Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 101
Egypt of the Anglo-Ottoman. Commercial Treaty of 1838, by
which British merchants were given the right to enter any part of
the Ottoman dominion and buy from the natives the products of
the soil and of the industry of the country. A few years later all
that remained of the vast industrial structure, which had cost
millions to create, was a quantity of rusting machinery in old,
deserted buildings, scattered throughout the country. The
attempt to make Egypt an industrial country had failed.
Its failure was perhaps inevitable. The attempt to impose upon a
primitive agricultural and guild economy a totally new system of
industrial production was bound to meet with very great ob-
stacles. .. . The managers of the factories were for the most part
salaried government officials, ignorant and unenthusiastic about
the work they were called upon to do. The machines imported
were still novelties and enormously expensive, while very few in
Egypt had mastered the new machine technique. .. . The attempt
to stimulate agricultural production was no more successful. The
low prices which were paid to the farmers for their crops took
away their incentive to work. ... They had to be literally driven
to the fields and obliged to work by threats and punishments.
Thousands of them deserted their farms. From time to time the
fugitives were rounded up, in the towns and marshes in which they
had taken refuge, and were sent back to the villages. , .. The
monopoly system did not help in the production of new wealth.
Its only effect was to keep down the standard of living of the
farmers, and to divert into the hands of the government the
additional wealth created by higher prices and increased pro-
duction/1
The experience of our own day has shown how difficult it is to
bring about the rapid modernization and industrialization of an
undeveloped agricultural economy by imposing a bureaucratic
collectivized regime. The resistance which the Soviet govern-
ment has encountered in this respect is well-known; and Moham-
med All, despite his great energy and iron determination, lacked a
popular ideological appeal which could evoke the co-operation of
thousands of assistants. He was dealing, not merely with a back-
ward peasantry, but with one exceptionally apathetic by reason of
1 Crouchley, op. cit., 74 f., 103 f. The similarity to the labour-situation
created by the bureaucratic control attempted by the Greek and Roman rulers of
Egypt is very striking.