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De-industrialization and Re-industrialization in the Middle East since 1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Charles Issawi
Charles Issawi
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

Like many other parts of the world, in the last two hundred years or so the Middle East has gone through a process of de-industrialization followed by reindustrialization.* The decline in handicrafts continued until well after the First World War. But by then another development was under way: the growth of a modern factory industry that started around the 1890s, gathered increasing momentum in the 1920s and 1930s, and since the Second World War has proceeded at a very rapid pace.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 4 , December 1980 , pp. 469 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

* The development of the Middle Eastern petroleum industry is not covered in this discussion. Petroleum plays such an overhwelming part in the economies of the producing countries that its inclusion would have seriously distorted the picture. Hence the term “industry” has been used to designate manufacturing and all forms of mining except oil.

1 Charles, Issawi, “The Decline of Middle Eastern Trade,” in Richards, D. S., ed., Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford, 1970),Google Scholar and André, Raymond, Artisans et commerçants an Caire au XVIIIe siècle (Damascus, 1973), pp. 209–12.Google ScholarEliyahu, Ashtor, “L'apogèe du commerce venitien,” Venezia Centro di Mediazone, Vol. I (Florence, 1977), pp. 318–21, claims that “most Near Eastern industries were [by the fourteenth century] no longer able to compete with Western manufactured goods, imported by Italian and other merchants.”Google Scholar

2 Pierre, Pennec, Les Transformations des corps de métier de tunis (Tunis, 1964), p. 211.Google Scholar

3 Raymond, , Artisans pp. 170–82;Google ScholarPaul, Masson, Histoire de commerce français dans le levant an XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1911), p. 456;Google ScholarRalph, Davis, Aleppo and Devonshire Square (London, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Mehmet Genç, “A Comparative Study of the Life Term Tax Farming …” in La Révolution industrielle dans le Sud-Est européen-XIXs. (Sofia, , 1976); Encyclopaedia of islam (2nd edition), sv ‘Harir.’Google Scholar

5 Traian, Stoianovich, “The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” Journal of Economic History, 20, 2 (06 1960).Google Scholar

6 ibid; Raymond, Artisans, pp. 206–7.

7 See Novichev, A. D., Ocherki ekonomiki Turtsii (Moscow-Leningrad, 1937) pp. 89–100,Google Scholar translated in Charles, Issawi, Economic History of Turkey, 1800–1914, (Chicago, 1980). [henceforth EHT.]Google Scholar

8 Charles, Issawi, The Economic History of the Middle East. 1800–1914 (Chicago, 1966), pp. 38–47Google Scholar (henceforth EHME); The Economic History of Iran, 1800–1914 (Chicago, 1971), pp. 70–78, [henceforth EHI] EHT, Chapters III and VI.Google Scholar

9 Dominque, Chevallier, La Société du Mont Liban … (Paris, 1971), p. 200.Google Scholar

10 Report on Aleppo, 1862, Public Record Office, FO Series 195/741. Other, sometimes incompatible, figures have been given: “The number of Aleppo's textile looms, which had reached in the past a record of 40,000, diminished to about 5,500 in 1856 and rose back to only 10,000 in 1859. Similarly, the number of looms in Damascus fell from some 34,000 in recent past to about 4,000 in the late 1850s,” Moshe, Ma'oz, Ottoman Reform in Syria and Palestine (Oxford, 1968), p. 179,Google Scholar citing British consular reports. According to the Russian consul, the number of looms in all Syrian cities fell from 50,000 in 1840 to 2,500 forty years later, Bazili, K. M., Siriya i Palestine (Reprint, Moscow, 1962), p. 243.Google Scholar

11 Omer, Celal Sarç, “Tanzimat ye Sanayimiz,” EHME, pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

12 Various British consular reports, FO 78 series, cited in EHT, Chapter VI.

13 EHI, pp. 258–59.Google Scholar

14 Muhammad, Salman Hasan, al-tatawwur al-iqtisadifi al-fi-‵Iraq (Beirut, n.d.), pp. 281–5.Google Scholar

15 Pennec, , Les Transformations, pp. 211–24.Google Scholar

16 EHT, Chapter VI.

17 EHME, pp. 452–8.Google Scholar

18 Said, B. Himadeh, The Economic Organization of Syria and Lebanon (Beirut, 1936), pp. 120–30.Google Scholar

19 Richardson, to O'Conor, , 6 01 1900, FO 195/2122.Google Scholar

20 Report on Handlooms, 15 August 1907, FO 195/2243.

21 United Nations, Economic Developments in the Middle East, 1945 to 1954 (New York, 1955), p. 65.Google Scholar

22 Pennec, , Les Transformation, pp. 211–24.Google Scholar

23 EHI, pp. 298–9.Google Scholar

24 For details and sources see EHT, Chapter VI, and Orhan, Kurmş, Emperyalism Türkiyeye Girş (Istanbul, 1974), pp. 128–35.Google Scholar

25 EHI, pp. 301–5.Google Scholar

26 United Nations, Economic Developments, pp. 65, 66, 79.Google Scholar

27 Ali, Giritli, Tarikh al-sina'a, translated in EHME, pp. 389–402;Google Scholar see also Robert, Mabro and Samir, Radwan, The Industrialization of Egypt, 1939–1973 (Oxford, 1976), pp. 1–18.Google Scholar

27 Gabriel, Baer, Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem, 1964), pp. 136–7.Google Scholar

29 EHME, pp. 55–57;Google ScholarClark, E. C., “The Ottoman Industrial Revolution,” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (01, 1974).Google Scholar

30 Feridun, Adamiyyat, Amir-i Kabir wa Iran, translated in EHI, pp. 292–7;Google ScholarBrown, L. Carl, The Tunisia of Ahmad Bey (Princeton, 1974), pp. 295–9.Google Scholar

31 For example, whereas in 1860 there were almost no mechanical spindles in China, India, and Japan, by 1890 there were 3.2 million (300,000 of them in Japan) and in 1913 there were 9.2 million (2,300,000 in Japan), or 6.4 percent of the world total – Paul, Bairoch, Journal of European Economic History (Winter, 1974).Google Scholar The steel industry and other industries had also developed in India and Japan. For a more general, concise, recent discussion see Lewis, W. A., Growth and Fluctuations 1870–1913 (London, 1978), pp. 194–224.Google Scholar

32 Samir, Radwan, Capital Formation in Egyptian Industry and Agriculture (London, 1974), p. 236.Google Scholar

33 EHME, pp. 55–57;Google ScholarEHI, pp. 305–10; Osmanli Sanayii 1913, 1915, translated in EHT, Chapter VI.Google Scholar

34 EHI, p. 260.Google Scholar

35 EHI, Chapter II.

36 EHME, pp. 47, 452;Google ScholarEHI, p. 275.Google Scholar

37 Mabro, and Radwan, , Industrialization, pp. 26–29;Google ScholarRobert, Tignor, “The Egyptian Revolution of 1919: New Directions in the Egyptian Economy,” in Elie, Kedurie, ed., The Middle Eastern Economy (London, 1976);Google Scholar Marius Deeb “Bank Misr and the Emergence of the Local Bourgeoisie in Egypt,” in ibid.

38 Himadeh, S. B., ed., Economic Organization of Palestine (Beirut, 1938).Google Scholar

39 EHI, Epilogue and sources cited.Google Scholar

40 EHI, Epilogue and sources cited.Google Scholar

41 For a detailed analytic study see United Nations, The Development of Manufacturing Industry in Egypt, Israel and Turkey (New York, 1958), Chapters 1–3.Google Scholar

42 For details see United Nations, Review of Economic Conditions in the Middle East, 1948–50; ibid, 1951–52 (New York, 1951 and 1953).

43 Nathaniel, Leff, “Entrepreneurship and Development,” Journal of Economic Literature, 17, 1 (03, 1979).Google Scholar For figures on the individual countries see Hershlag, Z. Y., The Economic Structure of the Middle East (Leiden, 1975),Google Scholar Chapter VII, and idem., “Industrialisation of Arab Countries,” in Roberto, Aliboni, ed., Arab Industrialisation and Economic Integration (London, 1979).Google Scholar

44 Hershlag, in Aliboni, ibid., p. 66; see also Samir Makdisi, “Arab Economic Cooperation”, in ibid., for details.

45 Louis, Turner and James, Bedore, Middle East Industrialization (New York, 1979).Google Scholar

46 See United Nations, Development of Manufacturing, pp. 70–71.Google Scholar

47 United Nations, The Growth of World Industry, 1974 (New York).Google Scholar

48 In this respect latecomers to industrialization, who enjoy certain other important advantages from this fact, are under a handicap. To take an extreme example, when Japan started its petrochemical industry in the 1950s, the optimum output of an ethylene plant was about 20,000 tons a year. Today, when the Middle Eastern countries are building their plants, the corresponding figure is around 400,000 tons – Turner, and Bedore, , Middle East Industrialization, p. 155.Google Scholar

49 For examples see Bent, Hansen and Karim, Nashashibi, Egypt (New York, 1975);Google ScholarAnne, Krueger, Turkey(New York, 1974);Google ScholarMichael, Michaely, Israel (New York, 1975); and Avramovic, in Tahqiqat-e Eqtesadi (Tehran) Spring, 1970.Google Scholar