Imagined Empires (13 page)

SETTLERS AND BULLS FOR HEGEMONY

Upon putting down the rebellions, Muhammad ‘Ali sent an urgent decree to all the Turkish governors of the districts and subdistricts of Upper Egypt. “It is imperative,” read the promulgation, “to organize the lands that will be cultivated this year. Bring what they need from machines and cattle, erect waterwheels and everything else. . . . [I have] appointed a special official to work with you [the governors] on this matter. . . . Lands should be assigned in accordance with the number of their inhabitants, and village shaykhs should be urged to serve the crops and erect waterwheels, and registers should be kept .”
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This was the first decree of its kind to reach Qina Province. To adjust to the realities of southern discontent, the pasha changed his methods of internal colonialism, applying European models that were particularly used in the Americas. He colonized by sending settlers and creating plantations; imposing heavy central planning and government intervention in the economy; and maintaining close control of the environment and energy sources. He also created modern institutions of hegemony to allow the political participation of the subjugated populace, though the south nonetheless endured taxation without representation.

An ever-increasing influx of Turkish settlers from Cairo arrived in Qina Province to assume positions as government bureaucrats and, more important, to establish state and private plantations. Their plantations followed a model similar to what European empires devised in the Americas: they forcefully enclosed large plots—hundreds or thousands of acres—cultivating them with one cash crop, especially grain or sugar, and employing slaves or forced local labor to till them. To establish their social prestige and separate themselves from the natives, Turkish settlers carried the titles of
agha
and
bey,
referring to their status within the bureaucratic hierarchy as governors of provinces, directors of districts, or managers of subdistricts. Their sweeping presence in Qina altered the socioeconomic composition of a province historically inhabited by Arab tribes and native Copts, as these Turks purchased large houses in the urban centers of the province and brought their families from Cairo to take up residence in them. On a daily basis, they sent meticulous reports to Muhammad ‘Ali about all incidents, big or small, on every plantation they ran. Back in Cairo, the pasha responded to these reports personally, with equally detailed orders dictating how to handle both important and minute affairs on the plantations and in the province at large.
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FIGURE 5.
An Upper Egyptian village street.

To allow these state and private plantations to take form, Muhammad ‘Ali introduced fundamental legal reforms in the landownership system. He issued a civil laws that introduced three new types of agricultural properties:
ab‘adiyya, ‘uhda,
and
çiftlik.
The
ab‘adiyya
s were private plantations—originally vacant arable land that the pasha granted for reclamation to bureaucrats, army officers, and co-opted local elite and that was fully or partially exempt from taxation for a number of years. In 1836, the pasha legally transformed these holdings into semiprivate properties that the owners were then allowed to pass down to their heirs and white slaves. By 1842, he fully converted them to private properties. The
‘uhda
s were state-owned plantations—originally the confiscated land of runaway peasants who fled their plots after failing to pay overdue taxes or to escape army conscription or corvée labor. The state seized whole villages from fleeing villagers, transformed them into plantations, and assigned their management to Turkish bureaucrats. The plantation manager was obliged to pay the state overdue as well as new taxes. The
çiftlik
s were royal plantations—privately owned by Muhammad ‘Ali and his family, exempt from taxes, and administered by Turkish bureaucrats. The pasha annexed vast lands from villages that failed to pay overdue taxes and added them to his swiftly expanding collection of personal properties.
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These legal reforms were introduced in the Delta and Upper Egypt alike. Whereas they did not bring fundamental social change to the Delta, as that
region was already accustomed to the intensive presence of Turkish landholders from the Ottoman period, they did alter the face of life in Upper Egypt. The south witnessed for the first time the rise of a foreign white elite. In Qina Province, numerous Turkish
agha
s expanded private, state, and royal landholdings every year.
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In 1837, when ‘Ali Agha, the director of the subdistrict of Farshut, received an
ab‘adiyya
plantation in one village, he turned a part of it into a family endowment untaxed by the state, with full ownership accruing to the family. The revenue of the plantation would be passed down to his offspring forever and, after they died, to the offspring of the
agah
's freed black slaves.
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After accumulating substantial capital, Turkish settlers started expanding their plots by purchasing small and big parcels from the local farmers, in addition to purchasing cattle and machinery.
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Given the hot weather of Qina Province, many of the new elite administered their duties from luxury Nile boats furnished as dwellings. Nonetheless, Turkish settlers were not able to move within the province without armed guards—black slaves and Turks—to protect them against potential attacks from the native inhabitants, which apparently happened frequently.
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The new settler elite formed an indispensable alliance with segments of the old native elite, whom the empire co-opted. Among those co-opted groups were local judges hired in shari‘a courts, village shaykhs serving the plantations, merchants whose boats transported the pasha's monopolized goods, and Coptic merchants and accountants administering provincial finances. The new and old elite quickly intermarried and became business partners. Turkish bureaucrats married the daughters of upper-class Arab families, and rich Arab men married the daughters, sisters, and sometimes divorcées of
agha
s.
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The settler and native elite founded commercial companies that traded in grain, Sudanese slaves, textiles, and more. Turkish partners entered those companies only by contributing shares to the principle capital or extending credit, or sometimes they were fully involved in the business with their own Nile boats and employees.
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A business contract concluded in Isna's shari‘a court, in 1836, reveals these new colonial realities in Qina Province. Hijjo Agha, working for the office of the city governor, appointed Shaykh Ibrahim al-Fawi, the chief of the merchants' guild in the city of Isna, as his legal agent to buy, on his behalf, a share in a commercial boat and its equipment from the company of Khalil Ibrahim the Copt and Hajj Ahmad ‘Isa al-Asyuti. The Turkish bureaucrat, the Copt, and the Arab ended in each owning one-third of the boat, which could carry up to 13,400 liters up and down the Nile.
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The new plantations hired Qina's peasants as seasonal labor and the plantations also used slaves. Laborers were also rented out to local farmers through sharecropping contracts. The slave trade in the Sudan continued to be a significant commercial sector in Upper Egypt during this period, but now local merchants and Turkish settlers collaborated closely in the buying and selling of slaves in order to secure more laborers for the plantations.
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Many families of enslaved laborers ran away from the plantations to escape oppressive treatment.
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Similarly, seasonal local labor fled the land to escape the repression of a foreign colonial elite. When it was reported that a peasant from the royal plantation of Armant ran away, taking with him his animals and properties, the orders of the Turkish provincial governor were strict: to arrest him with everything he had and send him back to the manager for punishment and probably to resume forced work.
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Ironically, even tenants or sharecroppers deserted their plots and fled to hide in other villages, resenting the high taxes collected from them in-kind and in cash.
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In service of the plantations, village shaykhs collected corvée laborers, who spent months at public work sites away from their home villages. These laborers had to dig canals, construct dikes, and build bridges, and many ran away to escape unpaid, compulsory duties.
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Turkish settlers were not always efficient or rigorous managers of the plantations, which allowed native sharecroppers to take advantage of their overseers at every possible opportunity. One of the largest royal plantations in Qina was in the area of Armant, which mainly produced grain and sugar. The sharecroppers in Armant occasionally bargained with the Turkish administration to increase their percentage of the harvest. Before the beginning of the winter grain season of 1835, realizing the vulnerability of the state in matters concerning grain, the sharecroppers sent a petition to the Turkish governor of the province asking for an increase in their share from one-sixth to one-third of the harvest. Apparently the request took an aggressive form and a crisis mounted inside the plantation between a weak Turkish manager and the sharecroppers. The governor eventually decided to increase their share to one-fourth; nonetheless, two years later, the same sharecroppers refused to pay their dues to the weak manager. Moreover, they proposed to administer the plantation themselves. Information reached the general inspector of Upper Egypt that this manager was inefficient, ignorant of state laws, and, more important, not on good terms with the farmers, who in turn exploited his weakness by refusing to submit the
product of their labors and delaying their work. The governor declined the farmers' proposal to administer the plantation and instead replaced this manager.
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Aside from administering the plantations, the Turkish bureaucrats applied Muhammad ‘Ali's new colonial system of heavy state intervention in the economy and close control of the environment. They took charge of enforcing the pasha's new laws and orders pertaining to land assignment to small peasants, water and irrigation organization, industrialization, and allocation of sources of energy. In Qina Province, the Turkish bureaucrats controlled the process of assigning native peasants small plots of land for compulsory cultivation and forced them to till this land and pay its annual dues in-kind and in cash according to a set timetable that matched the harvesting seasons. Bureaucrats hired village shaykhs to keep these farmers working on their plots, collect taxes, and hunt down runaway peasants who deserted their land and fled their villages after failing to pay taxes. In water organization, the bureaucrats were assisted by modern chief engineers (
bashmuhandis
), who arrived from Cairo to supervise the building of new dams and the digging of new canals, while village shaykhs collected corvée laborers to work for extensive periods on these public projects. In addition, Turkish bureaucrats managed the lucrative state textile, sugar, and gunpowder factories in the province. They applied the pasha's strict policies in order to regularly provide the factories with animals to run the machines, recruit local workers, undertake occasional maintenance works, and so on, and they brutally punished native supervisors and workers alike for laziness or negligence.
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The creation of the Department of Sudanese Cattle was the epitome of the new colonial realities of heavy central planning in this plantation-based and industrializing economy. The pasha's regime sought to secure sources of energy for farms and factories, so in 1833 the pasha founded a special department for the importation and distribution of Sudanese bulls, cows, and camels, giving it the name of Maslahat al-Mawashi al-Sudaniyya. One of the main tasks of the appointed Turkish collector of cattle in Halfa, a Sudanese Nile port, was to oversee the transportation of these cattle so none of them would die en route; he received direct orders from the pasha in regard to this important duty. Qina's Nile ports played a central role in the function of this department: on a weekly basis they were the first to receive the imported cattle, take some of them to local state factories and royal plantations, and send the rest north to be allocated to state-owned enterprises in other provinces. The Department of Sudanese Cattle was large, with an immense budget,
and it employed hundreds of laborers in the province every year, including camel drivers, shepherds, guards, foremen, scribes, and more, who worked along with modern veterinarians dispatched from Cairo in the gigantic state barns prepared to receive the cattle. The peasants of Qina were ordered to provide the barns with tons of grass, hay, and fava beans to feed the precious bulls and cows all year long.
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Feeding the bulls of Isna's textile factory seemed an important personal concern of the pasha. He sent harsh memorandums to the Turkish director of the district urging him to regularly supply the factory with maize and beans for the bulls, and he demanded that receipts of delivery be sent directly to him in Cairo at set dates to ensure the enforcement of his orders. “If you are later than the due date, you know how you will be punished. If I do not receive statements [of delivered hay] with the director's signet, I will find my way with you,” the pasha swore, alluding to his system of corporal punishment that ranged from lashing to beheading.
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Similarly, Turkish administrators of the royal plantations in Armant and Ruzayqat in Qina Province received extensive correspondence directly from the pasha about the handling, feeding, and use of the Sudanese cattle. Village shaykhs took responsibility for distributing the amount of hay stipulated by the pasha's decrees to every individual bull or cow in the plantations. Even cattle that died during transport were addressed in the orders of the pasha, with their skin to be used in certain factories in the province.
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