Summary
La Société Générale des Sucreries et de la Raffinerie d’Egypte, the sugar company formed in 1897 in which the Suarès-Qattawi-Rolo-Menasce group was the leading local actor — Chapter 9’s case study of Colonial Capitalism, progressively Egyptianized under Ahmad ‘Abbud and nationalized in 1956 over his defiance of state economic policy, in The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
Details
- Raphael Suarès (1846–1902) and two other resident foreigners built a new refinery in 1881 at Hawamdiyya on the ruins of Khedive Isma’il’s state sugar company (Chapter 9, note 41); in 1893 the Suarès family bank contributed two-thirds of the capital to a partnership with the French Raffinerie C. Say; the 1897 merger formed the company; in 1902 it bought nine cane-crushing mills in Upper Egypt from the Daira Saniyeh Sugar Company, owned by an Anglo-Egyptian group led by Sir Ernest Cassel, becoming heavily indebted to Cassel; rapid expansion and the debt led to bankruptcy in 1905, after which it was managed by the Belgian Henri Naus (until his death in 1938) and Sir Victor Harari Pasha (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
- By the late 1930s effective control had shifted from the French shareholders (30 percent of the stock when Naus died, note 42) to Belgians, Egyptian Jews (Qattawi and Harari) and Egyptian Greeks (the Cozzika group); Ahmad ‘Abbud Pasha joined the board in 1942, became managing director, and was elected chairman in 1948; in 1948 the board comprised eight Egyptian citizens, one of them Jewish (René Qattawi Bey), and two foreign nationals, one of them Jewish (Col. Ralph A. Harari) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
- ‘Abbud Egyptianized the staff: by 1947, 954 administrative and technical employees, of whom 725 (76 percent) were Egyptian and 38 mutamassirun, with another 34 claiming Egyptian status without documentary proof (note 43); fewer than 30 (0.3 percent) of its 9,000 laborers were foreigners; ten of thirteen Managerial Committee members were foreigners in 1947, but by 1952 ten of fourteen were Egyptians; by 1955 only 26 percent of the shares were held in France (note 44) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
- On August 24, 1955 the company was placed in the Ministry of Finance’s custody over a dispute between ‘Abbud and the new regime over taxes and prices; the government sequestered it and in 1956 liquidated it, and after the Suez/Sinai War it became a state-owned enterprise — nationalized not from concern about foreign domination but because ‘Abbud would not bow to the government’s economic-policy demands (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
- Anis Mustafa Kamil, Nabil ‘Abd al-Hamid Sayyid Ahmad and ‘Arfa ‘Abduh ‘Ali note none of these shifts (note 45), regarding the firm simply as a foreign/Jewish colonial enterprise; Kamil charges it “continued until 1948 to be the basic source of sugar for the Zionists of Tel Aviv” (note 46) (The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, lines 4214-4295).
Related pages
The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, Colonial Capitalism, Anis Mustafa Kamil, Yusuf ‘Aslan Qattawi