Egypt's Culture and the Roots of Capitalism
Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760-1840. by Peter Gran
Review by: Eric Davis
MERIP Reports, No. 82 (Nov., 1979), pp. 24-25
Published by: Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP)
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Book
Egypt's
Review
Culture
and
the
Islamic
Roots
of Capitalism:
1760-1840
Egypt,
Center for Middle
by Peter Gran. Austin and London:
Eastern Studies and the University
of Texas Press,
1979. 278 pp., $19.95.
One of the most significant tendencies in the study of the
Middle East in recent years is the mounting discontent
with the predominant Western conceptualization
of the
region. The Review of Middle East Studies (ROMES)
and,
more recently, Edward Said's Orientalism sharply criticize
the understanding of the Middle East in terms of an "Is?
lamic society" which experienced a Golden Age after the
founding of Islam in the seventh century A.D., followed by
a long period of decline and intellectual stagnation until
confronted by the west during the nineteenth century.
Orientalism and most of the articles in ROMES emphasize
the conceptual inadequacies
and logical inconsistencies in
research on Middle Eastern society. While these critiques,
serve the crucial purpose of showing the need for a new
mode of analysis, they remain at best intellectual horsd'oeuvres. We have come to know what is wrong with Mid?
dle East studies but many are impatient to develop new
theories and methodologies.
Many critics of Orientalism are young scholars who
time in the Middle East engaged in
spent considerable
archival research, interviewing or in participant observa?
tion in rural or urban areas. It is only now that their re?
search is beginning to be published. One of the first such
studies is Peter Gran's Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt,
1760-1840. Through careful argument and impressive doc?
umentation, Gran's study paints a very different picture of
society during the
Egyptian and Eastern Mediterranean
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and, as
such, further underlines the profound shortcomings of
Orientalist scholarship.
Gran's study is revisionist in the best sense of that word.
Rather than pose a false dichotomy between idealism and
materialism, as is the tendency of many students of social
change in modern Egypt, he interrelates cultural and
material changes. Gran avoids the problem of some early
which re?
critiques of Orientalism (such as in ROMES)
duced Middle Eastern history to a vulgar materialism,
singled out as significant only world market forces or the
internal contradictions of the indigenous mode of produc?
tion and ignored religion, culture and ideology. In con?
structing a materialist problemmatic which sets up a dia?
lectical relationship between changes in ideas and changes
in material forces, Gran performs two very important ser?
vices. In addition to showing the inadequacy of Orientalist
interpretations of the onset of modernism in Egypt, he
likewise demonstrates the need for leftist scholarship to
Roots
of
Capitalism
take the study of culture more seriously. Thus Gran stands
within the growing ranks of Marxian political economists
who have become increasingly conscious of the "economistic" bias of much of their writing.
Islamic Roots of Capitalism demonstrates that the de?
velopment of a secular culture which was supportive of a
nascent capitalist order was not a result of the Napoleanic
invasion of Egypt. Rather it was the outgrowth of an intel?
lectual movement which traced its roots to the middle of the
eighteenth century. This does not mean that the author
would have us ignore exogenous causes of social change, as
quite the contrary is true.
Gran divides his study into two periods. During the first
period, 1760-1790, Egypt's commercial revival was the re?
sult of the development of a cash economy based on the
export of grains to the world market, particularly to south?
ern France. This increase in trade strengthened the indi?
genous middle classes, especially urban merchants and the
fulama. While the urban middle classes were benefitting
from capital accumulation,
the strength of the Mamluk
ruling class was eroded by its own excesses as well as by
the inflation which afflicted the urban lower classes. The
increase in retainers and the importation of luxury goods
placed a heavy financial burden on Mamluk households.
The need to purchase modern firearms and to hire foreign
mercenaries to use them squeezed the resources of the state.
The modality of thought which dominated the 17601790 period was a revival of hadith studies. It was within
this renewed interest in the study of hadith that one finds
the beginnings of a secular culture which empahsized util?
itarianism and inductive logic in solving problems. After
the destruction of the Mamluks and the rise of a strong
state under Muhammad Ali Pasha, the dominant mode of
thought was rooted in fiqh and deductive logic, as the
ruling elite sought to reassert its control over society.
For Gran, Islamic culture cannot be reduced to any
simplistic codification, nor can it be seen as simply deriva?
tive from Islam's "Golden Age" or conditioned by Western
ideas of science and technology. Between 1760 and 1790,
for example, culture played a multiplicity of roles. First, the
neo-classical revival helped the native middle classes both
to rationalize and interpret rapid social change. In the
writing of history, for example, the middle classes spurned
the chronicle in favor of more conceptually oriented histor?
ical analyses which raised questions of individual and so?
cial morality. In this sense, Gran argues, the great histori?
orthodoxy
an, al-Jabarti, was not, as the conventional
would have us believe, an isolated figure in a dark age of
social and intellectual decay. He was raising questions
which were being asked by the middle classes as a whole.
Culture played a critical role in helping the middle classes
24
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to accept the transformation of Egyptian society from one
based on corporate institutions, such as the guild, to one
based on a modern class structure. Secondly, the revival of
hadith studies corresponded with a revival of the Sufi
tariqa. The 'ulama' encouraged this revival in an attempt
to revitalize corporate institutions and to prevent rising lower
class discontent from threatening their political and eco?
nomic hegemony.
From 1815 to 1840, Gran argues, there was an emphasis
on fiqh and kalaru as the state sought to reassert its control
over the middle and lower classes. Secular culture con?
tinued to progress but at a slower rate. To show the conti?
nuity in the development of secular culture and its different
forms in both periods, Gran focuses on the life of a very
important but largely neglected thinker, Shaykh Hasan
al-'Attar (1766-1835). Al-'Attar's encyclopedic
writings,
from law to medicine, demonstrate his struggle to advance
secular culture within the framework of political and social
constraints imposed by the state and opponents among the
'ulama' We see that al-'Attar's most well-known student,
Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, developed his modernist orientation not
as a result of European influence but rather through his
association with the shaykh.
Peter Gran's study supports Edward Said's argument
that one of the pernicious effects of Orientalism has been
of the Orient or non-Western world
the conceptualization
as a passive Other, glorifying and reaffirming the unique?
ness of the (Western) Self. To sustain this idea, it has been
necessary to show that the distinctive characteristics
which have molded Western historical development did not
occur outside the West. The notion of the Orient as a recip?
ient of Western culture and hence as merely derivative or
reflective of a historical process produced elsewhere canonly reinforce (in Marxist as well as in bourgeois circles) a
view of the non-Western world as unable to generate its
own history and thus to take responsibility for itself. Such
a view may be couched in bourgeois modernization theory,
which seeks to transfer Western values and institutions to
the Third World, or in a Euro-centered Marxism, which sees
the Third World transformed by events in the advanced
capitalist countries. Both not only skew our vision and
understanding of the non-Western world but are also high?
ly paternalistic. What emerges is an intellectual imperial?
ism which sees the non-Western world as a borrower of
ideas. This in turn produces a mode of cultural dependency
which parallels and is connected to the economic and polit?
ical dependency
which already
characterizes
"coreperiphery" relations. Although there are notable excep?
tions, this cultural dependency has led many intellectuals
in the Third World to uncritically accept Western theories
of change, whether they be of bourgeois or Marxian origin,
and to ignore the historical specificity of their own socie?
ties. As a result, the possibility for achieving a critical
synthesis of Western and non-Western ideas and theories is
often lost.
As with most studies which deal with culture, the con?
cept is never explicitly defined. The author uses the term in
at least two different senses. In some instances, Gran sees
culture in Geertzian terms as a system of symbols through
which individuals
and groups interpret and attribute
meaning to social reality. Elsewhere, Gran seems to be
using culture in the Gramscian sense as a hegemonic ideol-
ogy. This seems evident when he talks about the way in
which the middle classes attempted to manipulate the low?
er classes during the latter half of the eighteenth century or
in the ruling class' use of culture to reassert its control over
the middle and lower classes during the early nineteenth
century. Hopefully, given the wealth of material at his
disposal and the innovative way in which he treats this
material, Gran will pursue in greater detail in the future the
ramifications of his book for a better theoretical under?
standing of the concept of culture.
and His
Nasser
by P.J. Vatikiotis.
Generation
New York: St. Martins
?Eric
Davis
Press,
1978.
Black Saturday?the
burning of Cairo on January 26,
a signal of the impending breakdown of the
1952?was
ancient regime. When Cairo went up in flames, so too did
the last vestiges of authority held by the traditional politi?
cal factions in Egypt. Instability and unrest created a pow?
er vacuum which was filled by the coup d'etat of the Free
Officers just six months later.
P.J. Vatikiotis' newest book, Nasser and His Genera?
tion, attempts to deal with the new era which the Nasser
"revolution" spirited. His efforts to understand the causes
and effects of Nasser's rule result in a strangely disjointed
work. In analyzing Nasser's development and rise to power
forces
the author considers the social and ideological
which helped shape the man, his class and his movement.
In this context, he sees Nasser's generation as representa?
tive of the petite bourgeoisie and as a microcosm of its
experiences and ideals. The army officers are situated his?
torically as products of the turbulent 1930s and 1940s, dur?
ing which time they were introduced to radical national?
this
fundamentalism?all
ism, terrorism and Islamic
against a backdrop of British intransigence, World War II,
and the 1948 Palestinian War.
Yet, Vatikiotis' analysis of Nasser in power focuses al?
most exclusively on Nasser, the individual. He sees Nasser's
life, his ideas and his actions through the lens of the psy?
cho-historian. Vatikiotis places himself in the role of the
clinician rather than the social scientist and tries to dissect
and examine the inner workings of the Nasser "mind."
Great importance is attached to the ruler's youth and de?
velopment: the early death of his mother, poor relationship
with his father, loneliness, shyness, attachment to religion
and discipline. Vatikiotis writes as though social history is
important in explaining a man's development but that the
achievement of power is so elevating that only a great man
theory of history infused with some psychological assess?
ment can account for the leader's judgements and policies,
and policies.
of
Vatikiotis is obsessed with the authoritarianism
Nasser's regime, its disinclination toward the delegation of
authority, unarticulated
policy of playing one political
comrade off another and Nasser's distrust and fear of op?
position. The book is flawed by his failure to conceptualize
and synthesize the totality of broad social and historical
developments in Egypt.
Selma Botman
25
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