The Progress of Egypt

“ EGYPT contains more marvelous things than any other country, things too strange for words.” This statement of Herodotus is as true in some respects to-day as when he made it, more than two thousand years ago. Compare the present condition of the land with that which existed in 1876. Then Ismail Pasha, a pinchbeck Pharaoh, as he has been aptly termed, was the ruler. The main characteristic of his reign and the cause of his deposition, namely, his extravagant expenditure, was due, strange though the statement may seem, to our Civil War. When he ascended the throne in 1863, the value of the annual crop of Egyptian cotton, of which the greater part was the Khedive’s personal property, had suddenly increased fivefold ; that is, was worth, instead of twentyfive million, one hundred and twentyfive million dollars. It should be added that it fell back within two years to the old value as suddenly as it rose.

There can be little doubt that this extraordinary increase of Ismail’s riches turned his head and occasioned his financial crimes and follies. The fact is, that the debt of Egypt, which in 1863 was in round numbers fifteen million dollars, in 1876 was five hundred million. For all practical purposes, with the exception of eighty millions spent on the Suez Canal, this vast sum was squandered. Ismail’s private funds and the resources of his subjects being alike exhausted, Egypt was declared bankrupt, and the dual control of France and England began.

What was the condition of his people at that time ? It is probably true that, as regards natural conditions, there is no people in the world more favorably situated than the Egyptian peasants or fellaheen. They live in an equable climate, and have a soil of inexhaustible fertility, which is tilled with extraordinary ease. Yet to secure a harvest requires, at certain seasons of the year, such constant labor and watchfulness that the fellah, with this healthy spur to active exertion, has never sunk to the condition of the tropical savage, from whom all anxiety for food is taken by a too-indulgent Nature. The desert which hems in his fields is his safeguard and protection. Without hostile neighbors or foreign foes, therefore, he is peaceful, and free from restless ambitions for conquest. A still more important factor of his happiness is the fact that the vast majority of the fellaheen are of one race and religion. He does not suffer from those ceaseless disturbances arising from the mutual hatred of people of different nationality and belief, such as have made the villages of Macedonia and Armenia the scenes of fratricidal strife for centuries. His wants are few and simple, and do not extend beyond what his fields and flocks, and above all his bounteous river, can give him in abundance. The purely natural conditions, then, are more nearly perfect than can be found in any other part of the world. Given a wise, just, and humane government, and there is no peasant’s lot so enviable as that of the Egyptian fellah.

How then was he affected in the matter of taxation by his Khedive’s extravagant expenditures and ever-pressing need of money ? In addition to the land-tax, the fellah himself was taxed, his wife and children, his crop and cattle in the field and again at the market, his license as tradesman or workman, and the product of his work, his cart, his boat, — even the loan which he had contracted to pay his taxes, was taxed. When Lord Cromer,¹ then Sir Evelyn Baring, came to Egypt in 1877 as English Commissioner of the Debt, he made a list of thirty-seven such petty taxes of the most harassing nature, and doubted if the list was complete. This would not be unendurable provided a certain fixed sum had to be paid. But when the claims of the treasury, the governor of the province, the head of the village, and the tax-collector, had been satisfied, the unfortunate fellah had paid perhaps three times as much as could be rightly demanded of him. The fiscal history of Ismail’s reign is simply a record of increased taxation, forced loans, and arbitrary requisitions. Shortly after his accession, twenty-five per cent was added to the land-tax; and four times at least in the next twelve years this tax was raised by amounts varying from ten to fifty per cent.

Nor was this increase of the regular taxes all. “ Every day some new tax,” writes Lady Duff-Gordon in 1868. A decree is issued, for instance, that every artisan shall immediately pay twentyfive piastres for the privilege of continuing his work at his trade. As there was no fixed amount, so there was no regular time for collecting the taxes. The collector might appear during the harvest when the cultivator presumably had money, or at any other time of the year. If in the summer, the growing corn was sold at perhaps half its value, and there were recorded cases of corn sold for fifty piastres an ardeb (five and a half bushels) “ which was delivered in a month’s time, when it was worth one hundred and twenty piastres an ardeb.” If the tax collector appeared in the winter or spring, the peasant was obliged to have recourse to the village money-lender, from whom he borrowed, often at the rate of sixty per cent per annum.

Toward the close of these dark days, as the needs of the Khedive became more pressing, all pretense of lawful methods of raising money was cast aside. “ The taxes are now being collected in advance,” writes a resident. “ The people are being terribly beaten to get next year’s taxes out of them,” writes another. For the ordinary methods of extorting payment under these circumstances were imprisonment, — that is, being chained neck, hands, and feet with a string of malefactors; or being beaten with a rhinoceros-hide whip, the courbash, on the soles of the feet, until the money was produced. It was the common boast of the fellah that he received so many lashes before he paid.

There was still more that Ismail could take from the poor taxpayer when his last piastre had gone — his labor. The corvée, or system of forced labor at the demand of the government, in itself is neither new, nor confined to Egypt, nor necessarily unjust. In its simplest form it is represented by the New England farmer working on the highways. This work corresponds in Egypt to the strengthening of the embankments, the cleaning of canals and digging of ditches to secure the proper flooding of the fields during the high Nile, and their drainage when the river falls. From time immemorial the rural population has been called out to do this work, which is absolutely essential to the existence of the country. As late as 1885, two hundred and thirty-four thousand men were called out to work for one hundred days in the year.

But, in addition to the corvée for labor upon the irrigation works, there were innumerable requisitions for labor for other things. Unlimited numbers of the fellaheen might be dragged away from their villages at any time for any purpose, public or private, legitimate or illegitimate, upon which the Khedive chose to employ them. His private estates, representing about one-fifth of the arable land, were cultivated to a great extent by forced labor. “ At one time there were one hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children driven forth with whips from their villages to perform wageless work on the Khedive’s roads through his property to the cotton-fields and sugar plantations.” In one of her “ Letters from Egypt,” Lady Duff-Gordon writes, “ All this week the people have been working night and day cutting their unripe corn, because three hundred and ten men (a third of the male population) are to go to-morrow to work on the railway below Siout. This green corn, of course, is valueless to sell and unwholesome to eat. So the magnificent harvest of this year is turned to bitterness at the last moment. From the whole province twenty-five thousand men were taken on this occasion to work for sixty days without food or pay.”

But the poor fellaheen dreaded the conscription far more than the corvée. The conscript was led away in chains under the blows of the courbash, and amid precisely the same violent expressions of grief on the part of his relatives as usually attend a funeral. If he ever returned to his home (which was doubtful in any case, for there were no laws regulating military service, and impossible if he was sent to the Sudan, which was equivalent to perpetual exile), he was generally mutilated or smitten with some fatal disease. No wonder, then, that, even in childhood, multitudes of the people maimed or blinded themselves that they might escape the conscription.

Justice, as we understand the word, was absolutely unknown to the Egyptian peasant in those dark days. In the time of the flood, the canals were first tapped for the estates of the Khedive, then for the pashas and village sheikhs, and last of all for the peasants. Times innumerable did they return to their villages from their month-long labor on the corvée, to find that their fields had been neglected and their hopes of a harvest ruined. Bribery was universal. Each grade in the public service gave “ bakhshish ” to the one above, and recouped itself with interest from the one below. The miserable fellah, being at the bottom of the scale, had in the end, therefore, to bear the whole burden.

At the close of Ismail’s reign, twothirds of the cultivated land had passed out of the possession of the peasant proprietor. The Khedive had acquired, in great part by arbitrary seizure, one million acres. Most of the remainder, through forced sales and expropriations, had become the property of the foreign usurers. Stripped of his possessions, then, subject to be chained, whipped, and sent far away from his home to dig canals and build roads, or to serve in the army at the pleasure of the Khedive, such was the condition of the fellah under Ismail. And though of all peasants, probably, he is the most attached to his home, yet to escape his cruel oppressor he did not hesitate to abandon his hut on the river-bank and to take refuge in the neighboring Sahara. “ Whole villages are deserted,” writes Lady Duff-Gordon, “and thousands have run away into the desert between this and Assouan. The hands of the government are awfully heavy on them.”

I might multiply indefinitely these instances of the wretchedness and misery of this people, suffering not from war, famine, or pestilence, or the deserved penalty for rebellion, but simply from evil rulers. One more will be sufficient; and is the condition of a people better indicated than in the songs of the children ? Listen then to the Egyptian boys and girls of thirty years ago, at work in the fields and singing in responsive chorus: —

The Egypt of to-day, what is its condition? As regards its financial situation, its public debt remains about the same in amount, but with a much smaller interest charge. The annual deficit lasted till 1888; but from that time the revenue has exceeded the expenditure, and in 1906 the aggregate surplus amounted to one hundred and thirty-seven million five hundred thousand dollars, although eighty million dollars had been spent on railways, irrigation, and public buildings. A general reserve fund of over fifty-five million dollars has been created. All this has been accomplished, and at the same time the direct taxation has been decreased by a little less than ten million dollars a year. The nation which was bankrupt in 1876 has now a financial standing in the world “ only second to that of France and England.” The cultivated area has nearly doubled in extent, while the value of the irrigation works is shown by the fact that the introduction of perennial irrigation into a tract of four hundred thousand acres in Middle Egypt, by means of the Assouan Dam, has increased its selling value one hundred and fifty million dollars. More than a million peasants own farms of less than five acres, and to maintain them in their holdings, as well as to enable them to purchase seed and manure, an Agricultural Bank has been established which has loaned forty-five million dollars in small sums to the fellaheen. To spread a knowledge of scientific cultivation, agricultural and horticultural societies have been formed.

We have seen that the amount of the fellah’s taxes has been decreased. But this is not all. “ The poorest peasant in the country,” says Lord Milner, “ is now annually furnished with a tax-paper, which shows him exactly what he has to pay to the government, and at what seasons the installments are due. The dates of these installments, moreover, which vary in different provinces, have been arranged so as to correspond as nearly as possible with the seasons when the cultivator realizes his produce, and is therefore in the best position to discharge his debt to the State.”

But a better and more concise description of the changed condition of the Egyptian cannot be found than that given by the one who of all men knows him best, Lord Cromer. “ A new spirit has been instilled into the population of Egypt. Even the peasant has learned to scan his rights. Even the Pasha has learned that others beside himself have rights which must be respected. The courbash may hang on the walls of the Moudirich, but the Moudir no longer dares to employ it on the backs of the fellaheen. For all practical purposes, it may be said that the hateful corvée system has disappeared. Slavery has virtually ceased to exist. The halcyon days of the adventurer and the usurer are past. Fiscal burthens have been greatly relieved. Everywhere law reigns supreme. Justice is no longer bought and sold. Nature, instead of being spurned and neglected, has been wooed to bestow her gifts on mankind. She has responded to the appeal. The waters of the Nile are now utilized in an intelligent manner. Means of locomotion have been improved and extended. The soldier has acquired some pride in the uniform which he wears. He has fought as he never fought before. The sick man can be nursed in a well-managed hospital. The lunatic is no longer treated like a wild beast. The punishment awarded to the worst criminal is no longer barbarous. Lastly, the schoolmaster is abroad, with results which are as yet uncertain, but which cannot fail to be important.”

This transformation of the bankrupt, impoverished Egypt, with a rapidity without a parallel in history, into one of the most prosperous regions of the world, and of the wretched fellah into a man, — to quote the testimony of Mustapha Fehmy Pasha, the Egyptian premier, given at the great farewell demonstration to Lord Cromer in Cairo, — “ who enjoys happy days owing to the improvement in his moral and material condition,” to what is it due? Again, history will be searched in vain for anything similar to the way in which the country has been governed for the past twenty-five years. The dual control of the finances by France and England, necessitated by Ismail’s suspension of payments of treasury bills, lasted till the Arabi Pasha rebellion, which England alone crushed, France refusing to take any part in the military operations. Since the battle of Tel-el-Kebir in 1882, England has exercised sovereign power. But it is not a sovereignty like that over India. It is rather a “ power behind the throne.” The Khedive, with a native ministry and legislative council, still rules; and the Sultan is his supreme lord, to whom he pays annual tribute. The one new and significant thing is the presence of English troops. But they number only four thousand six hundred and sixty, while the well-equipped and efficient native army, a product of the British rule, is twenty thousand strong. The situation is due to the fact that the Great Powers consented to the British occupation only on the understanding that it was temporary, and that there should be no organic changes in the government. Hence the British were forced to adopt their Indian policy of ruling through the existing institutions and forms of administration. The way in which this sovereignty was to be exercised is definitely slated by Lord Granville, in a memorable dispatch addressed to the Great Powers on January 3, 1883: —

” Although, for the present, a British force remains in Egypt for the preservation of public tranquillity, her Majesty’s Government are desirous of withdrawing it as soon as the state of the country, and the organization of proper means for the maintenance of the Khedive’s authority, will admit of it. In the mean time, the position in which her Majesty’s Government is placed towards his Highness, imposes upon them the duty of giving advice with the object of securing that the order of things to be established shall be of a satisfactory character, and shall possess the elements of stability and progress.”

It is true of course that it was distinctly understood that on important matters the advice given must be followed, and the presence of the English troops is intended to ensure this. But the unprecedented fact remains that, from the beginning, the English exercised their sovereignty by advice-giving or, as Lord Milner puts it, through influence.

It is certainly very remarkable that the man on whom the chief burden of givingadvice lay for nearly twenty-four years, and to whom belongs the chief credit for what has been accomplished, has been able to tell the story of the regeneration of the country. Lord Cromer’s Modern Egypt not only is one of the most noteworthy books of the time from a literary and historical point of view, but it is a contribution of inestimable value to the science of statesmanship. In this “ accurate narrative of some of the principal events which have occurred in Egypt and in the Soudan since the year 1876,” he shows in a most graphic manner the difficulties with which he and the British “ advisers ” attached to the different departments of the government had to contend. These difficulties fall into two classes, of which the first arose from the fact that “ one alien race, the English, have had to control and guide a second alien race, the Turks, by whom they are disliked, in the government of a third race, the Egyptians. To these latter, both the paramount races are to a certain extent unsympathetic.” These difficulties, however, are not peculiar to Egypt, as are those of the other class, which arise from the diplomatic obligations under which the country is governed. These obligations are founded upon treaties, known as the “Capitulations,” the earliest of which dates back to the sixteenth century. They were primarily intended to make it possible for Christians to reside and trade in the territories of the Porte, by protecting them against the ill-usage to which, as defenseless strangers of an alien faith, they would otherwise have been exposed. They are of such a comprehensive nature, and are so far-reaching in their application in Egypt, that “ all its most important laws are passed, not by any of its inhabitants or by any institutions existing within its own confines, but by the governments and legislative institutions of sixteen foreign Powers. It has also to be borne in mind that unanimity amongst all the foreign Powers is necessary before any law can come into force.” It is impossible to describe in a few words the obstacle to reform and progress created by this fact. “ Hampered at every turn by the privileges ” are Lord Cromer’s words describing the situation, and they must suffice. Nor can I do better than let him describe the various duties and responsibilities which fell to his lot: —

“ I never received any general instructions for my guidance during the time I held the post of British Consul-General in Egypt, and I never asked for any such instructions, for I knew that it was useless for me to do so. My course of action was decided according to the merits of each case with which I had to deal. Sometimes I spurred the unwilling Egyptian along the path of reform. At other times, I curbed the impatience of the British reformer. Sometimes I had to explain to the old-world Mohammedan the elementary differences between the principles of government in vogue in the seventh and in the nineteenth centuries. At other times, I had to explain to the young Gallicised Egyptian that the principles of an ultra-Republican Government were not applicable in their entirety to the existing phase of Egyptian society, and that, when we speak of the rights of man, some distinction has necessarily to be made in practice between a European spouting nonsense through the medium of a fifth-rate newspaper in his own country, and man in the person of a ragged fellah, possessed of a sole garment, and who is unable to read a newspaper in any language whatsoever, I had to support the reformer sufficiently to prevent him from being discouraged, and sufficiently also to enable him to carry into execution all that was essential in his reforming policy. I had to check the reformer when he wished to push his reforms so far as to shake the whole political fabric in his endeavor to overcome the tiresome and, to his eyes, often trumpery obstacles in his path. I had to support the supremacy of the Sultan and, at the same time, to oppose any practical Turkish interference in the administration, which necessarily connoted a relapse into barbarism. I had at times to retire into my diplomatic shell, and to pose as one amongst many representatives of foreign Powers. At other times, I had to step forward as the representative of the Sovereign whose soldiers held Egypt in their grip. I had to maintain British authority and, at the same time, to hide as much as possible the fact that I was maintaining it. I had to avoid any step which might involve the creation of European difficulties by reason of local troubles. I had to keep the Egyptian question simmering, and to avoid any action which might tend to force on its premature consideration, and I had to do this at one time when all, and at another time when some, of the most important Powers were more or less opposed to the British policy. . . . To sum up the situation in a few words, I had not, indeed, to govern Egypt, but to assist in the government of the country without the appearance of doing so and without any legitimate authority over the agents with whom I had to deal.”

His success was, of course, largely due to his diplomatic tact and great ability. But there were two other things of greater importance which contributed to it. One of these was his making the welfare of Egypt the one absorbing aim of his official life. The significance of this was far greater to the Egyptian than to the European, for it was almost impossible for the Egyptian to conceive “ that any foreigner would do otherwise than push the presumed interests of his own countrymen.” So when Lord Cromer at the outset of his career showed that he sought not English, but Egyptian, interests, a confidence was inspired in him which was never shaken. The other secret of his success was that which has contributed most to his countrymen’s success in the East, character. Here again it will be better to let him state the fact in a passage which deserves immortality:—

“ It always appeared to me that the first and most important duty of the British representative in Egypt was, by example and precept, to set up a high standard of morality, both in his public and private life, and thus endeavor to raise the standard of those around him. If I have in any way succeeded in this endeavor; if I have helped to purge Egyptian administration of corruption; if it is gradually dawning on the Egyptian mind that honesty is not only the most honorable but also the most paying policy, and that lying and intrigue curse the liar and intriguer as well as his victim, — I owe the success, in so far as public matters are concerned, to the coöperation of a body of high-minded British officials, who have persistently held up to all with whom they have been brought in contact a standard of probity heretofore unknown in Egypt; and, in so far as social life is concerned, I owed it, until cruel death intervened to sever the tie which bound us together, mainly to the gentle yet commanding influence of her who first instigated me to write this book.”

A most important thing which the recent history of Egypt teaches is that the establishment of a high standard of morality among the rulers of the nonChristian peoples is one of the surest guarantees of prosperity and peace. The dishonesty of Ismail ruined his people and brought Europe to the verge of war. With an honest government came prosperity and the universal peace-making, an entente cordiale between France and England. The Christian and the nonChristian nations are now drawing so close to one another, and such intimate commercial and diplomatic relations are being cemented between them, that it is evident there must be one common moral standard. Surely it is the grandest privilege as well as the highest duty of the Christian nations to bring this about by example and influence. This is what England’s representative in Egypt strove to do. In his farewell speech — which was translated into Arabic, and sold by thousands in the streets of Cairo the day it was delivered, making a profound impression on the people — he emphasized this fact. “ My policy,” he said, “ may be summed up in very few words. It has been to tell the truth.”