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Peasants in Revolt — Egypt 1919

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Ellis Goldberg
Ellis Goldberg
Affiliation:
Department of Policital Science, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.
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Abstract

From March until late April 1919 Egypt suffered one of the great peasant revolts of her history and of the 20th century.1 Contemporaries viewed it as having international importance because it was the result of thirty years of European domination, and its resolution would be likely to affect all Western colonial empires.2 For us, it marks the emergence of Egyptian liberalism and the construction of the modern state.3.

The insurrection began when four leaders of the Egyptian national movement were arrested on 9 March 1919. They were then exiled to Malta for insisting that the Egyptian delegation (wafd) to the Versailles Conference be recognized, so that it could demand that Egypt be accepted as an independent national state.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , May 1992 , pp. 261 - 280
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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References

NOTES

Author's note: I would like to thank Nathan Brown, Louis Cantori, Zachary Lockman, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Robert Vitalis, and several anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting on earlier drafts. I am also grateful to seminar students in Political Science 538 who prodded me by refusing to believe earlier stories of mine and others on the 1919 Revolt. Support for research and writing of this article was provided by the Graduate School Research Fund of the University of Washington.

1 See, for example, Gabriel, Baer, “Submissiveness and Revolt of the Fellah,” in Studies in the Social History of Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).Google Scholar

2 Valentine, Chirol, The Egyptian Problem (London: Macmillan and Co., 1920), pp.vii–x.Google Scholar

3 See Afaf, Lutfi al-Sayyid Marsot, Egypt and Cromer (New York: Frederick A. Prager, 1969), p.206.Google Scholar

4 See Dāwūd, Barakāt, Taʿalū liā kalimat sawāʾ (Cairo [?], 1919), p. 8, for a comparison of Egypt and Nigeria as colonial situations.Google Scholar

5 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Rāfiʿī, Thawrat sanat 1919 (in two parts) (Cairo: Maktabat al-Nahḍa al-Miṣriyya, 1946).Google Scholar

6 Leonard, Binder, at least, seems to share this judgment: “The revolution of 1919 will bear much new scholarship and reinterpretation,” he writes in In a Moment of Enthusiasm (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 38.Google Scholar The available iterature has increased recently. See Muḥammad, Anis, Dirāsāt fi wathāʾiq thawrat sanat 1919 (Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1963);Google ScholarʿAṣim, Dasūqī, Thawrat 1919 fi al-aqālīm “min al-wathāʾiq al-barīṭaniyyah (Cairo: University Writer's Press, 1981);Google ScholarReinhard, Schulze, Die Rebellion der aegyptischen Fallahin 1919 (Bonn: Ballbek Verlag, 1981):Google ScholarLaṭifa, Muḥammad Salim, Miṣr fi al-ḥarb al-ʿāiamiyyah al-ūlā (Cairo: Egyptian Book Organization, 1984);Google ScholarMarkaz, Wathāʾiq wa-Tārikh Miṣr al-Muʿāaṣir, Shuhaāʾd thawrat sanat 1919 (Cairo: Egyptian Book Organization, 1984),Google Scholar introduction and conclusion by Nabil ʾAbd al-Ḥamid Sayyid Aḥmad. The most recent addition to the literature is Nathan, Brown, Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt: The Struggle Against the State (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

7 Chirol, , The Egyptian Problem, p. 134.Google Scholar

8 Schulze, , Die Rebellion. Schulze's argument seems strange on its face. If the peasants never referred to Zaghlul as the Mahdi, then why should we assume that they regarded the movement he led as a new form of Mahdism? The peasants did refer to ʿAbbas Hilmi, the deposed Khedive, as a mahdi, which suggests that they rather clearly differentiated between a utopian future involving a mahdi and a more realistic—albeit quite radical—one with the Wafd. See for example FO 371/3711/12827 on the refusal of cloth merchants in Mansura to sell red cloth to European women because it would be needed for the near return of ʿAbbas as well as popular poetry of the time which clearly refers to ʿAbbas in millenarian terms (FO 371/3714/467; see also n. 91).Google Scholar

9 Vatikiotis, P. J., The History of Egypt, 3d ed. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), P. 265. Vatikiotis quickly reverts to an explanation by irrationality, however, saying that it was natural for the peasants to explode.Google Scholar

10 Salim subscribes at least in part to this thesis. See Salim, , Miṣr fi al-ḥarb, p. 118.Google Scholar Brown provides a good picture of the degree to which British control and manipulation of the local market allowed them to succeed in this venture (Brown, , Peasants, p. 199).Google Scholar

11 Salim makes a rather different, and I think far more telling, point about anger regarding what were widely understood to be forced donations to the Red Cross. Forced contributions for the care of wounded soldiers were widely perceived as unjust in a population suffering from hunger and penury (Miṣr fi al-ḥarb, p. 273). In a somewhat different vein, Ṭāriq al-Bishrī makes the clearest case on this in Al-muslimūn wa-al-aqbāṭ fi iṭār al-jamāʿa al-waṭaniyya (Cairo: Dār al-Waḥda, 1982), especially in his characterization of Saʿd Zaghlul's meeting with the press in Paris, pp. 134–35.Google Scholar

12 See Avner, Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. I.Google Scholar

13 The war could place a severe strain on the Egyptian economy short of massive starvation. In Palestine, “the people of the towns were in severe distress, much cultivated land was left untilled; the stocks of cattle and horses had fallen to a low ebb,” according to An Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1921), p. 3. Distress in Palestine arose from Ottoman seizure of food from the local population. Shibli Shumayyil cabled Theodore Roosevelt on 28 May 1916, warning of imminent starvation in Lebanon and Syria (I am indebted to Susan Ziadeh for sharing the fruits of her forthcoming dissertation with me on this point).Google Scholar

14 See Alan, Richards, Egypt's Agricultural Development 1800–1980: Technical and Social Change (Boulder, Cob.: Westview, 1982), pp. 61–63.Google Scholar

15 See Bent, Hansen and Michael, Wattleworth, “Output and Consumption of Basic Foods in Egypt, 1886–1968,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9 (1978), 449–69 (see Fig. 3A on p. 462 of three-year moving averages of per capita consumption).Google Scholar

16 See Brown, , Peasants, p. 200.Google Scholar

17 FO 37 1/20835, Brunyate (acting financial adviser) memorandum.

18 FO 141/797/2689, Sir Archibald Murray, commander in chief of the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces, 23 May 1917.

19 FO 848/5, Brigadier General Owen Thomas from Shafik Pasha, minister of agriculture.

20 FO 368/1902/204712, a note from W. Ross Taylor for the Supplies Control Board, 9 November 1918.

21 Ibid.

22 See Richards, , Agricultural Development, p. 64, and FO 368/1902/204712 in 1918.Google Scholar

23 Here I use “entitled” in its more or less ordinary sense. A more rigorous argument involving entitlements in the sense of the word used by Amartya Sen is suggested in n.66.

24 As Offer points out, getting food became an acute problem of survival for Germans during the war and formed a preoccupation of prewar British war planning. See “Food and the German State,” and “Fear of Famine in British War Plans,” in Offer, The First World War.

25 See Frank, M. Surfact, The Grain Trade During the World War (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1928), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

26 See Great, Britain, Statistical Department, Board of Trade, Statistical Abstract for the Several British Overseas Dominions and Protectorates (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1924), no. 56.Google Scholar

27 FO 368/1902/98510.

28 See Paul, de Hevesy, World Wheat Planning and Economic Planning in General (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), p. 429.Google Scholar

29 FO 368/1902/129624, 24 July 1918; see also Chirol, , The Egyptian Problem, p. 133.Google Scholar

30 FO 368/1902/132092, 29 July 1918.

31 FO 368/1905/98508, note sent 9 May 1918.

32 Ibid.; other statistical sources indicate imports had risen to about 70,000 tons annually in the immediate prewar period.

33 Ibid.; Wingate to Foreign Office, 4 May 1918; see also Richards, , Agricultural Development, p. 127, and the Statistical Abstract.Google Scholar

34 Lord, Lloyd, Egypt Since Cromer (London: MacMillan and Co., 1933), pp. 244–45.Google Scholar

35 See Richards, , Agricultural Development, Tables 3.7 and 4.2.Google Scholar

36 Elgood, P. G., The Transit of Egypt (London: Edward Arnold, 1928), p. 210;Google Scholarde, Hevesy, World Wheat Planning, gives the five-year average for wheat and flour imports before the war as 19.8 percent of consumption and for the five-year period after the war as 21.6 percent of consumption. For the 1914–1919 period, imports were only 5 percent of consumption and an average shortfall of 6.1 million bushels for the period 1914–1919 appears, i.e., less than average human consumption for the preceding period. The situation worsened as the war continued.Google Scholar

37 See SirJames, Wilson, “The World's Wheat,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 84,3 (05 1921), 329–78, esp. p. 336.Google Scholar

38 Ibid pp. 338, 344.

39 FO 368/2087/145707; see also Elgood, , Transit, p. 227.Google Scholar

40 FO 848/4, note by SirBrunyate, , p. 10, of the final report of the Milner Commission.Google Scholar

41 Elgood, , Transit, p. 227.Google Scholar

42 See Felice, Vinci “Cereales,” Metron 2 (1922), 196–226, (esp. pp. 201, 213).Google Scholar

43 The use of cottonseed oil seems to have begun shortly after the turn of the century. The oil was used directly, and it was also the basis for a kind of margarine which began to replace butter among poorer Egyptians. See United States Department of Commerce and Labor, Daily Consular and Trade Reports, 48 (29 08 1910), 625.Google Scholar

44 John, Todd, “The Uses of Egyptian Cotton Seed,” L'Egypte Contemporaine 2 (1911), 209–21, esp. p.210.Google Scholar

45 Todd, , “The Uses of Egyptian Cotton Seed,” p. 212.Google Scholar

46 FO 368/1899/117883. Oil and sugar were in even scarcer supply than cereals, and by summer 1917 there was less than two weeks' supply of sugar in the United Kingdom. It is surprising in this situation that Egyptian sugar was not taken. See Lord Bledisloe's remarks on Wilson's, “The World's Wheat.”

47 FO 368/1899/108846, 18 June 1918.

48 FO 368/1899/123539, 14 July 1918.

49 FO 368/1899/137255, 27 July 1918.

50 FO 368/1899/137255, 27 July 1918.

51 FO 368/1899/137255, 27 July 1918.

52 FO 368/1899/200056, 3 October 1918.

53 FO 368/1899/204669, 12 October 1918.

54 FO 368/1899/204669, 12 October 1918.

55 FO 362/1899/124200, 12 July 1918.

56 FO 361/1899/156787 and 206303.

57 United States Commerce Reports, 76 (1 04 1919), 18.Google Scholar

58 FO 368/2089/39620, 12 Macrch 1919.

59 Statistical Abstract, no. 56.Google Scholar

60 United States Commerce Reports, no. 76, 18.Google Scholar

61 Dasuqi, , Thawrat 1919 fi al-aqālīm, p. 23.Google Scholar

62 FO 848/4.

63 See Annuaire Statistique 1935, “Mouvement de la population,” Table I, 1917–1932 and Graph 1, “Naissances et décès declares.”Google Scholar

64 FO 848/4 131605, Table VIII; the Cairene laborers' diet was very high in grain. Of total consumption, 72.5 kilograms out of 88.71 kilograms were in wheat, maize, or bread for the better-off Cairene laborers. By December 1917 these accounted for over 65 percent of the food budget (up from 48% in February 1914).

65 FO 848/4 131605.

66 The argument so far is commonsensical. Those interested in a more formal presentation of the issues involved are referred to Appendix B of Amartya, Sen. Poverty and Famines (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). Sen's ldquo;r”—the protected urban workforce food entitlement—here refers to the military and, thus, the peasant entitlement does not equal Sen's q2 which is the total food peasants grow.Google Scholar

67 As straw became scarce, animals began to compete with people for the cereal supply. See Major, General L. J. Blenkinsop and Lieutenant, Colonel J. W. Rainey, eds., Veterinary Services, Official History of the Great War (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1925), pp. 169, 222. By 1918 the straw shortage was so severe that army rations were limited to five pounds of tibnper animal per day.Google Scholar

68 F0 371/423331: “Tonnage situation very bad and every ton of grain or fodder secured in Egypt went to relieve the necessity of importing supplies… no doubt we squeezed the country very hard.”

69 See, for example, Nicholas, Hopkins, Agrarian Transformation in Egypt (Boulder, Colo.: West- view Press, 1987), pp. 148–52.Google Scholar

70 See Brigstoke, R. W., “Grievances of Fellahin”: “I know of cases where men were obliged to provide more tibn than their land had yielded, having to buy the difference at PT 115 and supply it to the army at PT 50 per heml” (FO 848[3], 12 07 1919).Google Scholar Also Major, G. W. Courtney, “Memorandum” (FO 848[3]): “Markaz Santa in Gharbiyya and Minuf in Minufiyya were unable to supply all the tibn required and had to buy at higher prices to supply it to the army at requisition [lower] prices.” Also a Major Allard is cited as reporting Upper Egyptian villagers who had to buy on the free market to meet requisition quotas (FO 848[3]).Google Scholar

71 Blenkinsop, and Rainey, , Veterinary Services, p. 213 (for 1917), p. 230 (for 1918). Syce was the common transliteration of “sāʾis” or driver.Google Scholar

72 Richards, , Agricultural Development, p. 95.Google Scholar

73 See for example Chirol, , The Egyptian Problem, p. 136. He presents the peasants as largely rational actors before 1916, but thereafter ignores the effect of army recruitment on wages. A comparison of Chirol with Elgood and the private correspondence reveals the ideological intentions of Chirol's book.Google Scholar

74 F0 141/1797/2689, 6 May 1918. The American consul reported that wages for farm labor rose more than threefold, from 12.5 cents to 40 cents per day. See American Consular Reports, no. 112, (13 May 1919), p. 809.

75 F0 141/797/2689.

76 F0 141/797/2689, 13 May 1917.

77 See, for example, the circular from Rushdi Pasha, interior ministry, to the provincial mudirs mentioning “certain notables” who spread rumors regarding the Labour Corps to keep wages down. Rushdi urges that the mudirs intervene to tell the peasants the truth and also that landowners be asked if they think wage rates in the countryside would decline if massive conscription were introduced (FO 141/797/2689, 24 August 1917). On 7 1May 1918, Rushdi issued another circular (itself quoting a 21 October 1917 letter) to the effect that the ministry of the interior was aware “that some notables were for private purposes thwarting recruiting” and urging the local officials to recruit more vigorously under threat of punishment.

78 F0 371/3199/170794 15 September 1918.

79 F0 371/3199/170794, 6 May 1918. For the migration of workers from Upper Egypt to Alexandria, see Brown, , Peasant Politics.Google Scholar

80 lnspector Nizam Wise of the interior ministry admitted in testimony after the insurrection ended that he had lost more than 200 policemen or ghafirs in the course of requisitioning grain or recruiting peasants into the Labour Corps. “But for these measures,” he commented, “he did not consider that it would have been possible to induce the people of Upper Egypt to rise” (FO 848/4; Sir Rennell Rodd's “Summary of Evidence”).

81 F0 141/797/2689, for an account of a village attack on a jail in which draftees were held in Daqahliyya. The same file also contains indications that as early as I May 1916, it was clear that many “volunteers” were already not volunteers, and in Bani Suwayf there were mass escapes from barbed- wire encampments by 27 May 1917.

82 F0 14 1/797/2689; memorandum from the Ministry of the Interior to the High Command in Egypt, 21 May 1918.

83 F0 848/4, 15 December 1919.

84 Again, Allard in Courtney's report FO 848(3).

85 Samir, Radwan, Capital Formation in Egyptian industry and Agriculture,1882–1967 (London: Ithaca Press, 1974), Appendix A-6 (p. 265).Google Scholar

86 SirGeorge, MacMunn and Cyril, Falls, compilers, Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1928) p. 93.Google Scholar

87 MacMunn, and Falls, , Military Operations, p. 23.Google Scholar

88 Radwan, , Capital Formation, p. 265. In round numbers the decrease is from 118,000 to 95,000 in 1916 with a slight increase (to 99,000) in 1917.Google Scholar

89 Ibid.

90 Ibid.

91 Ora1 presentations may differ greatly. In Schulze, p. 122, this poem is given as “Woe on us, Wingate/Who has carried off corn/Carried off cattle/Carried off camels/Carried off children/Leaving only our lives/For love of Allah, now let us alone.” Another version of the first stanza can be found in Barry Cannan and John, McPherson, eds., The Man Who Loved Egypt (London: Ariel Books, 1985), p. 150.Google Scholar

92 F0 371/3714/467.

93 MacMunn, and Falls, , Military Operations, p. 365.Google Scholar

94 F0 141/747.

95 See Army Estimates of Effective and Non-Effective Services for the Year 1919–1920 (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1919) in Sessional Papers (Accounts and Papers), vol. 32(1919), pp. 4,9.Google Scholar

96 Cyril, Falls and Becke, A. F., Military Operations: Egypt and Palestine Pt. II, From June 1917 to the End of the War (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1930), pp.413–14.Google Scholar

97 See Allard, in Courtney's report FO 848(3), who cites El Hawtat as the particular village in the area.

98 F0 141/753/8940. The following paragraphs are all taken from this source, the report by Percival, J. submitted 26 03 1919.Google Scholar

99 Rafiʿi, , Thawrat sanat 1919, Pt. I, p. 230, specifies that he was inspector of prisons for Upper Egypt.Google Scholar

100 FO 141/747/8954.

101 Muḥiammad, Ḥusayn Haykal, Mudhakkirāt ft al-siyasa al-misriyya, pt. I (Cairo:Maktabat alNahḍ a al-miṣriyya, 1951) p. 80.Google Scholar

102 Rafiʿi, , Thawrat sanat 1919, Pt. 1, p. 234; given accounts such as these; it appears mre work needs to be done before we can assess claims about the degree of Wafdist organization behind the revolt.Google Scholar

103 Rafiʿi, , Thawrat sanat 1919, Pt. 1, pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

104 Afaf Marsot appears to be one of the few observers to have noticed the collaborative relationship between the Wafd and the government in March. See Egypt Since Cromer, pp. 205–6.Google Scholar

105 FO 848 (10), army general headquarters historical summary of the revolt.

106 Official Reports of the House of Commons, 20 03 1919, p. 2350. The speaker was ever congratulatory imperialist Captain Ormsby-Gore.Google Scholar

107 The most concise rendition of the history behind Brunyate's proposal and the terms of the proposal itself are in Rafiʿi, , Thawrat sanat 1919, pp. 71–72.Google Scholar

108 F0 371/1180. The account is contained in a message from Sir Reginald Wingate to Lord Cromer regarding an interview with the sultan on 12 December 1918. Fuʾad “visibly blanched as I told him it was a case of ‘victor’ and ‘vanquished’” and remarked that the interests of 14 million Egyptians had to take precedence over those of 150,000 foreigners.

109 lnstructive in this regard are the telegrams addressed to Woodrow Wilson in 1919 that make up a large fraction of the White Book published by the Wafd. See Egyptian Delegation to the Peace Conference: Collection of Official Correspondence from November 11, 1918 to July 14, 1919 (Paris: Egyptian Delegation, 1919).Google Scholar