-Ottoman Commercial Treaty of 1838 which outlawed monopolies and trade controls and gave the British the right to buy directly from the people. This treaty was enforced in Egypt and thwarted Ali's plans top industrialize the country.

{This raises interesting questions about our ability to generalize about "Ottoman" politics and economics during this period. Clearly here, part of the 'empire' was being sacrificed for the needs of other parts. Might this have some bearing on Egyptian aggressiveness with respect to Syria etc?}

It is doubtful whether the reforms of Muhammad Ali raised the standard of living or improved the health of the masses, but they were a remarkable beginning.

{Worth looking at more closely: was this the aim of the reforms? What about the notion of 'trickle down economics'?}

Muhammad Ali opened an important channel for Western influence by sending student missions to France. Perhaps more receptive than the students to what he saw and read there was the imam accompanying them, Shaykh Rifa'ah Fafi al-Tahtawi. He left us an exciting account of his experiences and also other works that argue in favour of reopening the gates of ijtihad and of popular government... and even socialism.

At first Muhammad Ali offered his service to his weak overlord in Instanbul. He was called on for help in suppressing the "Wahhabi" Saudi rulers of Najid, who had be now occupied the Hijaz and were uncontrollably raiding into syria and Iraq, where they attacked the Shi'ite holy places. ...[Ultimately] the Saudis restored their control of central Arabia after the forces from Egypt withdrew, the Hijaz and coastal Yemen remained in Muhammed Ali's empire a little longer.

[with reference to relations to Istanbul and its sultan Mahmud II...]Mahmud Iii finally was able to carry out reforms that in part were in emulation of his vassal in Cairo...[reference to the creation of modern army units, the massacre of the janissary, the westernization of education...] Still the sultan was no match for his titular subordinate in Cairo, who came close to taking over the empire in the 1830s. Muhammad Ali allied himself with the Shibab amir in Lebanon, and his troops, commanded by Ibrahim Pasha [his son], invaded Syria with ease in 1831. Within two years they moved on through Anatolia to within 150 miles of Istanbul. Muhammad Ali's armies could almost surely have made him the strongman, or perhaps sultan, of the whole empire except for European intervention.

{The following is worthy of special note, keeping in mind the relations between the Ottoman's and the Russians throughout most of the century, and the whole set of international relations we have talked about to date.}

The challenge of his rebellious vassal (Muhammad Ali) forced the sultan into the arms of the Czar. The Russian fleet sailed to the Golden Horn, and Russian soldiers got permission to march overland to help defend Istanbul. The Treaty of Hunkiar Iskelesi (1833) established an alliance between Istanbul and St. Petersburg. This treaty obligated the former at Russia's request, to close the Straits to the warships of third powers. By implication, Russian warships were to gain access to the waterway, in contrast to the 'ancient rule' of the Ottoman Empire excluding all alike. In effect, this constituted a de facto Russian protectorate over the Ottomans and evoked protests from other capitals.

One of Muhammad Ali's initial advantages -- being welcomed with open arms in Syria because of his seemingly more orderly administration and emphasis on religious toleration -- vanished as the same oppressive methods known in Egypt appeared in Syria and bred rebellion. But when the sultan tried to push the pasha's army back from syria in 1839, the latter proved his superiority all the more. Perhaps in part because of the fear of Russia's embrace, the Ottoman fleet mutinied and transferred its loyalty to Muhammad Ali.

Thus Egypt and all the Fertile Crescent were drawn into the maze of European Power politics. The British were unhappy when the Egyptians in Syria threatened their access to India. The French, who had aided Muhammad Ali, were alarmed at the turn of events and, like the British, feared the consequences ... The sultan could not bear defeat at the hands of his vassal and prepared for war. Muhammad Ali was thus thwarted in his attempt to destroy Mahmud II, whom he held in contempt. But for eight years, Ibrahim ruled Syria with ability and enlightenment and broke down the economic isolation of the region. His enlightenment however, was more self-centred than people oriented. His heavy-handed policies and his imposition of a much-hated conscription upon the people united Muslims, Christians, Druzes and Jews in rebellion against him.

{What does this add to our sense of how the empire itself operated, or 'the view of empire from Syria'?}

Again, the European powers decided the outcome, leaving a weakened empire for Muhammad Ali and a sultan no longer dependent on St. Petersburg. Meeting in London in 1840, the representatives of the great powers decided that Muhammad Ali's forces must leave Anatolia and Syria. Austrian and British naval forces temporarily occupied Beirut... In 1841 the Sultan awarded a consolation prize to Muhammad Ali: the hereditary governship of Egypt and the Sudan for his family. Annual tribute to Istanbul was required, but while Egypt continued to be under an ottoman ruling class and in some respects a meaningful part of the empire, the sultan henceforth had little say over his vassal's affairs. [Muhammad Ali died in 1849]

[In terms of Nationalism:] The Ottomans governed most of the Fertile Crescent as a unit, with the exception of Lebanon and parts of the Arabian Peninsula under separate governments. Egypt, as we have seen, was distinct both geographically and politically. The advent of Muhammad Ali and the Subsequent history of Egypt widened the gap between the Egyptians and the peoples of the Fertile Crescent. Thus, it was easier for the intellectual elite and the political activist of Egypt to think of themselves as a separate nation. The European contacts that the reforms of Muhammad Ali provided made it easier for them to adopt European nationalism.

On the other hand, Al-Azhar University in Cairo, as the largest centre of Islamic studies, was very influential; and its teachers, like Afghani and Abduh were proclaiming the demands of Islam. Furthermore, because of the fact that there was more freedom in Egypt than in the other parts of the Ottoman Empire, many writers from Syria and Lebanon moved to Cairo and published their papers and books there. Hence, Egypt became the centre of all sorts of movements that were active in the Ottoman Empire.

{In an overall sense, then, should we be looking at Egypt as something apart from, distinct from, the Ottoman empire or an integral part of what it was becoming in the 19th century?}

[I include only a few short excerpts from Stavrianos, below. But I want you to read pp.214-20 and compare his approach and assessment with respect to Muhammad Ali himself, his success or lack thereof in economic reform, the role of the British in his success or failure, the sense of what the real 'key issues' were blocking reform -- Muhammad Ali's and/or others. It stands in substantive contrast to the views above.]

Egypt stands out in the history of the Third World for its pioneering effort to win political and economic independence from the West and to avoid the semi colonial status of the Ottoman Empire. The moving spirit behind this historic venture was Mohammad Ali... He became the pioneer innovator of the Middle East because, like Peter the Great, he understood that genuine independence required a modern army capable of resisting the West and that a modern army in turn required a modern industrial establishment to provide the necessary military equipment. Accordingly Mohammad Ali proceeded with a drive and ability reminiscent of his Russian predecessor, to impose a complete restructuring of Egyptian society.

The profits accumulated from the export of cotton and other agricultural commodities such as sugar cane and grains enabled Mohammad Ali to import industrial machinery from Europe along with the necessary technical personnel. By 1830 factories were turning out cotton, woolen, silk and linen textiles, sugar, paper, glass, leather, sulphuric acid, guns and gunpowder. Investments in industrial enterprises amounted to about 12 million P.S. by 1838. Some sixty thousand to seventy thousand workers were employed in these factories, comprising 6 to 7% of total employment, which is the same percentage of the labor force engaged in "modern" manufacturing in Egypt today. The objective was to replace foreign imports whenever possible with domestic substitutes. In fact, Egypt in the 1830s was exporting a significant quantity of manufactures goods, especially textiles, to neighbouring countries.

Muhammad Ali was more capable and energetic and disposed o more funds [than Sultan Mahmud] , thanks to the profits from his monopolies in agriculture and foreign trade, as well as his heavy land taxes and forced loans. Having eliminated the old Mamluk ruling class, he was the unquestioned ruler of the country, so that his orders were actually implemented to a degree that was impossible for any sultan working through encrusted layers of imperial bureaucracies and vested interests.

{Except it could be asked whether this was still really the case after Tanzimat reforms...}

Yet in the end Mohammad Ali failed completely, and his factories did not survive his death in 1849. The reasons were partly domestic -- his own failings and those of his subjects -- but in a more fundamental sense they were external -- the unrelenting opposition of British policy-makers, who correctly perceived Mohammad Ali's modernization effort as a direct challenge to their domination and exploitation of the entire Middle East.

Despite very real and formidable domestic difficulties (please read through this section, pp.216,7), it is at least possible that Mohammad Ali would have been partially successful if he had not had to contend also with the implacable hostility of British officialdom, especially of the imperious Foreign Minister, Lord Palmerston.

"I hate Mohammad Ali... whom I consider as nothing but an ignorant barbarian, who by cunning and boldness and mother-wit, has been successful in rebellion. ... I look upon his boasted civilization of Egypt as the arrogantest humbug; and I believe that he is as great a tyrant and oppressor as ever made a people wretched."

Behind this characteristic explosion were two concerns that preyed on Palmerston, one economic, the other strategic. In 1837, he had sent Sir John Bowring to Egypt to investigate Mohammad Ali's economic policies, about which Palmerston had received many complaints from British merchants and consuls. ... Probably a more important factor behind Palmerston's vituperation was Mohammad Ali's threat to British imperial strategy [re India].

Mohammad Ali's impact on the Middle East of his time was akin to that of a meteorite crashing in from outer space. His efforts between 1820 and 1840 represented an attempt to end Egypt's traditional subsistence economy by developing an export trade and using the proceeds to build up industries and develop a balanced and independent national economy. ... But with his superior military and economic resources [the British Lord Palmerston] successfully torpedoed Mohammad Ali's historic bid for independence from the West. Bowring's dictum [ from his earlier study, above] that "A manufacturing country Egypt never can become" proved to be, not surprisingly, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

[lastly, the question of how all this reformism, modernization and debate affected women]

In the early nineteenth century the societies of the Middle east began to undergo a fundamental social transformation. Economic encroachment by the West and entrammelment in the global economy, the emergence of "modern" states in the region, and the domination, formal or informal, of much of the area by European colonial powers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries formed the overarching economic and political parameters of the transformation.

As early as the first decades of the nineteenth century some women, particularly rural workers and lower-class women, in countries such as Egypt and Syria where European-made goods had made inroads, undoubtedly suffered as a consequence of the shifting economic and political patterns. For women in general the effects of European political and cultural encroachment were complicated and, in certain respects, decidedly negative. Nonetheless, in crucial ways the outcome of the process of change the encroachments set in motion was broadly positive...

One development was of peculiar significance to women, however: the emergence of women themselves as a central subject of national debate. For the first time since the establishment of Islam, the treatment of women in Islamic custom and law -- the license of polygamy, easy male access to divorce and segregation -- were openly discussed in Middle Eastern societies. The subject of women first surfaced as a topic of consequence in the writings of Muslim male intellectuals in Egypt and Turkey. From the start, the discussion of women and reform was embedded in considerations of the relative advancement of European societies and the need for Muslim societies to catch up. A new discourse on women emerged, overlaying rather than displacing the old classical and religious formulations on gender, and often linking issues concerning women, nationalism and national advancement, and cultural change. In the new and, by the end of the century, dominant discourse on women these issues were inextricably connected.

Egypt was at the forefront of the changes overtaking the arab world over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in many ways it was, and continues to be, a mirror of developments in the Middle East. The debate over the veil that erupted there at the turn of the nineteenth century, igniting a controversy within Egyptian society and touching off debate in other Muslim Middle Eastern capitals, marked the emergence of a new discourse. As formulated in Egypt at that time, when colonial ascendancy and class division were crucial issues, it proved to be a founding and paradigmatic discourse. Repeatedly throughout the twentieth century the issue of women and the veil,... had flared up in one or another Middle Eastern society -- and indeed in Muslim c\societies further afield -- and always the debate is charged with other issues -- culture and nationalism, "Western" versus "indigenous" or "authentic" values -- first drawn into the discourse on women at a past critical moment, a moment occurring in Egypt in the late nineteenth century. {Read the Chapter in the Library Reserve Readings on 'The Discourse of the Veil'.}

In their immediate impact, both Western economic advances and Muhammad Ali's policies adversely affected some women, particularly lower-class urban and rural women. [following from the collapse in the textile industry..]Some of the state factories had employed women, in particular factories in provincial centres [though the numbers are thought to have been small] Women received about two-thirds the wages received by men. Women, probably again only in small numbers, were also employed in other factories established by Muhammad Ali, sugar and tobacco factories, for example, and cotton-processing plants, some of which continued production into the twentieth century.

Egypt's growing entrammelment in the global economy, however, initially decreased the opportunities for women to earn a livelihood or supplemental income from textile production, whether by spinning, carding, or bleaching...[It is also speculated on the basis of recent research that...] the influx of European goods had a negative impact on other areas of local trade in ways that, again harmed women and men....

[Under Muhammed Ali] male peasants were also subject to forcible recruitment into the army, with once more the same consequences for their families; again women and children with no other means of subsistence followed thier men. They encamped in shantytowns and split the rations allotted to their men, and here too, the conditions were often appalling. If not compelled by poverty to follow men fulfilling their corvee or military duties, women suffered in their men's absence having to take on their agricultural tasks in addition to their own already onerous ones. Observers report seeing whole villages where cultivation was carried out by women.

[Following on the establishment of the school to train translators in Cairo in 1835, directed by al-Tahtawi who had spend five years studying in France], the state, at least rhetorically, adopted the view that educating women was desirable: in the late thirties the Educational Council of Egypt, of which al-Tahtawi was a member, issued a statement declaring itself "impressed by women's important contribution to the progress of civilisation in modern societies" and recommended public education for women.

Although the School for Hakimas [school for Doctors] was the only state-sponsored venture in women's education until the 1870s, the openness toward women's studying European subjects was reflected in the practices of the upper classes. Muhammad Ali's daughters and their retinues received instruction from European tutors as well as the traditional instruction in Arabic and religions. Upper-class families followed suit.... Among the middle and lower classes, a small percentage of girls continued to attend the kuttabs or traditional schools... But European type education began among these classes as well, initially by way of missionary schools, first established in the 1830s and 1840s. By 1875 an estimated 5,570 girls were attending missionary schools, among them 3,000 Egyptians; and by 1887 about 4,000 or 6,610 were Egyptian. The majority of Egyptian girls attending missionary schools were Copts, but a small number of muslims also attended...