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On the Theory and Practice of Compradors: The Role of ʿAbbud Pasha in the Egyptian Political Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Robert Vitalis
Robert Vitalis
Affiliation:
Department of GovernmentUniversity of Texas, Austin
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Extract

One of the most resilient ideas introduced to the analysis of economic and political change under colonialism and imperialism is the “comprador” and, by extension, the “comprador bourgeoisie.” The comprador in essence embodies or internalizes the basic theoretical problem of the peripheral political economy: economic activity oriented primarily for the benefit of the other.1 By strict definition, compradors are native agents or partners of foreign investors who operate in some form in the local economy. However, in the theoretical context of assessing the possibilities for local industrial development, compradors represent forces that hinder change. As “agents of foreign imperialism,” they act “against the interest of the national economy.”2

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , August 1990 , pp. 291 - 315
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

Notes

Author's note: A version of this article was presented at the twenty-second annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Beverly Hills, California, panel on State and Society in Modern Egypt, 5 November 1988. I am indebted to Professors Catherine Boone, Nathan Brown, Ellis Goldberg, Joel Gordon, Clement Henry, and Peter Trubowitz for incisive comments on earlier drafts. In addition, I received valuable criticism from anonymous IJMES reviewers. I am especially grateful for the careful reading provided by Professor Robert L. Tignor.

1 Fanon paints the picture clearly: “Because it is bereft of ideas, because it lives to itself and cuts itself off from the people…the national middle class will have nothing better to do than to take on the role of manager for Western enterprise, and it will in practice set up its country as the brothel of Europe.” Frantz, Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York, 1968), p. 154.Google Scholar

2 For the historical roots of this influential argument, see the debates between Lenin and the Indian Marxist, M. N. Roy, during the meetings of the Third International, as reviewed in Alec, Gordon, “The Theory of the Progressive National Bourgeoisie,” Journal of Contemporary Asia (10 1973), 192–203. For the quote, see p. 197.Google Scholar

3 The fundamental interests of the “mercantile comprador class” consist in the continuation of a strong foreign economic presence, increased integration into the world market, and in preventing the growth of a dynamic local industrial sector. See Paul, Baran, The Political Economy of Growth (New York, 1957), pp. 194–95;Google ScholarPeter, Evans, Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton, 1979), p. 39.Google Scholar

4 Gordon, , “National Bourgeoisie,” p. 192.Google Scholar

5 See for instance the influential studies by Shuhdī, ⊂Ahiyya al-Shāf⊂ī, Tahawwur al-Saraka al-Wasaniyya al-Mihriyya, 1882–1956 (Cairo, 1957);Google Scholar⊂Abd, al-⊂Atīm Ramahān, “al-Būrjwāziyya al-Mihriyya qabla Thawrat 23 Yūliyū,” al-Kātib, 123 (06 1971), 91–102;Google Scholar⊂Abd, al-⊂Atīm Ramahān, Sirā⊂ al-habaqāt fī Mihr, 1837–1952 (Beirut, 1978);Google ScholarMahmoud, Hussein, Class Conflict in Egypt:1945–1970 (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

6 Recent studies by Davis and Tignor, representing the most detailed work to date on Egypt's business community, advance arguments broadly consonant with the comprador–national class fraction model outlined earlier. Davis charts the rise and fall of national capital in Egypt. See Eric, Davis, “Bank Misr and the Political Economy of Industrialization in Egypt” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1977);Google Scholar and the revised version published as Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization, 1920–1941 (Princeton, N.J., 1983).Google Scholar Tignor recognizes problems in the model but fails to carry his analysis to its logical conclusion. He remains within the comprador–national framework, arguing, in essence, that compradors sometimes become national capitalists. See Robert, L. Tignor, State, Private Enterprise, and Economic Change in Egypt, 1918–1952 (Princeton, N.J., 1984), especially p. 7;Google Scholaridem, “Dependency Theory and Egyptian Capitalism, 1920–1950,” African Economic History, 9 (1980), 101–18;Google Scholaridem, “Nationalism, Economic Planning and Development Projects in Interwar Egypt,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 10, 2 (1977), 185–208.Google Scholar

7 This analysis and the theoretical discussion which it buttresses is adapted from Robert, Vitalis, “Building Capitalism in Egypt: The ⊂Abbud Pasha Group and the Politics of Construction” (Ph.D. diss., Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988).Google Scholar

8 In the Tignor works cited in n. 6 as well as in his recent “Decolonization and Business: The Case of Egypt,” The Journal of Modern History, 59, 3 (09 1987), 479–505, ⊂Abbud is the only businessman identified—and referred to repeatedly—as a comprador.Google Scholar

9 Davis, , Challenging Colonialism, p. 152.Google Scholar

10 Marius, Deeb, Party Politics in Egypt: The Wafd and Its Rivals, 1919–1939 (London, 1976), p. 77.Google Scholar These same views are held by numerous Egyptian scholars as well. For an insightful review, see ⊂āsim, al-Disūqī, Naswa fahm tārikh Mihr al-iqthāadī al-ijtimā⊂ī (Cairo, 1981).Google Scholar

11 The level of analysis problem that exists when a concept is used both with reference to an individual and to a social class is quite real. However, broad claims made about the comprador class in Egypt rest on weak empirical foundations. Surveying the literature, ⊂Abbud appears as the best case for analysts since, judging by the documentation, he is essentially their only case. Those interested in salvaging the concept might conceivably engage in further empirical work. I argue against such an approach since I find the exercise of distinguishing comprador and national capitalists useless in differentiating the Egyptian business class.

12 Tignor, , Private Enterprise, p. 137.Google Scholar

13 This argument parallels the one made for Anatolia in the 19th century. See Resat, Kasaba, “Was There a Compradore Bourgeoisie in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Western Anatolia?” Review, 11, 2 (Spring, 1988), 215–30.Google Scholar

14 For a structuralist analysis that yields the same conclusion see Patrick, Clawson, “The Development of Capitalism in Egypt,” Khamsīn, 9 (1981), 77–116.Google Scholar

15 See Richard, L. Sklar, “Postimperialism: A Class Analysis of Multinational Corporate Expansion,” Comparative Politics, 9, 1 (1976), 75–92;Google Scholar and reprinted in David, G. Becker, Jeff, Frieden, Sayre, P. Schatz, and Richard, L. Sklar, Postimperialism: International Capitalism and Development in the Late Twentieth Century (Boulder, Colo., 1987), quoting p. 28. The assumption of “subservience” which it implies is rarely subject to testing. Illustration in the case of ⊂Abbud is provided later. The case suggests that the relationship between foreign and local capitalists is no less ambivalent and conflictual than that between multinationals and state managers, as elaborated in Evans, Dependent Development. Kasaba, “Compradore Bourgeoisie,” develops a similar argument.Google Scholar

16 Robert, L. Tignor, “The Egyptian Revolution of 1919: New Directions in the Egyptian Economy,” Middle Eastern Studies, 12, 3 (10, 1976), 41–67.Google Scholar

17 “The pretence that the Bank Misr represented the interests of the populace at large was gradually dispelled as it came to be identified with the more conservative elements of Egyptian society…” The bank was attacked in the pages of al-Wahan as early as 1924. See Davis, , Challenging Colonialism, p. 128.Google Scholar Harb's dissimulations at a shareholders' meeting in 1929 is illustrative of the group's continued resort to nationalism. See his defense of the Misr group's joint venture with German cotton exporters, described in Robert, L. Tignor, “Bank Misr and Foreign Capitalism,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 8 (1977), 161–81, see especially 171. The export firm in question, R. and O. Lindemann, founded in 1907, was backed by the Deutsche Orientbank Actingsellschaft, a subsidiary of the giant Dresdner Bank. The Misr group and its historians would go out of their way to argue that these were not “foreign interests.”Google Scholar

18 For instance, the group's raison d'âtre has recently been described as a heroic assault against the “domination of foreign capital”; its financial collapse in 1939 and bail out by the state as a capitulation to foreign capital and the “Europhile segment of the Egyptian bourgeoisie which felt little commitment to the industrialization policies and goals” of the Misr group's founders. See Davis, , Challenging Colonialism, pp. 8–9.Google Scholar

19 This section summarizes analyses found in Vitalis, Building Capitalism, and idem, “The Emergence of Local Business Groups in Nineteenth Century Egypt,” paper presented at the third annual conference on Ottoman history, “The Impact of 1838: Anatolia and Egypt Compared,” Fernand Braudel Center, State University of New York at Binghamton, 7–8 10 1988.Google Scholar

20 The quotations are drawn from Tignor, , “Bank Misr,” p. 164. The general thrust of his analysis is compatible with the point being made here, though he makes too much of the bank's “nationalist and antiforeign impulses.”Google Scholar

21 Deeb, , Party Politics, p. 77. Emphasis mine. The argument is a common one.Google Scholar

22 I am grateful to Helmut Fischer for the information on the Misr group's negotiations with the Handelsbank and Empain.

23 See al-Muhawwar, 18 07 1952Google Scholar and his interview with Musā, Aabrī in al-jīl al-Jadīd, 28 02 1955.Google Scholar Most biographical accounts of ⊂Abbud in the secondary literature are drawn from the personality reports of the British Residency. There is unfortunately very little else to rely on. Interested readers should also see al-Ahrām, 6 02 1970;Google Scholarākhar Sā⊂a, 16 10 1974.Google Scholar

24 al-Muhawwar, 18 07 1952.Google Scholar Also see “Pharoah of Free Enterprise,” Time, 10 10 1953, where ⊂Abbud recalled “how he decided to buck the foreign businessmen who then monopolized the nation's industry…[s]tarting with two British companies which handled all the dredging of Egypt's irrigation canals…” While he tended to emphasize this point only later and at an obviously convenient point in his career (the first time I saw this mentioned was in the al-Muhawwar article, less than one week before the 1952 coup) it was more or less true. Until his arrival, the Behera Company dominated dredging work. ⊂Abbud should have qualified his description of it as a British company. It was locally registered, and a member of the Salvago family served as chairman. He also neglected to mention that he did his largest dredging work, both in Egypt and abroad, as chairman of a joint venture with British partners.Google Scholar

25 ⊂Abbud was officially expelled from the party in October 1928. See the Times (London), 22 10 1928.Google Scholar His relations with the Wafd's leadership had deteriorated after he backed the losing Fath-allah Barakat faction in the succession struggle that followed the untimely death of Zaghlul, the party leader, in August 1927. See British Public Records Office, Kew Gardens [hereafter omitted] F[oreign] O[ffice]371/13127, J194/18/16, Lloyd, to FO, 5 01 1928.Google Scholar On Barakat's failed campaign to replace Zaghiul, see Afaf, Marsot, Egypt's Liberal Experiment: 1922–1936 (Berkeley, Calif., 1977), p. 105.Google Scholar For the business rivalries that may have been involved in the split, see the retrospective account in Akhbār al-Yawm, 5 11 1949,Google Scholar and the discussion in Vitalis, , “Building Capitalism,” p. 182. Comparing these sources, Tignor's “Nationalism,” (203) observation that “[b]y 1927 he had disassociated himself from the party and was championing the new ministry of Muhammad Mahmud” [emphasis mine] is misleading. It should also be noted that Mahmud did not take office until late in 1928. ⊂Abbud actually backed a rival of Mahmud for prime minister as well as the dissident faction within Mahmud's own Liberal Constitutionalist party.Google Scholar

26 On Tharwat's attempt to finalize a treaty on the heels of Zaghlul's failed first round in 1924, see Jacques, Berque, Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution (New York, 1972), p. 395;Google ScholarMarsot, , Liberal Experiment, p. 103.Google Scholar On the claim that Tharwat kept the Wafd party leader, Zaghlul, informed of the progress of the negotiations, see Deeb, , Party Politics, p. 90, who cites Sidqi's memoirs as the source. According to British documents, it was ⊂Abbud, representing the ‘Zaghlulist majority,’ who was at least one of the conduits to Zaghiul. F0371/ 12359, J2345/8/16,Google ScholarSelby, to Murray, , 22 08 1927. Selby claims to have obtained independent confirmation of this.Google Scholar

27 For details on ⊂Abbud's political involvements, including maneuvers on behalf of prime ministers Sidqi, ⊂Abd al-Fattah Yahya, and Nahhas; Kings Fu⊃ad and Faruq; and British ambassadors Lord Lloyd and Sir Miles Lampson; as well as his financing Wafd election campaigns after his rapprochement with the party in 1942, see Vitalis, ‘Building Capitalism.’ A declassified American intelligence assessment is also worth noting. The Americans dismissed parties in Egypt as unimportant, ‘since all authority is in fact vested in a small group of families…There are, furthermore, wealthy persons like Ahmad Abboud Pasha who though unaffiliated with any party exercise a considerable influence on Egyptian policy.’ Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, R&A No. 2519, Political Parties and Personalities in Egypt, , Washington, D.C., 15 09 1945. Tignor, ‘Nationalism,’ 203 concludes that ⊂Abbud was active “on the fringes of politics.” This characterization does not seem appropriate.Google Scholar

28 Tignor, , “Nationalism,” 203–5;Google ScholarTignor, , Private Enterprise, pp. 138–39.Google Scholar

29 On Loraine's dissent, see for instance FO141/759, Residency File 254 on ⊂Abbud for1933, 254/1/33, “Minutes of First Meeting Held at the Residency, 10 January 1933”; F0371/17019, J303/127/16, Loraine to Peterson. For the context, namely ⊂Abbud's involvement in the attempt to weaken the Sidqi government, see Vitalis, ‘Building Capitalism,” chapter 4. The defense of ⊂Abbud by Cook is reported in FO141, Box 637 [The residency's file on ⊂Abbud for 1935], 380/2/35. An account of the lobbying on ⊂Abbud's behalf by British business associates is found in 380/3/35, enclosing memo by Kelly, , 5 03 1935.Google Scholar

30 The palace offensive against Sidqi in the summer of 1932 is uncontroversial. See, for instance, Marsot, , Liberal Experiment, pp. 160–61;Google Scholar for evidence of ⊂Abbud's involvement F037I/20916, J1989/815/16, Lampson, to FO, 16 04 1937, entry on ⊂Abbud.Google Scholar Sidqi's government fell in September 1933. The subject of Britain having abandoned its policy of ‘neutrality’ in its intervention against the palace-backed government of ⊂Abd al-Fattah Yahya is frequently discussed in traditional accounts. The commercial conflicts which were involved and ⊂Abbud's central role in these events has never been recounted, as far as I know. For details and documentation, see Vitalis, , “Building Capitalism,’ pp. 329–54.Google Scholar

31 Tignor, , Private Enterprise, p. 138;Google Scholaridem, “Nationalism,” 208.Google Scholar

32 Starting in early 1933, officials of the Foreign Office began accusing the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph of being in the pay of ⊂Abbud, and there is a long set of documents pertaining to this, for instance, FO371/17019, J127/127/16, enclosing letter from Peterson, to Loraine, , 17 01 1933. This file is particularly interesting for its insights into imperial news management in the early 1930s, once the paper's dispatches were judged hostile to Sidqi. According to later files, the ex-correspondent, Gerothwohl, worked openly as a paid consultant for ⊂Abbud. The British government, meanwhile, had ⊂Abbud under surveillance while in London in 1934, blocked his efforts to lobby British elites, and apparently intercepted his letters to King Fu⊃ad's lieutenant, Zaki al-Ibrashi. See F0371/18019, J1772/1772/16, Green File, labeled Ahmad Abboud Pasha. A dispatch from Oliphant to Lampson, 26 July 1934, enclosed a copy of an intercepted correspondence that Lampson was ordered to destroy. This file also includes a confidential memo from Thompson which reports ⊂Abbud's successful intervention to remove two Egyptian diplomats in London.Google Scholar

33 For an account of his address to the parliament committee, which praised the Wafd's founder, Zaghlul, while blasting the party, see FO371/17978, J1670/9/16, Loder (MP) to Lord, Cranborn, 12 07 1934.Google Scholar Also see ⊂Abbud's letter in the Times, “Egypt and Britain,” 30 06 1934.Google Scholar

34 For Sidqi's charge, see F0371/17978, J1228/9/16, enclosing dispatch from Heathcote-Smith (Alexandria) to Cairo, reporting a conversation with Sidqi, , 7 05 1934. Later dispatches by Lampson continued to report this as fact, for instance, see his paragraph on ⊂Afifi in F0371/20916, J1989/815,16, Egyptian Personality Report, 16 April 1937.Google Scholar

35 See the remarkable account of Docker and his role in the interwar British political economy by Davenport-Hines, R. P. T., Dudley Docker: The Life and Times of a Trade Warrior (Cambridge, 1984);Google Scholar for an early example of the benefits accruing to ⊂Abbud through this alliance, see the account of the dinner held in his honor at the House of Commons in May 1928, and his contact with the “ultraimperialist” MP, Patrick Hannon, a businessman beholden to Docker, in F0371/13120, J1575/4/16, Hannon, to Chamberlain, , 10 03 1928.Google Scholar On Hannon, see Davenport-Hines, , Dudley Docker, pp. 66, 129–31.Google Scholar

36 See St. Antony's College, Oxford, Middle East Archives, Diaries of SirMiles, Lampson, Lord, Killearn, 20 07 1934. The full unpublished diaries rather than the expurgated, published version are essential to the study of the interwar political economy. They were invaluable to my analysis of the bargaining behind the infrastructure industrialization schemes of the 1930s and 1940s.Google Scholar

37 F0371/17980, J2521/9/16, minute attached by Somers-Cocks.

38 See for instance Government of Egypt, Commission du Commerce et de l'Industrie, Rapport de la commission du commerce et de l'industrie (Cairo, 1918).Google Scholar

39 For details on the Suares group and their pioneering role in Egyptian industrial development see Vitalis, “Local Business.”

40 United States Government, National Archives, Washington, D.C., Archives of the Department of State [hereafter omitted], R[ecord] G[roup] 59, 1930–1939, 883.797, “Egyptian General Omnibus Company,” Jardine, to State, 11 04 1932, FO371/16123, J1127/429/16, including ⊂Abbud to Commercial Secretary, 16 March 1932.Google Scholar

41 Compare with the analysis in Evans, , Dependent Development, p. 162.Google Scholar

42 Most recently, Tignor, , Private Enterprise, pp. 135, 137–38.Google Scholar

43 Of the multiyear collection of documents on this case, start with F0371/16123, J1127/429/16, especially memorandum by Larkins titled “Recapitulation of the History of the Cairo Motor Omnibus Concession.” Though the issue of what constitutes control in modern corporations remains the subject of ongoing theoretical debate, most students of the Egyptian case do not provide signs that the debate informs the discussion of the subordination of comprador interests in Egypt. For a review of the corporate control literature, see John, Scott, Corporations, Classes and Capitalism, 2nd edition (London, 1986).Google Scholar

44 My summary here is based on Vitalis, , “Building Capitalism,” pp. 275–78, which in turn is based entirely on the British records. Thus the discussion should be considered provisional. This material has not previously been analyzed. The account in Tignor, Private Enterprise, focuses on the fate of Yassin, and how he was “driven out of business” by ⊂Abbud. As indicated earlier, the threat to Yassin preceded ⊂Abbud's entry into the picture—hence, the lawsuit against the government. According to British documents, the Egyptian government never took the Yassin issue seriously; Sidqi brokered a financial settlementmdash;that is, had ⊂Abbud buy him rather than drive him out. See FO371/18018, J199947sol;1651/16, enclosing memorandum on the Egyptian General Omnibus Company, August 1934. Nonetheless, British observers suspected that the Yassin issue was being used in the Cabinet as a tactic to delay settlement of the concession. In this reading, it was the convenient cover behind which the campaign in support of Empain was taking place. See especially F0371/16123, J11277/429/16, which gives details of Sidqi's instructions through Korayyim (an ally of ⊂Abbud and minister of public works) for dealing with Yassin.Google Scholar

45 Though the Empain group reassured the British that they were not interested in taking over the company, data on shareholders found in British archives show that Empain held as much as 55 percent of the ordinary shares in the company by April 1934. ⊂Abbud succeeded that same summer in “retaining” control of the company by secretly taking up the bulk of a public subscription through the use of various “men of straw,” including his ally, the lawyer Wahib Duss. The maneuver brought his holdings back up to 45 percent and dropped those of the Belgians down to 41 percent. See FO371/18018, J1651/1651/16, Selous, to DOT, 23 06 1934,Google Scholar The shareholder data was supplied by the unquestionably reliable head of the European department at the ministry of interior, Alexander Keown-Boyd. It is not clear if Belgian involvement in the company was ever publicized. When al-Muqham published rumors of negotiations between the Cairo Tramways and the EGOC, ⊂Abbud vigorously denied them. See the Egyptian Gazette, 16 04 1933.Google Scholar

46 The agreement was apparently concluded in the spring of 1933. Details are found in F0371/18018, J1994/1651/16, Lampson, to FO, 9 08 1934.Google Scholar

47 ⊂Abbud held Sidqi responsible for the obstacles in his way of obtaining the bus concessions and, no doubt, for being forced to come to terms with the premier's business allies, the Empain group. See F0371/17019, J303/127/16, Loraine, to Peterson, , 28 01 1933.Google Scholar

48 Details in FO371/18018, J2591/1651/16, Department of Overseas Trade, 24 October 1934.

49 ⊂Afifi's partners included the Lombardo interests, who directed the Alexandria Omnibus company, and possibly the British manufacturer, Leyland, from whom the company had arranged to import the chassis for their vehicles. At some point the Misr group became a significant (33 percent) shareholder in the venture. Though ⊂Afifi was a director of Misr ventures at the time, I have been unable to determine if the bank itself was part of the original coalition. See FO37I/19085, J842/303/16, Kelly, to FO, 21 02 1935; Clement Levy, Stock Exchange Yearbook of Egypt, 1943 edition.Google Scholar

50 On the British intervention, see the Killearn Diaries, 24 01 1935, and FO371/19085, J645/303/16,Google ScholarLampson, to FO, 19 02 1935.Google Scholar British officials justified their response by arguing that the award to the ⊂Afifi group guaranteed a sale to a British manufacturer. They ignored the fact that another British manufacturer had a direct investment in ⊂Abbud's company and argued that it was a Belgian-Egyptian rather than a British-Egyptian venture and that the Belgians controlled it, based on the pooling arrangement. This clearly was a rationalization. See F0371/19085, J756/303/16, enclosing letter from ⊂Abbud to Lampson, , 5 02 1935; J536/303/16, DOT, 26 February 1935.Google Scholar

51 The decision to block assistance to the joint venture is even more remarkable given the increased vigilance with which the residency and the Foreign Office guarded against the expansion of Italian capital in the mid-1930s.

52 See F0141/680, 380/4/35, enclosing Campbell, to Cairo, , 27 02 1935;Google Scholar F0371/19085, J1101/303/16, Lampson, to Campbell, , 19 03 1935;Google Scholar J1108/303/16, Lampson, to FO, 20 03 1935;Google ScholarKillearn Diaries, 6 03 1935.Google Scholar

53 This heretofore unreported conflict and the British government policy in tacit support of the Belgians are documented in the extensive files included in F037I/19085, beginning with JI101/303/16. The Thornycroft representative continued to entreat the FO and the DOT to support their interest, refusing to “abandon” ⊂Abbud. The choice of when to and when not to intervene in commercial matters was clearly a political one. The British policy of neutrality was interpreted logically by the Belgians as support for their position, an impression that the British did little to try to correct. The course of the conflict after 1935 is unclear. Though ⊂Abbud remained on the board of the EGOC and it was not absorbed by the tramway company, the Belgians eventually gained a controlling interest. See Clement, Levy, The Stock Exchange Yearbook of Egypt, 1943 edition, p. 150.Google Scholar

54 On the mission, see the Times, 3 04 1935. Other, even more practical initiatives were being taken as well, including the resurrection of the post of commercial adviser, vacant since 1931, to provide “technical assistance” to the newly formed Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Tignor, “Nationalism” (203) errs in claiming that ⊂Abbud dominated the ministry of commerce during the Yahya government. It did not exist then, nor did ⊂Abbud ever manage to colonize it as far as I can determine. On British involvement in the appointment to the new ministry as well as the bureaucratic rivalries involved in its formation, begin with F0371/19082, J154/J2384/J2434/154/16.Google Scholar

55 On the Misr group's growing ties to British industry in the 1930s, see Davis, , Challenging Colonialism, pp. 141–43, 153;Google ScholarTignor, , Private Enterprise, pp. 134–35.Google Scholar

56 See, for instance, F0371/18014, J2265/636/16, Peterson to FO, 22 September 1934. The Chilean Nitrate Sales corporation, which operated a large agency in Egypt, was the subsidiary arm of the Chilean Nitrate Producers' Association, which was in turn heavily dominated by British and U.S. business interests. The Royal Agricultural Society was founded in 1898 and until 1911, when the government established an agricultural department, the society apparently functioned as a quasi-governmental organization with some responsibility for legislation. It had introduced chemical fertilizers into the country in 1901 and sold them as a way of funding its other activities. This private association was headed by members of the royal family. See the Government Press, Publications Office, Almanac for the Year 1933 (Cairo, 1933), p. 358.Google Scholar

57 See the classic study by George, Stocking and Myron, W. Watkins, Cartels in Action: Case Studies in International Business Diplomacy (New York, 1946)Google Scholar and United States Tariff Commission, Chemical Nitrogen, Report Number 114, second series (Washington, D.C., 1937).Google Scholar

58 Muharram and the Hungarians would later join forces with the English Electric Company. See the fascinating series of stolen letters published in al-Balāgh throughout August and September 1937.

59 FO371/13877, J1476/1056/16, Lloyd to FO, 15 May 1929; F0371/13870, J2382/297/16, enclosing memo by Larkins, 8 August 1929; al-Waqā⊃i⊂ al-Mihriyya, 12 and 19 January 1928.

60 Tignor (“Nationalism”), describes the Wafd leadership at this time as suspicious of foreign business, protector of “the people's interests” and motivated in its policies towards public works projects by intense nationalism. This does not give us the necessary tools to understand why, then, it reversed the plan to build a publicly owned power plant in Cairo and instead granted a new concession to foreigners. On this front, see FO37I/14646, J1978/752/16, enclosing letter from ⊂Abbud to Turner, 27 May 1930. The Empain group saw this concession as the key to controlling the future of electrification in Egypt. See, in the FO file listed earlier, “Société Egyptienne de Electricité,” 25 March 1930. Data on the Misr group's participation are found in Clement, Levy, The Stock Exchange Year-Book of Egypt, 1943 edition, p. 695.Google Scholar

61 See, for instance, the heralded 200-page report issued by the Misr group in May 1929, The Creation of Domestic Industries, and the discussions in Tignor, “Bank Misr,” 70; FO37I/13870, J1664/297/16, enclosing dispatch from Turner to DOT, 22 May 1929.

62 See the Secret memo ICI to IG (draft), December 1929, reproduced in William, J. Reader, Imperial Chemical Industries: A History (London, 1970), 2:114.Google Scholar

63 Tignor, , “Nationalism,” p. 119;Google Scholar especially idem, “Dependency Theory,” p. 115. In the former work Tignor suggested that “it is neither possible nor necessary to unfold the tangled story of negotiations and counternegotiations that lay behind the Aswan electrification project.” With that in mind, researchers are advised to treat the conclusions he draws with caution. For details and documentation on the strategy pursued by ICI, see Vitalis, , “Building Capitalism,” especially pp. 375–98.Google Scholar

64 See, for instance, FO371/19086, J602/348/16, DOT, record of interview with Nelson and Rice, 14 February 1935; Killearn Diaries, 29 01 1935.Google Scholar

65 Thus, during a visit to Cairo by the chairman of the English Electric Company, Lampson had asked for an assurance that the company had no connection with ⊂Abbud. See F0371/19086, J121/348/16, record of conversation between Crowe and Nelson, signed by Farrar, 17 March 1935.

66 See F0371/19086, J1484/348/16, Lampson to FO, 5 April 1935, reporting interview between Selous and Horsfall, 3 April 1935; Killearn Diaries, 8 04 1935.Google Scholar

67 Details in FO371/19086, J2196/348/16, Selous to DOT, 24 May 1935.

68 See Government of Egypt, Council of Deputies, Committee on Financial Affairs, Taqrīr al-Lajna ⊂an Mashrā⊂ Kahrā⊃ Khazzān Aswān, Report No. Ill (Cairo, 1948), p. 5.Google Scholar

69 On the creation of ⊂Abbud's new company and the negotiations for the loan see Akhbār al-Yawm, 1 02 1946;Google Scholar and Export-Import Bank of the United States Archives, Denison to Maffrey, 26 June 1946, memorandum regarding ammonia fertilizer plant in Egypt [released under the Freedom of Information act and in my possession]. For early production statistics from the company, see Taha, Zaky, “Development of the Fertilizer Industry in the United Arab Republic,” in United Nations Industrial and Development Organization, Factors Inhibiting the Indigenous Growth of the Fertilizer Industry in Developing Countries (New York, 1969), pp. 63–72.Google Scholar

70 See, for instance, the British report of the first meeting to discuss financing of the Delta scheme, between ⊂Abbuds American partner, Pope, and the president of the World Bank, “arranged by Clayton.” F03717sol;53394, J3900/435/16, Campbell, to FO, 14 September 1946. Clayton refers to William Clayton, President Truman's undersecretary of state for economic affairs (1946–47) and Houston businessman (partner in Anderson, Clayton and Company). His firm controlled the Nile Ginning Company, one of Egypt's largest cotton exporters. See William Clayton papers, box 95, alphabetical file 1950–1953, folder marked Egypt, Truman Library, Independence, Missouri.

71 “An analysis of the historical formation of this bourgeoisie would inevitably place in doubt the explanatory coherence of the myth. And so it has not been done, or not been done very much.” Immanuel Wallerstein, , “The Bourgeois(ie) as Concept and Reality,” New Left Review, 167 (01–02 1988), 91–106, esp. p. 99.Google Scholar

72 On this point see the discussion of Florestan, Fernandez, A Revolucao Burguesa no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1975)Google Scholar and of Fernando, Henrique Cardoso and Enzo, Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, trans. Marjory Mattingly Urquidi (Berkeley, Calif., 1979)Google Scholar in Evans, , Dependent Development, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

73 These models collapse of their own weight in the two best studies of the interwar economy. Davis provides a book-long defense of the Misr Group as an attempt “to remain independent of and challenge the domination of foreign capital. Yet, he concludes that “Bank Misr was unable to challenge fundamentally foreign capital's domination of the Egyptian economy (and Harb and his colleagues probably never thought in those terms anyway).” Davis, , Challenging Colonialism, pp. 5, 199; emphasis mine.Google Scholar Remarkable for the strikingly similar internal contradiction, Tignor's study of the Egyptian business community begins with the familiar model of the comprador: “In fact … although some of these foreign businessmen were compradors (as were some Egyptian businessmen), many others were forces for far-reaching structural social and economic change. Far from supporting the economic status quo, they worked aggressively for its alteration.” Yet his data lead him to abandon the distinction. He concludes: ”Compradors (Egyptian and foreign) pioneered new industries; often agents of foreign trading and financial firms used their wealth and business experience to found new companies.” Tignor, , Private Enterprise, pp. 7, 246; emphasis mine.Google Scholar

74 Tignor, , “Nationalism,” p. 195;Google Scholaridem, “Dependency Theory,” p. 115.

75 Tignor, , Private Enterprise, p. 137, emphasis mine.Google Scholar

76 Davis, , Challenging Colonialism, p. 152.Google Scholar

77 Tignor, , “New Directions,” 41–67.Google Scholar

78 The bargaining which took place between local and foreign capital in pre-1952 Egypt eventually led to new national ventures in oil exploration, shipping, aviation, chemical fertilizers, iron and steel, soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, electric goods, and textiles.

79 For obvious reasons, the national and/or ethnic origins of actors was a dominant concern of Egyptian political life. This affected political positions towards segments of the business class as well as historiographical debates about it. The same phenomenon is equally true of working class politics and historiography. My argument here is that it has distorted our understanding of capitalism in Egypt. For evidence of its continued pernicious effects, see the recent resurrection of another analytically bankrupt construct: “Jewish capitalism” in Anīs, Muahfāg Kāmil, “Tgrīkh al-Ra'smāliyya al-Yahūdiyya fī Mihr,” al-Ahrām al-Iqisādī, 636–42 (23 03–4 04 1981).Google Scholar For evidence of the same problem in the politics and historiography of nondominant classes, see Selma, Botman, The Rise of Egyptian Communism, 1939–1970 (Syracuse, N.Y., 1988);Google ScholarJoel, Beinin and Zachary, Lock-man, Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882–1954 (Princeton, N.J., 1988);Google ScholarJoel, Beinin, “The Communist Movement and Nationalist Political Discourse in Nasirist Egypt,” Middle East Journal, 41, 4 (Autumn, 1987), 568–84.Google Scholar For recent manifestations, see Ra⊃ūf, ⊂Abbās and ⊂lzzat, Riyās, Awrāq Hinrī Kūrīyāl (Cairo, 1988);Google Scholar as well as the discussion of this publication by Joel Beinin in Middle East Report, 156 (01–02 1989), 39–40; current positions of other Egyptian historians can be judged from the series of articles about the Curiel papers published in the April–May and November 1988 issues of al-Hilāl. l am grateful to Ellis Goldberg for underscoring the wider implications of this issue for Egyptian politics and historiography.Google Scholar

80 See especially Deeb, Party Politics.

81 See Tignor, , Private Enterprise, pp. 158–62 for a concise discussion of the defensive investment strategies of declining metropolitan textile firms in the Egyptian market.Google Scholar