CHAPTER V
FINANCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
CROMER
" And Pharaoh said unto Joseph, See, I have set thee over all
the land of Egypt."-—GEN. xli. 41.
THE smashing of Arabi-ism in Egypt was an easier
enterprise than the smashing of Mahdi-ism in the Sudan.
But it proved a much simpler task for the British to
regrow a new civilisation from the wasted ground in the
Sudan than to clear away the rubbish and ruins which
were smothering the ancient cultivations of civilisation in
Egypt. For that was really the essence of our task in
Egypt—to enable a progressive and productive people
to recover prosperity in spite of the bonds in which it
had been fettered by Islamic and international institu-
tions and in spite of the burdens forced on it by Euro-
pean moneylenders and Ottoman landlords. As Lord
Cromer generously admits (Mod. Eg., vol. i., p. 58) ;
Our financial success is indeed mainly due to the
remarkable recuperative power of the country and the
industry of the inhabitants/1
In the first part of their task—breaking the grip of
the dead hand of Islam—the British were handicapped
by being foreigners and infidels. Islam, it must be
remembered, is not merely a religion ; it is a rigid regime
of public and private life. It regulates all social relations
by rules, many of them incompatible with modern civili-
sation. Islamic reformers have argued that the funda-
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