Anglo-French Relations in Egypt 1798-1875

Abstract

Several canonical works exist on European capitalism in North Africa, especially Egypt. From a revisionist perspective, this work analyses the features of British and French relations in Egypt of the nineteenth century. The definitions of capitalism in scholarly engagements reflects in the narratives of how English and French capital manipulated the political space to map Egypt in the dynamics of international economy. Internal or domestic capitalism was an institutionalized and standardized in the era of Mohammed Alis modernization policy. Invariably, the paper examines the nexus in the interplay of land, labor and finance that tied Egypt to global capitalism. The terminal period of 1875 marked a period of financial crises that plunged the nation to endless debt burden that further defined its national governance and international relations. With the plethora of secondary sources such as books and journals, this work adopts the historical method.