Najat Effenberg, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität - Erlangen - Nürnberg
Considering the history of Modern Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth century, in particular until the “Free Officers Revolution” 1952, the role of minorities in the economic process is doubtless. Indeed, there are several interpretations about that role. Jewish and Greek minorities were the largest minorities in number.
My research project seeks to analyze and compare the role of Jewish and Greek entrepreneurs in the development of the Egyptian economy from 1860 through 1960. Minorities in Egypt played a distinctive role in the wide-scale economic developments that characterized the period between the era of Ismail (1863-1879) and World War II. This study begins with the establishment of industrial and service enterprises in the 1860s and 1870s, and ends with the cessation of Greeks’ and Jews’ entrepreneurial activities in Egypt in the 1960s.
In an attempt to define and evaluate minorities’ role in the economic development of Egypt, the research aims to analyze the general conditions, national parameters and the imperialist context of this period of Egyptian history as a background of the interrelationship and historical development between the majority population and the Jewish and Greek minorities. In addition, I will examine the economic and socio-historical reasons for the roles assumed by the Jewish and Greek entrepreneurs in Egypt between 1860 and 1960. Were they minority businessmen, members of a collaborative elite, or innovative entrepreneurs? Or were they perhaps a combination of all three? How did their minority status affect their economic roles and opportunities, and how did these two factors and positions affect each other? In this project I will use a comparative approach to study the entrepreneurs of the Jewish and Greek minorities in order to analyze their roles in the Egyptian economy as precisely as possible.
The first part of my theoretical framework will draw from the approach of historian Ronald Robinson, relating to his “theory of collaborative elites” (1972, 1986) in his discussion of imperialism. In his theory, Robinson indicates the role of indigenous elites, classes or groups in the society,(i.e. merchants and people related to economic activities such as trade, and those who worked for the colonial government), as mediators between the centres of power -- the metropolis-- and the peripheries of the empire. The relationship of mediation, which connected European and indigenous components based on mutual, if not necessarily equal interests, evolves from the cost-benefit ratios.
The second part of my theoretical framework will utilize the approach of economist Joseph A. Schumpeter (1883-1950), particularly his “theory of economic development” (1912), in which he focused on entrepreneurs and their behaviour as an essential instrument for economic analyses. According to Schumpeter, it is innovative entrepreneurs who trigger dynamic economic growth, which differs from the static growth of an economy. Thus, for Schumpeter, the individual as innovative entrepreneur plays a decisive role in the economic process.
This interdisciplinary dissertation project seeks to illustrate the historical developments in the perspective of economic context.