Intra-Elite Conflict and Demands for Power-Sharing: Evidence from Khedival Egypt (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Political Economy of the MENA Region: A Pluralist Approach

Abstract

In this paper, we study how inequality, in the form of the rising economic power of a politically marginalized elite, can impact both its de jure political representation as it is co-opted by the incumbent elite, as well as its demand for de facto power sharing, in late 19th-century pre-colonial Khedival Egypt. We exploit the cotton boom that occurred during the American Civil War (1861–1865) as an exogenous positive shock to landholders in rural Egypt, as it led to the rise of the economic power of medium landholders (village headmen) vis-`a-vis owners of large estates (the Khedive’s family and top state officials), as both classes expanded their cotton cultivation. We use a difference-in-differences strategy that compares the evolution of the political representation and the attitudes towards democratization of village headmen before and after the cotton boom, across villages with varying levels of cotton suitability. We measure the first outcome, the political representation of village headmen, using a novel dataset of the universe of members of the Egyptian parliament (MPs) since its inception in 1824, that has information on each MP’s occupation and locality. As MPs were selected by local elites in their constituencies, subject to the Khedive’s approval, we can interpret this measure as reflecting both the local support base and the cooptation of the rising village headmen. The second outcome is village headmen’s attitudes towards power sharing, which we measure by their support (or lack thereof) for the first broad-based anti-authoritarian movement in modern Egypt: the ’Urabi Revolution (1879–1882). This failed uprising was led by Colonel Ahmed ’Urabi Pasha (himself a son of a village headman) against Khedive Tewfiq (the Ottoman autonomous viceroy of Egypt in 1879–1892), and was eventually defeated by the British army that intervened in support of Tewfiq, resulting in the British Occupation of Egypt in 1882. The prevailing historical narrative portrays the uprising as an intra-elite conflict between the rising rural bourgeoisie (Egyptian village headmen) and the aristocratic (Turkish) large landowners. To measure village headmen’s support of the uprising, we exploit two major episodes of the ’Urabist contestation. First, we record the variation across village headmen MPs in signing an 1882 petition demanding the resignation of the Khedive. Second, we use the post-British-Occupation 1882 arrest lists to determine whether a village headman actively participated in the ’Urabist uprising. Third, we examine the composition of MPs in the first post-Occupation Egyptian parliament to identify who was co-opted and who was punished by the new colonial political regime.

Authors

• Allison Spencer Hartnett, University of Southern California

• Mohamed Saleh, University of Toulouse Capitole