2025 Theses Doctoral

A New Ruling Class and Its Empires: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Egypt

Mansour, Nadeem

Egypt in the nineteenth century saw a rapid shift towards state modernization, the formation of a modern army, some degree of transition to capitalism, and a new ruling class. The state and its new ruling class consistently sought autonomy but not independence from the Ottoman Empire while being invested in their own colonial venture, controlling a sizeable territory in Central and East Africa. Yet, in 1882, parts of the same ruling class called for British military intervention in Egypt. Under British occupation, Egypt remained an Ottoman province for decades and retained some of its imperial interests in Sudan.

This dissertation offers a new holistic account of why Egypt was concurrently a province in the Ottoman Empire, a colonial force expanding its territories in Sudan, and, in 1882, occupied by the British. By focusing on Egypt’s economic elites, it shows how their internal conflicts and developing relationships with the state are vital in understanding Egypt’s peculiar position in relation to the Ottoman and British Empire as well as the occupation of Sudan. This is part of a broader argument that power structures in the periphery are integral to understanding imperialism. This story does not easily fit our conventional understandings of empires, modernization, and nation-state formation. Historians have written extensively on different sides of this story, yet a convincing account of how these overlapping and, seemingly contradictory manifestations of imperialism exist simultaneously is missing.

Based on extensive archival research using Arabic, Ottoman, English, and French sources, the dissertation explores the emergence and significance of this new class. The rise of this class of large landholders and financiers is often understood as an outcome of the failure of Mehmed Ali’s state centralization and market control efforts in the first half of the century. The dissertation shows that it was the same centralization and market control that drove the rapid process of land expropriation and consolidation, creating a new class of large landholders by the mid-century.

This class, in turn, contributed to dismantling the very system that created it. The interests of the landed elite are thus central to understanding the economic and social transitions of the mid-nineteenth century. It follows these elites, arguing that conflicts of interest within these groups and the state’s attempts to manage them contributed to the shaping and development of Egyptian state institutions. The dissertation shows how networks of economic interests, together with the balance of power between different groups of elites, depended on Egypt continuing to be a province of the Ottoman Empire. The dissertation then argues that Egyptian territorial expansions in Sudan were driven by interests in expanding cotton plantations and exerting more control over trade in the region. Finally, I argue that the key to understanding the British occupation in Egypt lies in the decision among parts of the Egyptian ruling class to call for British military intervention. This decision was taken in reaction to a middle-class revolution that coincided with a deep crisis within the ruling class.

My dissertation is part of a broader research agenda that focuses on local class actors and revisits the political economies of late development and imperialism. The project engages extensively with existing debates on imperialism, particularly with regard to the British Empire. The British occupation of Egypt in 1882 has long played a central part in the historiography of the British Empire and the development of theories of imperialism. Expanding our explanatory scope to the multiple forms of imperialism in the case of Egypt in the second half of the nineteenth century provides a unique potential to test the limits of our understanding of these questions.