How the American Civil War Built Egypt’s Vaunted Cotton Industry and Changed the Country Forever
But for a number of fledgling countries and colonies across the world, America’s loss was their great gain. As northern warships blockaded southern ports, closing them off to commercial shipping, the cotton plantations of the Confederacy struggled to export their ‘white gold.’ With the great textile mills of England now deprived of the lifeblood of their industry, 80 percent of which had previously come from the U.S, the price of cotton very soon went through the roof. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, birthed in Britain, the United States and its former antagonist and overlord had symbiotically thrived on the massive revenues from the cotton trade, a titan of commerce reliant on the lives of the American South’s enslaved population. Now, the Civil War imperilled everything for the moneymakers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
But for a number of fledgling countries and colonies across the world, America’s loss was their great gain. As northern warships blockaded southern ports, closing them off to commercial shipping, the cotton plantations of the Confederacy struggled to export their ‘white gold.’ With the great textile mills of England now deprived of the lifeblood of their industry, 80 percent of which had previously come from the U.S, the price of cotton very soon went through the roof. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, birthed in Britain, the United States and its former antagonist and overlord had symbiotically thrived on the massive revenues from the cotton trade, a titan of commerce reliant on the lives of the American South’s enslaved population. Now, the Civil War imperilled everything for the moneymakers on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
It took just a couple of weeks after the outbreak of hostilities in South Carolina for farmers the world over to realize the scope of the bounty that had landed in their lap. Agricultural laborers from Australia and India to the West Indies ditched wheat and other food staples and hastily planted up their fields with cotton. Prices had risen by up to 150 percent. As soon as it became clear that England wouldn’t enter the war as allies of the Confederacy, many farmers doubled down and gave over every scrap of their acreage to this enriching crop.
No one, however, seized on the opportunity quite like the Egyptians, who had just a few decades beforehand freed themselves from almost 300 years of direct Ottoman rule. Under the ambitious leadership of Muhammed Ali, an Albanian soldier who had seized power in 1805 and is widely considered the founder of modern Egypt, the country had already embraced cotton as a valuable cash crop. The discovery 40 years beforehand of a fine long-staple variety by a visiting French engineer – a Monsieur Jumel – meant that Egypt was also well on its way to building a reputation for high-quality cotton, which linen-makers rave about to this day.
But now, with prices continuing to soar and desperation high in northern England as the mills of Manchester exhausted the excess supply left over from a bumper American harvest of 1860, authorities in Cairo moved with extraordinary speed to ramp up additional production.
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But their arrival also coincided – and indirectly contributed – to a rash of poor decision-making among Egypt’s ruling classes that was to eventually lead to the arrival of the British military on a long-term basis in 1882. Ismail was so intent on building up cotton infrastructure and transforming Cairo into a ‘Paris on the Nile’ that he encouraged the “establishment of banks like the Anglo-Egyptian from which he might borrow heavily in return for certain favors,” writes Owen. Very soon he’d built up such big debts to mostly British and French creditors that he couldn’t hope to ever pay them back. Additionally, the end of the American Civil War in 1865 led to a steep fall in global cotton prices as the U.S. crop came back on the market and proved particularly damaging for Egypt. It created a sharp budget deficit and ultimately a declaration of national bankruptcy a decade later
“I think you can say that the American Civil War – and the effects on cotton – made the British change their policy towards Egypt,” says Mohamed Awad, director of the Alexandria & Mediterranean Research Center at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. “Indirectly it was one of the main reasons for the occupation of Egypt.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-american-civil-war-built-egypts-vaunted-cotton-industry-and-changed-country-forever-180959967/
So the Civil War led to Egypt becoming a colony of the British Empire.
I’ve been pointing this out to people for a few years now. The South’s economy would have been just fine if the corrupt Northern crooks had simply stayed out of it.