the study of middle eastern industrial history: notes on the interrelationship between factories and...

The Study of Middle Eastern Industrial History: Notes on the Interrelationship betweenFactories and Small-Scale Manufacturing with Special References to Lebanese Silk andEgyptian Sugar, 1900-1930Author(s): Roger OwenSource: International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Nov., 1984), pp. 475-487Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/163153 .

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 16 (1984), 475-487 Printed in the United States of America

Roger Owen

THE STUDY OF MIDDLE EASTERN INDUSTRIAL

HISTORY: NOTES ON THE INTERRELATIONSHIP

BETWEEN FACTORIES AND SMALL-SCALE

MANUFACTURING WITH SPECIAL REFERENCES TO

LEBANESE SILK AND EGYPTIAN SUGAR, 1900-1930

INTRODUCTION

The growth and transformation of Middle Eastern manufacturing industry has been little studied for the period before the advent of tariff autonomy, and thus protectionism, in the early 1930s.' The reasons for this are various but must have much to do with the many difficult problems involved. There is an obvious lack of data, particularly about the activities of the craft or small-scale sector which, even to this day, is regularly under-counted by government statisticians.2 There arc also serious problems of definition which have generally been ignored by the vast majority of economic historians who remain content to analyse manufacturing activity in terms of such simple dichotomies as modern/factory/capitalist versus traditional/workshop/pre-capitalist, a method which not only masks the fact that there are a whole range of activities which do not fall into such appar- ently neat categories but also - to introduce the major theme of this essay - makes it impossible to examine the complex interrelationship between plants of different size and degree of capitalisation. Finally, much of what passes for a discussion of manufacturing activity has, in fact, got muddled with the much larger debate about the whole process of industrialisation, about whether particular areas of the Middle East could have developed their own industrial base before 1930, and about why they might have been prevented from doing so.

Nevertheless there is the beginning of a consensus among some economic historians about the way in which the subject ought properly to be approached.3 This takes as its starting point the proposition that, in general terms, the scope and trajectory of Middle Eastern manufacturing activity has to be defined by its relationship with a world market dominated by the more advanced industrial economies. One obvious implication is that, in the period before effective tariff protection, the few factory industries which were actually established were either those which enjoyed some "natural" form of protection against foreign competition - for example via the high cost of transport (e.g., bricks and cement); or the "administrative" protection which a state could extend to products destined for

? 1984 Cambridge University Press 0020-7438/84/040475-13 $2.50



476 Roger Owen

its own use (e.g., weapons, military uniforms, or railway equipment). The only alternative was to find some part of a domestic or foreign market which could be exploited on the basis of cheaply produced, processed or semi-produced, usually local, raw materials (e.g., Egyptian sugar and cigarettes; Lebanese silk thread, Anatolian carpets).4 Thus it follows that the "space" in which each industry was forced to operate was largely defined by world market forces outside the domestic economy. For these same economic historians, however, the mapping of such a "space" is only the beginning; they would also agree that the growth and development of any particular industry can only be properly understood through an examination of more specifically local factors such as its organisation, its technology, its labour force, and its relationship to the state and to that part of the agricultural sector which provided its raw materials.5 Of course, each of these factors is itself likely to be affected by world economic forces. But their particular mix, in historical and geographical context, is almost certain to be unique.

Another area of growing consensus concerns what is usually described as the craft or, better, the small-scale sector. Here there have been a number of powerful challenges to the blanket view which saw all such activity as being largely decimated during the first great wave of European competition in the nineteenth century. Indeed, as the studies of Chevallier and others have shown, there were many areas in which small-scale manufacturing not only survived but even ex- panded during the period up to 1930.6 Although the argument has not been particularly well-developed, it would seem that a preliminary examination of world economic forces is just as important here as it is in the case of Middle Eastern factory industry. Those small-scale plants which survived could only do so either by dominating or developing some part of the local market which was protected from foreign imports by cost, taste, or fashion; or by learning to make efficient use of some of the cheaper products which the outside world could provide - such as cotton thread or simple machines (such as the Jacquard loom or the steam boiler).

Finally, and here we enter nearly uncharted seas, there is at least one economic historian who has called attention to the importance of analysing the relationship between the different types of enterprise to be found within any one industry.7 It follows from what has just been argued that both large and small enterprises were subject to the same, or similar, types of world economic forces. But the picture is not complete without an examination of the significant ways in which both interacted with one another. Examples of such interactions would include: competition for labour and supplies of local raw materials (and thus their effect on the price of each other's inputs); rivalry for government assistance; the exchange of each other's products for further processing; and the influence which each might have had on the other's organisation, techniques or, just as important, share of a local or foreign market by means of induced changes in taste or cost.

It is this last topic - the little-studied interrelationship between what, very generally, we may call "factory industry" and that of the small-scale variety - which is the subject of my essay. 1 begin by using examples from two Middle Eastern industries where the distinction between a factory-type organisation on



The Study of Middle Eastern Industrial History 477

the one hand, and a variety of small-scale activity on the other, is particularly well-defined. These are the Lebanese silk-spinning and the Egyptian sugar industry (both raw and refined). In each case my choice has been largely determined by the fact that there exists a small body of printed literature about each of them, notably the important works by Ducousso and Mazuel.8 But I should also stress that my aim is not to provide new facts - this will have to be done as a detailed study of a whole variety of new sources, both private and official - but simply to illustrate the extent and complexity of the interrelationships involved and to raise questions about their analysis.9 (The choice of these two industries has the additional advantage of providing some important and interesting con- trasts: for example the fact that while sugar was refined locally for the domestic market in Egypt, most of Lebanon's silk thread was sent to France for further processing.) I then look briefly at two other industries - Anatolian carpets and Egyptian cigarettes - before attempting to draw some general conclusions.

THE LEBANESE SILK INDUSTRY

In 1900 there were nearly 200 silk-spinning factories in operation in the muta- sarrifiya of Mount Lebanon and its neighbourhood, employing some 14,000 workers'? These factories obtained their raw material locally from the cocoons raised by peasant agriculturalists who also tended the mulberry bushes required to provide the silk worms with leaves.'1 Although the whole work of processing and exporting the silk was heavily dependent on French capital, the vast majority of the factories themselves were owned by local residents. Most used no mechanical motive power and employed the simple Chambon method of spinning to "two ends" which had been introduced to Mount Lebanon by the first French entrepreneurs in the 1840s (the number of "ends" referred to the number of cocoon threads which could be spun by a single operative at one time). I have argued elsewhere that the reasons for the continued reliance on such a technology, as well as for the location of most of the factories high up in the mountain villages of the Matn and the Shuf, can be explained in terms of the advantages to be gained from obtaining a regular supply of cocoons and of cheap, mainly female, seasonal labour.'2 As for the silk thread which they produced, the greater part of it was exported to France, leaving only a small proportion of lower quality material, usually of the type known as "Scandarani," for sale to local Syrian and Lebanese weavers.

Existing side by side with the factories was another type of spinning activity using a single basin of hot water (for unsticking the cocoons) and a revolving wooden mechanism called the "Arab wheel."'3 Such spinners generally employed a low grade of cocoon, or even silk waste from the factories, and produced a coarse thread for use by Syrian, Anatolian, and Egyptian weavers. But they were also quite capable of spinning a small quantity of Scandarani of a similar quality to the factories whenever there was a local demand for it. Figures for total output must obviously be treated with suspicion, but for what it is worth Ducousso estimates that, in 1910/1911, some 100,000 okes of raw silk was produced on the Arab wheel, or roughly 20 percent of that season's factory production.14 This



478 Roger Owen

compares with his estimate of 300,000 okes produced by the same method in 1855.'5

From the evidence which Ducousso presents it would seem that the decline in the use of the Arab wheel during the second half of the nineteenth century can be accounted for, in part, by pressure from two sets of related features. One was competition from the factories for supplies of cocoons, something which not only forced up the price but also the quality of this raw material, leaving fewer, more expensive, cocoons for the small spinner.'6 A second feature was the increasing use made by Syrian and Lebanese weavers of cheaper, and often better, Chinese and Anatolian silk threads, imports of which may have equalled, or even exceeded, the amounts produced on the Arab wheel just before World War I.17 Thus, even though there was little direct competition for access to the local market between the factories and the small spinners, there were still other ways in which the two sections of the industry affected each other, to the detriment of the weaker partner.

Conditions during World War I proved disastrous for silk producers of both types: huge numbers of mulberry bushes were cut down for fuel, many factories were closed and total factory output was reduced to about a tenth of its pre-war level.'8 However, there followed a period of considerable revival in the 1920s with the wholescale replanting of mulberries and the reopening and, in many cases, improvement of existing plants. A few factories were re-equipped to allow them to increase productivity by spinning to four or six "ends"; many more, it would seem, were supplied with steam engines to drive their machinery.19 In all this they derived some advantage from the support of the Lebanese government and French mandatory authorities who, among other things, removed the import duty from new spinning equipment and the tax from land newly-planted with mulberries.20 This was in marked contrast to the situation during the mutasarri- fiya period when the Beirut silk merchants had been instrumental in preventing the efforts of the silk section of the Ottoman Public Debt Administration from introducing its programme for improving the quality of cocoons on the grounds that this would interfere with the Mountain's right to freedom of trade.21 Post- war production reached its peak at the end of the 1920s when over 100 factories were at work spinning over 200,000 kg of thread, once again most of it for export.22

The situation during the early Mandate period was much less favourable for the smaller producers using the Arab wheel. There was a reduction in the activities of local weavers as loom numbers declined in the face of imports of foreign cloth.23 Meanwhile, many of those weavers who remained in business only did so by turning more and more to the use either of imported silk or, increasingly, of artificial silk or rayon, against which the local spinners received little tariff protection.24 Lastly, the traditional foreign markets for Syrian and Lebanese raw silk in Anatolia, Egypt, and elsewhere were rendered inaccessible as a result of the new barriers to trade which followed the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Thus, by the early 1930s, use of the Arab wheel was generally confined to the mountains along the Syrian coast north of Tripoli while output is estimated to have ranged from 60,000 kg (or half its pre-war total) in 1927 to only 20,000 kg in 1929.25



The Studl of Middle Eastern Industrial Historv 479

The last episode in this particular story was ushered in by the huge fall in the international price of silk which began even before the Wall Street crash of November 1929. The result was an immediate closing of many factories but a brief revival in small-scale spinning based on the Arab wheel, a consequence presumably, of the fact that its operators could reduce their costs sufficiently to rival some types of foreign imports.26 Thereafter, however, both sections of the industry began to compete more and more for a share of the local market as some of the remaining factories attempted to offset the reduction in their foreign sales by switching partly to the production of Scandarani for local consumption.27 Both received some temporary assistance from the decision of the French Mandatory authorities to raise the tariff on imported thread in December 1932. But, in the longer run, both suffered from, and were finally defeated by, a new development: the establishment of modern weaving mills in the larger Syrian cities encouraged by the high tariff imposed on certain imported textiles between 1932 and 1935.28 Such factories tended to make new types of cloth which were cheaper than the more traditional materials and were based more exclusively on the use of both cotton and man-made fibres.29

THE EGYPTIAN SUGAR INDUSTRY

In 1900 the large-scale sector of the Egyptian sugar industry consisted of nine crushing and processing factories managed by the Daira Saniya administration and two owned by the French controlled Societe Generale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d'Egypte.30 The former had all been constructed during the reign of Ismail Pasha (1863-1879) as part of his programme to develop his own agricultural estates in Middle and Upper Egypt as well as to provide the country with a major alternative crop to the then dominant cotton. As far as the scattered evidence goes, they were well managed by the Daira Saniya and derived extra advantage from the fact that they could be supplied with cane from its own estates.3' The factories produced raw sugar, most of which was sent abroad for refining, and molasses, some of which was sold locally and the rest distilled into alcohol in the Daira's six distilleries. As for the two factories owned by the Societe Generale des Sucreries, these produced raw sugar by the more efficient and up-to-date Stephen method of crushing and purifying, the bulk of which was refined for Egyptian domestic consumption in the refinery which the company had purchased at Hawamdiya, on the Nile just south of Cairo. Indeed, a central feature of this company's establishment was that it represented a determined effort by a major French sugar interest to get round many of the difficulties which the industry had been experiencing in France by building a refining capacity overseas in countries with a large potential domestic market.

Two years later - in a deal depigned by Lord Cromer to liquidate the Daira Saniya's international debt - the Daira's factories and network of light agricultural railways, but not its estates, were sold off to the Societe Generale des Sucreries which thus obtained a monopoly over Egyptian factory-produced sugar. This allowed the Societe Generale to rationalise the industry by closing off three of the Daira's factories so as to concentrate production in those with the best



480 Roger Owen

supplies of local cane. But in spite of all this, the company soon ran into two major crises. The first, triggered off by the suicide of its President in 1905, revealed that it was suffering from a number of major weaknesses, including bad management, shortage of working capital, and continued difficulty in obtaining a large enough supply of cane - something which forced it to close another three factories. In these circumstances, the company made the first of many successful appeals to the British-controlled Egyptian administration and not only managed to sell off its railway network to the state but also to obtain a three-year remis- sion of the excise duty placed on the sugar produced for local consumption. The second crisis followed soon after, in 1908, as a result of the acute shortage of cane caused by the switch of many Middle Egyptian cultivators to the production of (the more profitable) cotton. Once again the Societe Generale just managed to weather the storm, helped this time by the fact that cotton experienced its own worst season in 1908/1909 and by the management's strenuous efforts to improve the supply situation by developing its own special links with the larger cane producers. In 1910 it felt confident enough to build a sixth factory for itself at Kom Ombo and from then on experienced no more difficulty before World War I. At this same time, the company enlarged and re-equipped the Hawam- diya refinery to make it as efficient as any in Europe, while ensuring that it always worked to full capacity by importing extra supplies of raw sugar from Java.

In the first decade of the twentieth century the Societe Generale's main local rivals were 568 small crushing plants or melasseries, 32 of which were worked by steam.3 They employed 5,000 workers (as opposed to the company's 15,000) for a short winter season during which they produced raw sugar, molasses, and syrup for local consumption as well as yellow sugar for sale to the Hawamdiya refinery.33 Competition between the factory and the small-scale sectors was particularly intense in two areas. First, they were rivals for what were becoming increasingly scarce supplies of cane, with the Societe Generale managing to leave a smaller and smaller amount to its rival. Thus, whereas in the mid-1890s the Daira Saniya had secured cane from some 50,000 to 60,000 feddans, leaving 20,000 to 25,000 feddans for its smaller rivals, by 1909/1910, the Societe Gene- rale was buying up the produce of 31,500 feddans out of a total cane area of 45,500.34 The second field of competition concerned sales to the Egyptian market. Here the major feature seems to have been an enormous increase in the per capita consumption of white refined sugar during the 1890s and early 1900s, although the few figures which can be used to support this assertion have to be used with considerable care.35 And while a large part of this increase must have had something to do with the concomitant rise in Egyptian national income, it also seems reasonable to argue, as Hansen does, that it represented a sizable change in taste away from the syrups and molasses used in traditional Egyptian dishes and confectionaries towards a more European style of sugar use.36 Indeed, it would seem that the Societe Generale had become almost too successful in creating and expanding an Egyptian market for refined sugar, for demand soon outran the capacity of its Hawamdiya refinery, necessitating a considerable reliance on foreign imports.




The Societe Generale experienced its best and most profitable years during World War I when foreign supplies were cut off and it was called upon to meet the whole of Egyptian and Sudanese demand for refined sugar (then put at some 80,000 tons a year) as well as that of the foreign troops stationed in the country.37 But the company made a loss in 1921/1922 and from then on, for the rest of the 1920s, it experienced considerable difficulties in meeting the challenge posed by renewed competition from the more cheaply produced foreign sugars made from both cane and beet. Thus, by 1927/1928, imports of just under 100,000 tons were almost exactly the same as the Societe Generale's own output, and this was far more than the Egyptian market could absorb.38 As always the company lobbied the government strongly for assistance, aided by the fact that many of its major suppliers of cane were politically-influential landowners with a strong voice in such pressure groups as the Union d'agriculteurs.39 During the 1920s it was able to obtain small concessions such as an increase in the external tariff in October 1923 from eight to ten percent as well as reduced rates for its products on the state railways.40 But its major triumph came in 1931 when the government of Sidqi Pasha, using its new freedom to protect Egyptian industry, placed an absolute barrier against imports from foreign refineries. This was at once followed by a huge increase in domestic output: to over 150,000 tons in 1933/1934.4'

As in the case of Lebanese silk, the difficult economic conditions brought on by the World Depression, and the government's response to them, produced a differential effect on the two sections of the Egyptian sugar industry. In 1930, according to Mazuel, there were still 400 melasseries in Egypt, with a whole range of machinery from the simple to the most modern.42 They had continued to provide limited competition for the Societe Generale during the 1920s as it was often more profitable for the small cultivator either to sell his cane to such establishments or to purchase or hire a melasserie and process it himself. Small- scale producers derived further benefit from the fact that they did not have to pay the excise duty which was levied on factory-made refined sugar.43 After 1931, however, the greater freedom of action obtained by the big company as a result of the ban on foreign imports placed it in a much stronger position to bargain with the cultivators for their cane - to the detriment of the smaller establishments. Thus, by the mid-1930s, the melasseries were only treating some 30,000 to 35,000 tons of cane out of a total harvest of around 1,300,000 tons.44

RELATIONS WITHIN OTHER TYPES OF MIDDLE EASTERN MANUFACTURING

INDUSTRY BEFORE 1930

There were a number of other Middle Eastern industries in which there was a similar pattern of interaction between the factory and the small-scale sectors before 1930, notably textiles.45 There were also at least two others which represented unusual variations on the above: the manufacture of carpets in Western Anatolia, and of cigarettes in Egypt. As far as the former is concerned, carpets had been woven in individual households for many centuries. But it was only in



482 Roger Owen

the 1860s that a handful of Turkish merchants began to try to increase production for export by organising a putting-out system in which they supplied the weavers with dyed thread and then purchased the finished product.46 This method of organisation was taken a step further by a number of British exporters based at Izmir who managed to increase output still further by buying wool in bulk, spinning and dying it either in small factories or in household workshops and then using a large force of commercial agents to make contact with weavers over a very wide area. With the superior resources of capital at their disposal they were soon able to drive most of the Turkish merchants out of the business. But by the turn of the century they faced more formidable competition from other foreign firms and this caused them to band together to form the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers Company in 1908. Two spinning and two dying plants were constructed at Izmir, followed closely by seventeen carpet weaving factories at various centres throughout Western and Southern Anatolia. The result was the creation of a powerful commercial network in which just over half the carpets were woven in the company's factories and the remainder through an ever more efficient putting-out system.47 In this way, by 1913, the company had obtained a virtual monopoly of carpet making for export, although, according to KurmuS, something like another quarter of total Anatolian output was still produced on an individual basis for local use.48

Not surprisingly, the period of nearly continuous wars, 1914-1922, and the death and departure of the Armenians and Greeks had a serious effect on the manufacture of Anatolian carpets. When the business revived in the mid-1920s, the factory element was very much reduced: the Oriental Carpet Manufacturers, which had previously employed many Armenian workers, transferred some of its operations to Greece, leaving only one large establishment at Izmir. For the rest, the industry returned to its late nineteenth century pattern of organisation with a number of local merchant houses active in promoting a putting-out system employing mainly household looms.49

The final industry to be examined is that of cigarette manufacture in Egypt.50 Its introduction is usually credited to Greeks, many of whom transferred their business activities from Istanbul after the creation of the first Ottoman tobacco monopoly in the late 1870s. Egypt is said to have provided them with a useful alternative because of its dry climate and the presence of a substantial labour force of local foreigners willing to work for low wages - labour being a very high proportion of total costs. It was on this basis, and using high quality tobacco leaf imported from Greece and Anatolia (Egyptian tobacco cultivation being banned totally in 1890) that the first entrepreneurs developed a successful factory industry based on the export of certain well-known brands of "Egyptian" cigarettes. Of these, perhaps the most important was the firm started in 1869 by Nestor Gianaclis which, by the early twentieth century, was employing some 500 workers on premises which have since become the American University in Cairo, and manufacturing some 80,000,000 cigarettes a year, of which 90 percent were exported. Meanwhile, perhaps encouraged by evidence of a growing local demand, other entrepreneurs began to concentrate more exclusively on the Egyptian domestic market. Some, like Maspero, opened factories to do this; others, whose




names rarely show up in the published records, must have operated in more humble circumstances, buying small amounts of tobacco and papers or tubes and rolling cigarettes for sale in the neighbourhood grocers' shops and other outlets.

Information about the relationship between the various sectors of the industry in the early 1900s is difficult to find but there are one or two pointers to its special features. First, as the actual process of making or rolling cigarettes could be done by almost anyone (the skill involved was speed) there could have been a considerable degree of movement between the various enterprises, both by workers and entrepreneurs. At least one of the successful Greek manufacturers began in a very small way, making and selling cigarettes with his family in his spare time.51 Second, it may well be that, in terms of volume, production for the home market was soon as great, if not greater, than for export. At the very least there is a strong probability of this, for the foreign trade records show that in the first decade of the twentieth century as much as fifteen times the quantity of leaf tobacco was imported into Egypt as was re-exported in the form of cigarettes.52 No doubt a large proportion of these imports was sold simply as loose tobacco for use in pipes and all the countless other ways of smoking which had flourished before the cigarette itself had been so recently invented.53 But the quantity involved was so large, and there were so many factories recorded in the 1907 census (37 in Cairo alone), that it seems likely that a substantial amount of it was used for local manufacture. Third, by World War I, there was beginning to be an important distinction between the factories making the luxury "Egyptian" cigarette for export, which, as their advertisements repeatedly underlined, was hand- made, and some of those which catered to the domestic market which were beginning to try to import the new and vastly more productive European-made rolling machines.54 It was this latter attempt which had much to do with provok- ing the strikes and labour unrest which was so much a feature of the time - the skilled hand rollers realising that the introduction of such machines, which could produce as many cigarettes a day as 40 to 50 workers, would make them imme- diately redundant.55

After World War I the paths of the two types of factories began to diverge still further. Faced with an intensification of international competition in the luxury market, many of the companies making the hand-rolled cigarette found it expe- dient to open factories in Europe and North America, a trend which had been begun by Gianaclis and Melachrino during the early 1900s.56 Meanwhile, a number of firms working for the Egyptian market began to expand their local operations by, among other things, bringing in rolling machines from Britain and Germany. It was these firms which then became the object of a substantial take- over bid by the Eastern Tobacco Company (a subsidy of the American Tobacco Company), in conjunction with the Egyptian cigarette entrepreneur, Matossian, with the aim of dominating the local market. During the 1920s the new giant managed to obtain control of all but one of the important mechanised companies, paying particular attention to the purchase (and thus the preservation) of their brand names and the "goodwill" of their retailers and clients.57 The only major enterprise to resist was the Greek firm of Coutarelli brothers, founded in



484 Roger Owen

1890. By 1928 it owned 12 rolling machines and was locked in a grim struggle to resist the Eastern Company's total control of the Egyptian market. One estimate puts Coutarelli's share in the early 1930s at roughly 30 percent.58

CONCLUSION

On the basis of an examination of the interlocking structures of the industries just described, it will be seen that the proper definition of the different types of manufacturing processes is all-important. Not only does the conventional divi- sion into "traditional" and "modern" make little sense in terms of the types of techniques employed or the quality of the product produced, but it also suggests that they inhabited two different economic worlds. This was clearly not the case: as I have tried to demonstrate, both large- and small-scale activity existed within the same economic environment and were subject to many of the same kinds of pressures and constraints. There were also important links between them: whether directly, through the exchange of raw materials or semi-processed products or competition for the same sources of supply and the same markets; or, indirectly, via the mediation of government or changes in the national and international economic environment. Rivalry between the two sectors generally allowed the larger, factory sector more influence in setting prices for major inputs or per- suading governments to give it particular advantages, but not necessarily so.

For all these reasons it is not possible to construct a simple model which either defines the relationship between the sectors or outlines the way it could or should have developed over time. If there is a theme running through the majority of the examples given, it is of factory industries which were initially established to manufacture goods for export being forced, by shifts in the world economy, to concentrate more and more on the domestic market. This certainly brought them more into direct competition with the local small-scale sector. The result was increasing pressure on the latter, but in no case its immediate demise. The examples of carpets and cigarettes offer two unusual variations on this theme. In the case of carpets it was the factory sector which was largely wiped out (but mainly as the result of a war). As for tobacco, what happened here was that innovators and market leaders, having established an export oriented industry, were forced to give way to the mechanised sector producing for the home market, only for the latter to succumb to one of the first examples of a near monopoly established in a major Middle Eastern market by a huge Multinational.

But rather than pursue the question of intra-industrial relations further at a time when so little detailed work has been done on the subject, it might be more useful to conclude by pointing out some of the areas which could profitably be explored in the future. Apart from the obvious need to find more of the records of the particular industries concerned, it would be important to know more about their technology, their cost structure and their organisation, and of the ways these changed over time. There is also much work to be done on the general question of markets and pressures by which they were defined and trans- formed by changes in taste and fashion. (It may be that advertisements and novels are as good a guide to this subject as anything else.) Finally, it would be




interesting to look at the whole subject on a comparative basis by bringing together material from other parts of the world with similar types of industrial activity. To take only one example, were the radical tobacco rollers of Cairo organised at all like their counterparts in Spain or Cuba or Greece who sat working silently at their tables while one of their number read them extracts from the anarchist or syndicalist press? It is my general impression that historical study of Middle Eastern industry has been emptied of a great deal of potential interest by the fact that it has concentrated so much on two or three well-worn themes. It would be good if it could be opened out again for general examination, analysis, and - remembering the teacher in whose honour this issue of IJMES is being dedicated - sheer intellectual delight.

ST. ANTONY'S COLLEGE, OXFORD

NOTES

'There are only a few works which concern themselves directly with the organisation and structure of Middle Eastern industry before the 1930s, among them, A.A.I. El-Gritli (al-Jiritli), "The Structure of Modern Industry in Egypt," L'Egypte Contemporaine, 241-242 (Nov.-Dec. 1947), pp. 363-582 and Ta'rikh al-sina'afi Misr (Cairo, 1956?) and the chapters on "Industry" in Sa'id B. Himadeh's various edited collections, Economic Organization of Syria (Beirut, 1936); Economic Organization of Palestine (Beirut, 1938); and Al-nizam al-iqtisadi fi'l-'Iraq (Beirut, 1938). For the rest, the most useful sources are the descriptions of particular industries such as those by Eman, Ducousso, and Mazuel cited below.

2See the various observations about the under-counting of Egyptian factory workers in the 1907 Egyptian Census, for example by J. Vallet, Contribution a 'etule de la condition des ouvriers de la grande industrie du Cairo (Valence, 1911), p. 96. More recent surveys reveal that a huge under- counting of small-scale plants continues - for example, Cairo, Zagazig, and Michigan State Univer- sities, "The rural non-farm employment project-Egypt: Small scale enterprise in Egypt: Fayoum and Kalyubiya Governorates," Phase 1, Survey Results. Mimeo (March 1982), pp. 14-15.

31 include in this group C. Keyder, The Definition of a Peripheral Economy: Turkey 1923-1929 (Cambridge and Paris, 1981); E. Davis, Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Indus- trialization 1920-1941 (Princeton, 1983); and R. Owen, The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (London, 1981).

4Egyptian cigarettes were an unusual example of the advantages of cheap inputs in that, after 1890, all the tobacco used in them was imported.

'For example, Keyder, Definition, pp. 50-64; Davis, Challenging Colonialism, p. 193. 6For example, D. Chevallier, "Un exemple de resistance technique de l'artisinat syrien au xixe et

xxe siecles: Les tissus ikates d'Alep et de Damas," Syria, XXXIX, 3-4 (1962), pp. 300-334. Also, Keyder, Definition, pp. 47-48; and 0. Kurmus, "Some Aspects of Handicraft and Industrial Produc- tion in Ottoman Anatolia," Asian and African Studies, XV, I (March 1981), pp. 88-94.

7Keyder, Definition, pp. 64-66. 8G. Ducousso, L'industrie de la soie en Syre et au Liban (Beirut and Paris, 1913), and J. Mazuel,

Le sucre en Egypte: Etude de geographie historique et e(onomique (Cairo, 1937). For silk, see also P. Saba, "The Development and Decline of the Lebanese Silk Industry," B. Litt. (Oxford, 1977) and B. Labaki, "La filature de la soie dans le Sandjak du Mont Liban," Arabica, XXIX, I (Feb. 1982), pp. 80-90. For sugar, see P. Arminjon, La situation economique et financiere de l'Egypte (Paris, 1911), pp. 236-279; C. Artaud, "L'industrie sucriere et la culture de la canne h sucre en Egypte," L'Egypte Contemporaine, I, 2 (March 1910), pp. 207-225; W. Tieman, The Sugar Cane in Egypt (Altrincham, 1912), pp. 1-14.



486 Roger Owen

9The most obvious place to begin to look for documents concerning the history of the Egyptian sugar industry would be the archives of the Daira Saniya in Cairo. In the case of silk there were some records in the Lebanese Silk Office just south of Beirut on the old Saida road, but nothing about the

operation of individual factories. '?Ducousso, L'industrie, Part 3 and list of factories in Annexe 1. "An estimated 40 percent of the cultivated area of Mount Lebanon was covered with mulberries

at this time. See, Ismail Haqqi Bey, ed., Luhnan: Mahahith 'ilmil'a wa iitimaci,a, new edition (Bei- rut, 1970), pp. 457-459.

2Owen, Middle East, pp. 251-252. '3Ducousso, L'industrie, pp. 145-148. 14Ibid., p. 150. 5Ibid., p. 183. 'Ibid., p. 182-183. '7Ibid., p. 150. '8M. Fevret, "La sericulture au Liban - 2," Revue tie Geographie de Lyon, XXIV, 4 (1949),

pp. 348-350; G. Hakim, "Industry," in Himadeh, Economic Organization of Syria, p. 123. '9Estimates of the degree of modernization vary. For example, Saba, "Development and Decline,"

pp. 62-66; Emil Edde, quoted in Comit6 Executif du ler Congres Libanais de la Sericulture, Rap- ports du ler Congres Lihanais tde la Sericulture (Beirut, 1930), pp. 8-9; A. Naccache, "Moriculture, grainage, sericulture et filature au Liban," Extrait des Actes de la Conference Technique Sericole Internationale (Ales, France, 1955), p. 39; Hakim, "Industry," p. 134. It is Hakim who implies that the factories generally used steam power (ibid., p. 138).

2?Saba, "Development and Decline," pp. 62-63; Hakim, "Industry," p. 136. 21Ducousso, L 'industrie, pp. 72-73; Saba, "Development and Decline," pp. 68-69. 22Ibid., pp. 63-65; Institut Internationale d'Agriculture, Monograph No. 8, La Sericulture dans le

monde (Rome, 1944). 23Hakim, "Industry," pp. 145-147. 24Ibid., pp. 146, 150-153. 25Ibid., pp. 138-140. 26Ibid., Table VIII, p. 140. 27Ibid., p. 141; Comite Executif du ler Congres Libanais de la Sericulture, Annual Report, 1936/7,

pp. 2-3. The use of more factory-produced silk thread by Syrian weavers was one of the major aims of important members of this Committee. For example, P. Hobeika, La soie libanaise (Beirut, 1930), p. 10.

28Hakim, "Industry," pp. 150-153. 29Ibid., p. 151. 30The major source of information about the history of the Egyptian sugar industry is Mazuel, Le

sucre, chapter one. 31For example, the published annual reports of the Daira Saniya administration. See also A. Chelu,

Le Nil, Le Soudan, L'Egypte (Paris, 1891), pp. 217-218; C. Pensa, Les Cultures d'Egypte, pp. 52-55; Williams, De Broe and Co., Sugar in Egypt and Elsewhere (London, 1903), pp. 58-63, 106-114.

32Arminjon, Situation &eonomique, pp. 247-248. 331Ibid., pp. 249, 255; Mazuel, Le sucre, pp. 157-159. 34Figures from Sir W. Willcocks and J. I. Craig, Egyptian Irrigation, 3rd edition (London and New

York, 1913), 1, p. 113 and Egypt's Annuaire Statistique, 1914, p. 362. See also B. Hansen's calculations in "Income and Consumption in Egypt, 1886/1887 to 1937," IJMES, 10 (1979), pp. 38-41.

"For example, ibid., pp. 39-40. 361bid., pp. 40-41. See also Arminjon, Situation economique, pp. 247-248, 252. 37"Note sur l'industrie sucriere," Government of Egypt, Rapport de la Commission du Commerce

et de 'lIndustrie, 2nd edition (Cairo, 1921), p. 148.

38Figures from Mazuel, Le sucre, Table XII. See also, J. Schatz, "Aperqu general sur les princi- paux cultures 6gyptiennes," L'Egypte Contemporaine, 138 (Dec. 1932), pp. 694-697.

39El-Gritli, "Structure," p. 512. 40Ibid., p. 512, Mazuel, Le sucre, pp. 129-130. 41Ibid., Table XIl.




421bid., p. 162. 1Ibid., p. 159.

44Ibid., pp. 158-159. 45For example, see A. Eman's excellent L'Industrie du coton en Egypte: Etude d'economi poli-

tique (Cairo, 1943). 46Kurmus, "Some Aspects," pp. 90-94. 471bid., pp. 92-93; A. Wright, ed., Twentieth Centuri Impressions of Egypt (London, 1909),

p. 468. The Company still exists, with offices in London. 48Kurmus, "Some Aspects," p. 93.

49Keyder, Definition, p. 56. 50Wright, "The Cigarette Industry," Twentieth Century Impressions, pp. 483-496; Vallet, Contri-

bution, pp. 95-111; C. Issawi, ed., The Economic History of the Middle East (Chicago, 1966), pp. 60-64.

Slnterview conducted by Mr. Alexander Kitroeff of St. Antony's College, Oxford.

2Figures from Annuaire Statistique, 1914, pp. 303, 307. 53See Hansen's comments, "Income and Consumption," pp. 37-38. For the government's calcula-

tions of the increase in tobacco consumption per head see Annuaire Statistique, 1914, p. 402. The tombac imported for use in narghiles is listed separately in the trade statistics.

54Vallet, Contribution, pp. 103-104. 55"bid., pp. 102-103. Calculations concerning the rival productivity of worker and machine are

difficult. The Bonsack roller used by the Wills Company in Britain could produce 300 cigarettes a minute in the 1890s. The Standard machine, introduced after World War 1, could manage 600 a minute. See B. W. E. Alford, W. D. and H. O. Wills and the Development of the U. K. Tobacco Industry, 1786-1965 (London, 1973), p. 225, 370-371. There is a wide discrepancy between the estimates of the amounts produced by cigarette rollers in Egypt. For example, compare Vallet, Contri- bution, p. 99 with the anonymous author of "The Cigarette Industry" in Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions, p. 486.

56bid., pp. 487, 491. 57El-Gritli, "Structure," p. 510. 581nterview conducted by Mr. Alexander Kitroeff of St. Antony's College, Oxford.



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