26 Egypt
scientific. And who shall say that our Nile dams and
land banks and agricultural experts are of greater value
than their palaces and mosques and artistic traditions ?
Our cotton has brought foreign trade to Egypt, but it
is their culture that has brought the tourist traffic. Yet
there is no doubt but that they cost the native Egyptian
far more than we did. They took in taxation practically the
whole produce of the soil beyond the barest livelihood of
the fellaheen. Their tolls on the transit trade, equivalent
to the original cost of the goods, prevented any competi-
tion with the sea route round the Cape. Their struggle
with the Turks for the right to exploit Egypt caused
perpetual disturbance, while their acceptance of Islam
cut the country off from participation in European
progress.
It looked at one time as though this Mameluke system
of white slave rule over Asiatic and African races might
win the world for the Eastern Islamic State, much as
our system of commercial colonisation has subsequently
won it for European industrial civilisation. At the time of
their overthrow by the Turks a Mameluke fleet was dis-
puting the future Empire of India with the Portuguese,
and late in the eighteenth century the Mamelukes under
Ali looked like becoming the successors of the Turks in
the Ottoman Empire. But thereafter their day was over.
The war-slave was succeeded by the wage-slave in the
empire of the world, and India was ruled by the
Griffin, not the Grouz ; moreover, the military art of the
Mamelukes became antiquated. Their armies were still
made up of feudal contingents, commanded by a chief,
and composed of lesser beys or barons, of Mamelukes or
men-at-arms, and of swarms of foot soldiers and fol-
lowers. Their military art was that of the Crusades, and
their arms were copied or even captured from* those of