Discussion: Compiling Statistics in Egypt

Hiroshi Kato


The Egyptian Personality

Almost all of the Middle Eastern states have artificial boundaries because they were established after the First World War by European Great Powers seeking to further their own interests. This historical legacy is a major factor in the underdevelopment of nation-states in the region. Egypt, however, is an exception among Middle Eastern states in that it has historical boundaries and traditions which have helped instill a mature 'national' consciousness in the population. The formation of the Egyptian 'nation-state' begins with the 'Egyptians' -- that is, the people of the communities which grew up along the Nile River -- and then moves to the political formation of the 'Egyptian state.' This process of development has spurred controversies not unlike those related to the national anthem, the flag, and "Nihonjinron" (the ideology of Japanese-ness) in Japan.

The Egyptians frequently use the term "Egyptian personality" in everyday life. As this custom indicates, Egyptians like to talk about themselves and to be talked about, and they care little if the discussion turns contradictory or malicious. In fact, they enjoy being insulted so long as the insult is clever or amusingly phrased. In this sense, they may resemble the Japanese. Without understanding this national characteristic, non-Egyptians cannot understand the Egyptian society or culture. At first glance, this behavior may seem somewhat masochistic but it signifies not so much indiscretion as the society's self-confidence. This self-confidence means that the people refuse to be shaken even when living conditions deteriorate.

The Revolution Which Came Too Soon

It is well known that Japan built a modern state with remarkable speed following the Meiji Restoration of 1868. However, the earliest effort by a non-Western country to establish a modern, independent state was made by Egypt. Almost before the Meiji modernization began, Egypt had already made two attempts to modernize within the short span of seventy years, and within completely different economic frameworks. However, Egypt's efforts met with even greater difficulties than those confronted by modernizing Japan.

The first attempt was made under the rule of the enlightened absolute monarch Muhammad Ali (reigned 1805-48). He instituted an economic policy which was externally protectionist and internally monopolistic. The state expropriated the profits from the agricultural sector for itself to establish modern military and state-run industrial sectors. The expansion of Egyptian state power was remarkable, and its military strength surpassed even that of the Ottoman Empire. Egypt sought entry into foreign markets, and expanded its trading in the Arabian peninsula, the Sudan and Ethiopia, Crete and Cypress, and Syria. The people of the Middle East sensed the emergence of a rising nation capable of displacing the Ottoman Empire.

Examination of the import-export statistics of the port of Alexandria in 1831 reveals that Egypt's five largest trading partners during this era were Turkey (accounting for 46.8% of exports and 33.2% of imports), Austria (17.5%, and 25.2%), Tuscany (17.1% and 11.6%), Britain (8.1% and 13.5%), and France (5.8% and 11.3%). Turkey is equivalent to the Ottoman Empire, needless to say, but we cannot so readily assume that 19th century Austria is the same as present-day Austria or that Tuscany is just a region in Italy.

The picture becomes even less clear upon examination of residence documents. Almost all of the foreign residents registered as Austrian were Italian -- Austria was then part of the Habsbury empire, whose capital was Vienna -- and the so-called Austrians probably came from the area around Venice. Most of the persons registered as Tuscans were Jews from Livorno, which from the Middle Ages was licensed as a free economic zone and served as a seaport for Florence. In addition, we must assume that there was an eastern Mediterranean trading zone during the first half of the 19th century since Egypt's next most important trading partners were Malta, Greece, and Sardinia, all located in either the Aegean Sea or the Adriatic Sea.

Trade from the port of Alexandria was directed toward the Mediterranean Sea. Taking into account also the overland trade with Libya, the Sudan, and Syria, and the trade passing through the Red Sea towards the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, it hardly seems an exaggeration to state that Egypt was coming to be regarded as a regional power in the process of displacing the Ottoman Empire.

However, the international politics of the early 19th century would not permit a new power to emerge. The European powers exerted pressure, including armed force, upon Egypt to force it to accede to the London Treaty of 1840. The treaty recognized the family of Muhammad Ali as hereditary viceroys of Egypt -- a position which the family retained until the 1952 revolution -- in exchange for relinquishing all conquered territories other than the Sudan. It also opened the Egyptian economy to free trade. Having little choice but to accept these terms, Egypt would find itself from that time on confined to the territory of the Nile valley.

The Collapse of Egypt's "Rokumeikan Era"

Although Muhammad Ali's attempt to build a modern state met with failure, the agricultural wealth supported by the waters of the Nile remained abundant. This availability of resources encouraged a second attempt to construct a modern state, this time within a free trade regime. The second attempt was led by Muhammad Ali's successors, Said (reigned 1854-63) and, especially, Ismail (1968-79).

Extreme westernization was the basis of the second attempt to modernize. Steamship routes between Alexandria and Marseille and between Suez and Bombay had already been opened in the 1830s. In 1855 a railroad was built from Alexandria to Cairo, and a second linked Cairo and Suez in 1858. Egypt became the nexus linking the land and sea routes from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. Japanese traveling to Europe during the end of the Edo era and the early Meiji era had to pass through Egypt.

All of this infrastructure was created to build up transportation links with Europe, particularly so that cotton could be sent to Britain's textile manufacturers. Thus Egypt presented itself as a monocultural, specialized economy, or as "Lancashire's cotton plantation." Alexandria's trade statistics show that by the latter half of the 1860s, Britain accounted for 76.7% of exports and 42.2% of imports, and most of the former was cotton. At that time, Ismail stated that, "Egypt has already become part of Europe."

The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, was the symbol of the modernizing era. It simultaneously fulfilled the dreams of both Egypt and Europe, especially France. The project was the bastard child of the ideas of the later Saint-Simonian school, which exerted the strongest intellectual influence on the Egyptian government from early to mid-19th century, and notably of Pere Enfantin, who dreamed of building an industrial society in the Orient. Another child of the era was Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal.

To celebrate the completion of the canal, the Egyptian government built a grand opera house in imitation of the Opera House in Paris. Giuseppe Verdi was commissioned to compose an opera for the opening. The name of the composition was "Aida." Staged in ancient Egypt, it was a tale of tragic love. Ultimately, the opera was not completed in time for the completion of the canal, so "Rigoletto" was performed in its place. To attract visitors to the completion ceremonies, a luxury hotel was built directly opposite the Great Pyramids in Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. The hotel was the site of the Allies' Cairo Conference at the end of the Second World War. Today the building is the Hotel Mena House and one room facing the Pyramids is still named Churchill's Room.

Unfortunately, the bill for the festivities was immense. During the reign of Muhammad Ali, the nation incurred no foreign debts. In 1862, Egypt borrowed from abroad for the first time. The debt quickly accumulated and in 1876, only 14 years after the first loan, Egypt found itself bankrupt. The country was placed under international supervision by the Western powers. Japan also emulated Western ways in its so-called rokumeikan diplomacy as part of an effort to bring about a revision of the unequal treaties with the Western powers. Kaoru Inoue was the foreign minister who developed rokumeikan diplomacy. When he resigned his position some ten years after Egypt's bankruptcy, he wrote his friend, Ito Hirobumi, "It would be terrible if Japan turned out like Egypt."

Statistics and the Modernization of the National Administration

The deepening intrusions of the Western powers into Egypt's domestic politics triggered the country's first nationalistic movement in 1881. Called the Orabi Revolution, after the military officer who led it, the movement collapsed the following year when British soldiers landed in Alexandria. Egypt was thereafter placed under British military occupation, leading to the development of what was in fact a colonial administration. It is from this time that statistics were first compiled systematically in Egypt.

Consular reports and other materials written by Western administrators following the 1876 bankruptcy repeatedly state that Egyptian administration was premodern and inefficient. It was, as they noted, incapable of gathering the statistical data necessary to control the population and effectively administer the country.

This does not mean that the Egyptian administrators did not have any information on the people. Had that been the case, the developments in recent Egyptian history we have described would not have been possible Research indicates the opposite, that in fact the Egyptian government worked hard to gather detailed information so that it could control the population.

In the 1850s, for example, Egyptian peasants were monitored through three record-keeping systems. These were the "Register of Inhabitants," which recorded family information according to households, the "Register of Deaths," and the "Register of Recruitment for Military Service," which recorded the names of peasants drafted into the military and the dates of their inductions. (A conscription system for ordinary peasants was in use at the early date of 1822.) These records were compiled at the village level, and they were undoubtedly based on a national population survey conducted in 1847 (the Arab word for population survey, ta'dad al-sukkan, later came to be used to mean population census). This survey covered even the nomads in the oases of the desert.

The difference between the Egyptian administration and the administrations of European countries was not in whether or not detailed statistical data was used as a means of governing the population, but in the different methods for gathering and managing statistical data and, more concretely, the degree to which data compilation was centralized. Ultimately, the difference lies in the new outlook of the Egyptian state.

Over the course of the 19th century, Egypt took a step forward in its campaign to modernize (Westernize) and centralize its state structure. With the passage of time, the concern with statistical data clearly increased. Representative of this trend is Ali Mubarak (1824-94), a state bureaucrat and historian who compiled encyclopedic information, mostly in the form of official documents. Ali Mubarak published what was called a "topographical study" which employed a literary voice in describing traditional Egyptian geographical, biographical, and historical information in The New Topography (al-khitat al-tawfiqiya al-jadida) (20 volumes, Cairo, 1888-89). This work cites a vast quantity of statistical data dispersed among the diverse governmental agencies.

Such examples indicate that the modernization of the national administration and the growing concern for statistics were not suddenly generated by the Western presence but arose from the maturation of the Egyptian state and, within the Egyptian bureaucracy, from administrative necessity. However, this process assumed a more drastic form in 1876 when the state went bankrupt and was placed under international supervision. Those events represented the imperialist interference of the European powers in Egyptian affairs, but they also brought the rationalization of national finances, which had not previously differentiated between resources of the Royal family and those of the state. The road to establishing a national economy was open.

Colonial Administration and Statistics

Following Egypt's bankruptcy, the Egyptian Public Debt Committee (la Commission de la Dette Publique d'Egypte) was established to liquidate the debt and protect the interests of the debtors. In addition, Britain dispatched a finance minister and France sent a minister of public works to supervise the nation's finances and expenditures. The annual financial reports of the Egyptian Public Debt Committee contain information on resources, including land taxes, which were regarded as debt collateral.

Government agencies established Statistics Bureaus to provide the information, which was sent to Ministry of Finance. A couple of examples, taken from materials I have at hand, are the Ministere des Finances Egyptiennes, Statistique agricole et animale de l'Egypte. Pour l'annee cophte 1590 and Ministere de l'Interieur, Direction Generale de la Statistique, Le commerce exterieur de l'Egypte pendant les annees 1874, 1875, 1876, 1877 et 1878 (Le Caire, 1879), which are the earliest systematically compiled collection of agricultural and trade statistics, respectively.

In addition, the Statistical Department of the Ministry of Finance conducted the first census in 1882, the year in which Egypt came under British military occupation. The 1882 effort was really a preparatory step; the first true population census was conducted in 1897. Thereafter, censuses were conducted at ten-year intervals in 1907, 1917, 1927, 1937, and 1947.

The surveys conducted by British officials were, as they boasted, by far the most detailed and thorough ever conducted in Egypt. Japan, itself a late developer which undertook colonial ventures in the early 20th century, regarded Egypt as a 'bad example' from which to learn, but considered its colonial administration to be a positive model. The British administration in Egypt served as a model for the administrators who controlled Taiwan and Korea. For example, Japanese administrators assiduously studied the 'scientific' land survey conducted at the end of the 19th century in Egypt as well as the land tax revision which accompanied it in order to conduct an even more comprehensive survey in Korea from 1911 and revise land taxes (see "The Korean Land Survey in Comparative Historical Perspective" by Hiroshi Miyajima in the volume The Modern Economic Structure of Korea, edited by Tetsu Nakamura et al (Nihon Hyoron Sha, 1990) (in Japanese).

Many statistics specialists and researchers, apart from those in Ministry of Finance bureaus and other government agencies, worked in semi-governmental research institutes. One such institute was the Egyptian Society of Political Economy, Statistics, and Legislation (Societe d'Economie Politique, de Statistique et de Legislation; al-jam*iya al-misriya li-l-iqtisad al-siyasi wa al-ihsa wa al-Tashri'), founded in 1909. The Society continues to issue its bulletin L'Egypte Contemporaine (Misral-mu'asir) which includes important information on economic historical research for Egypt.

An Introductory Outline to Egyptian National Income Statistics

From the beginning, the emphasis in accumulating statistical data centered on population statistics gathered through censuses. Needless to say, however, population statistics are the basic data which make possible the compilation of economic, social, and other statistics. Therefore, attention has been devoted to gathering statistics in areas other than population when the opportunities exist.

One such case was 1897, when the general population census was accompanied by other statistics gathering. One of the results of the latter is A. Boinet's Geographie economique et administrative de l'Egypte, Basse-Egypte I (Cairo, 1902). The volume was compiled at the village level and includes various data on the lives of villagers. However, it covers only three prefectures in lower Egypt. Although further volumes were announced, no similar works covering other prefectures were ever published.

Statistics on social and economic aspects of village life were also collected at the time of the 1907 census. One result was Nizarat al-Maliya*s ihsa*iya *umumiya *an al-muhafazat wa al-mudiriyat li-l-qutr al-misri [The general statistics of Egypt by administration units] (Cairo, 1909), published by the Ministry of Finance. In addition, detailed statistics on education were gathered, and they later served as a basis for time series analyses.

Intensive economic and social statistics gathering was conducted during the period between the world wars. In the area of economic statistics, for example, the first agricultural census was conducted in 1927, and in 1937 the first manufacturing census was conducted in cooperation with the population census. During the same period, economic policymakers increasingly began to analyze national income statistics. In 1942, a research committee was established in the Ministry of Finance to investigate national income and expenditures from 1937 to 1945. One result of the committee's work is A Study of the National Income of Egypt (Cairo, 1950) by Mahmoud Anis, who held a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of London and served on the committee.

Anis points out in the book that several problems hindered national income analysis, among them the lack of reliable statistical data on rents of land and buildings, wages paid in agriculture and agricultural profits, commercial and industrial profits, industrial wages prior to 1942, salaries and wages in general, the balance of payments, and employment. After the appearance of Anis' book, economic policymakers realized that the information necessary to analyze national income statistics was often unavailable, and they accordingly began to devote greater attention to gathering statistical data.

Establishment of the Central Statistics Office

In order to improve data compilation, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) was founded in 1946, immediately following the Second World War. CAPMAS was a government agency charged with centralizing the gathering of data from all institutes, universities, research centers, private individuals, and international agencies, and preparing pertinent materials, especially statistical materials, for public distribution.

When the revolutionary government led by Gamal Abd el-Nassar seized power in 1952, it established a planned economy in which CAPMAS was charge with providing necessary data. From the late 1970s to the present, under the *open-door* economic policy, we have been able to obtain essential statistical data from the institute, as long as it is in stock. The centra administration and the Statistics Section of CAPMAS are [illustrated in the diagram below] (as shown in CAPMAS, Informative Bulletin, 1993). Regional offices are organized by prefecture under the authority of the central office.


Hiroshi Kato
Hitotsubashi University, Department of Economics