Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

The new state of Israel was proclaimed by Ben-Gurion on May 14, 1948, and was recognized by President Truman sixteen minutes later, in a race to beat the Soviet Union (whose recognition came on May 17th). Efforts by both to use the United Nations machinery to stop the Israeli-Arab war in Palestine were frustrated by conflicting opinions and especially by British efforts to restrict Israeli acquisition of arms and immigration without placing comparable restrictions on the surrounding Arab States.

A truce imposed by the UN on June 11th was violated by both sides and broke down with a resumption of fighting in July, but by that time the Arab states were squabbling bitterly among themselves, and were increasingly involved in embarrassment because their propaganda falsehoods to their own peoples about their glorious victories over Zionism could not be sustained in the face of the precipitous retreats of their forces under Israeli attacks. Some of the Arab states tried to excuse their defeats as resulting from Transjordanian “treason.” Ten days of renewed fighting from July 8-18, 1948, mostly favorable to Israel, were ended by a three-day UN ultimatum threatening sanctions against any state which continued fighting. This curtailment of Israeli successes by United Nations actions and the UN mediator’s suggestion that Jerusalem be given to the Arabs led directly to his assassination by Israeli extremists in September.

On September 20th the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, chief Muslim religious leader of the Levant and a wartime collaborator with the Nazis, proclaimed an “Arab Government of All Palestine,” which was at once recognized by all the Arab states except Jordan and was set up at Gaza on Palestine territory occupied by Egypt. Israel in return launched successful and successive week-long attacks on Egypt and Lebanon which were stopped by UN truces on October 31, 1948. Belated recognition of the truth about Egypt’s weakness, if not its corruption, led to street riots in Cairo and assassination of the Egyptian prime minister.

British efforts to invoke its 1936 alliance with Egypt to justify British military action against Israel were blocked by Egypt’s refusal to allow such a public display of Egypt’s helplessness. Five British planes which “attacked” Israel were promptly shot down (January 7, 1949). This led to Britain’s de facto recognition of Israel on January 29th and the gradual release of Jewish immigrants imprisoned on Cyprus. A series of armistice agreements were negotiated in the spring of 1949- These left various forces in approximately the positions they held, but were accompanied by explicit refusals by the Arab states to make peace with Israel, to recognize its existence, or to allow any steps to be taken to remedy the plight of Arab refugees outside Palestine. To this day these problems remain, with the Arab states still at war with Israel and publicly sworn to exterminate it.

Egypt’s defeat in the Israeli war brought to a head persistent Egyptian discontent, especially its hatred for the corrupt and lecherous King Farouk. Egypt’s plight, however, was far deeper and more ancient than Israel, and Farouk’s blame, in spite of his total failure as a ruler, was less than that of his great-great-grandfather, Muhammad Ali, who had been Khedive of Egypt under the Ottoman sultan in 1811-1848. Until Muhammad Ali’s time, Egypt continued its ancient practice of raising a single crop of food from each annual flooding of the Nile Valley. Muhammad Ali, in order to finance his plans to conquer the whole Near East, took over state ownership of all the land and built a great network of irrigation canals which permitted perennial cultivation of the land with two to four crops a year. He also established state monopolies of industrial enterprises to equip his armed forces.

Muhammad Ali’s successors, especially his grandson, Ismail, ended state ownership of land and industry, allowing both to fall into private hands where they retained much of their monopolistic character. At the same time, they burdened the country with enormous debts to European bankers for public-works projects of irrigation, railroads, and the Suez Canal. In the same period, the demand for Egyptian long-lint cotton became so great during the world cotton shortage caused by the American Civil War that it became the favorite crop of the landlord class and the chief source of foreign exchange to pay off Egypt’s debts. But this meant that Egypt’s prosperity became linked to the uncontrolled fluctuations of prices on the Liverpool cotton market.

The results of all this were to create the Egypt of 1936, the first year of Farouk’s reign. Irrigation, with its perpetual-motion farming, greatly increased the output of food, and allowed an increase in population from 3.2 million in 1821 to 6.8 million in 1892 to 12.5 million in 1914. At the same time European science, by its control of epidemic diseases, reduced the infant mortality rate. The rise in population began to outstrip the increase in food supply by a wide margin, especially when the small group of large landowners insisted that the land be used for exported cotton rather than for home-consumed food.

In 1914, production of cereals was 3.5 million tons for 12.5 million Egyptians; by 1940 there was only 4 million tons for 17 million persons. The output of food continued to crawl upward, following the great leaps in population. By 1960 the population was increasing at the rate of one person a minute, over half a million a year, and had already passed 26 million. Moreover, as a result of perennial irrigation, the population of 1940 was much less healthy than that of 1840, since it was infected with debilitating, chronic, water-borne, infectious diseases like malaria, bilharzia, ancylostomiasis, and irritating eye infections.

Moreover, unlike the ancient cultivation based on annual flooding which replaced the fertility of the soil, the perennial irrigation of today requires artificial fertilizers (which the harassed peasant cannot afford) to retain the productivity of the soil. Thus by 1950 an enormously increased population, worn down by anemia and malnutrition, was crowded in a narrow valley under the greatest population density in the world, with neither land nor work for idle millions, their miserable fates entirely in the hands of the small ruling elite of landlords, commercial monopolists, and political exploiters of world economic changes.

Until 1952 monopolization of land, although less complete than in other Near Eastern countries, was nevertheless extreme, since 3 percent of the landowners held 55 percent of the agricultural land and 28 percent of the owners held 87 percent of the land. The remaining 72 percent of landowners with 13 percent of the land were too poor to exploit their plots effectively since they could not afford fertilizer, choice seed, or adequate tools, and in most cases had to supplement their work on the land by other activities or by renting plots from other owners.

Since the great owners did not work their lands themselves, most Egyptian soil was worked by renters and sharecroppers, often removed from the real owner, by a series of intermediaries and subleasers. In addition, of course, millions without land of their own had to work for about five American cents an hour on the lands of others, and a third group eked out an existence entirely from rented land in which the rents were equal to about three-quarters of the net yield. The burden of population on the land (about 1,500 persons per square mile compared to about 200 in France) left everyone drastically underemployed, with at least half the rural population merely sitting around in the dust or napping all day. Because children were more healthy than their diseased-sapped parents, they were more energetic and often were skillful and could be obtained for wages less than half that of men (about twenty American cents for a day of ten or twelve hours in 1956), much of the agricultural work, especially in cotton, was done by children.