Reasons preventing peasants from resisting the expulsion from land
It is thought that land had been an ownership of the monarch until till 1868 ( Khedive Said period). Before that date peasants merely utilized the land.
· Khedive Said issued a decree, which implied the possibility of transforming the land ownership to persons other than the royal family, ministers and associates.
· On 1871 khedive Ismail issued a decree – under the pressure by his European donors due to high coasts of digging the Suez Canal – called, exchange law, which mean land ownership in return for 6 years tax payment in cash.
Some of senior officials benefited from the decree, but poor peasants unable to pay the annual taxes did not benefit.
· After World War I and due to the rise in cotton prices some of small peasants gradually managed to buy some of this land.
· On 9 September, leader of 1952 Revolution issued land reform law no. 178, and divided 900 thousand feddans in ten years on poor peasants ( between 2-5 feddans for each), it means that revolution officers confiscated the land owned by big feudalists landowners while peasants and all the political forces were setting on spectators' chairs, it was different from what happened in the French revolution on 1789 when peasants destroyed the feudalist system. Therefore the Egyptian revolution is called the "white revolution".
· After 1952 peasants stayed without popular syndicates , and entered by force of law the governmental syndicates, they were ignorant and weak and the law compelled them to:
1- Cultivate the corps the government needed for local consumption and exportation.
2- Buy production outputs (seeds – fertilizers -insecticides – animal dry foods)
3- Border the cultivated land areas at the limits which the government wanted.
4- Pay taxes.
5- Sell their corps (all the cotton and sugarcane, a ratio of wheat and rice) to the government at predetermined prices.
· The cultural atmosphere was conservative in general and the current of political Islam (the Muslim Brotherhood) was active and influential in the same direction.
· The influence of the feudalist power and culture in the Egyptian society was still strong and effective.
· The majority of the 1952 revolution officers did not believe in ideas of land reform and did not sympathize with peasants. Therefore some of those leaders assisted feudalists escape the land reform law.
· The emergency law and other legislation against socialist parties and activists separated peasants from their real supporters.
My e.mail:
Basheer_sr@gawab.com
our committee e.mail :
\egyptianpeasantsolidarity@gawab.com
our committee web site:
tadamon.katib.org