Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
The profile of Egypt at midcentury is quite typical of Third World countries: Two-thirds or more of the population lived and made a living off the land, more than half of the national labor force was rural, the contribution of agriculture to GNP was one-third the total, and that of industry less than 15 percent. Land distribution was extremely unequal, less than one percent of landowners possessed more than one-third of the cultivated land and many of them were absentee landlords. The credit system and extension services were inadequate if available at all. Finally, population pressure on the land was relentless.
1 See, for instance, Milton, J. Esman, Landlessness and Near-Landlessness in Developing Countries (Cornell University: Center for International Studies, 1978),Google Scholar and Harik, , The Political Mobilization of Peasants (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1974).Google Scholar
2 Daniel, Craig, “The Impact of Land Reform on an Iranian Village,” The Middle East Journal, 32, 2 (Spring 1978), p. 146.Google Scholar
3 For complete data on land distribution in 1974, see monograph, Distribution of Land, Employment, and Income in Rural Egypt (Cornell University: Center for International Studies, 1979).Google Scholar
4 ⊃Abd, al Basit at Mu⊃ty, al Sira⊃ al Tabakifial Qarvah al Misriyah.Google Scholar
5 Two unpublished papers deal with this question in detail: John, Waterbury, “Administered Pricing and State Intervention in Egyptian Agriculture,” Conference on Politics of Food held in Rome by the American Universities Field Staff, 06 1978;Google Scholar and Karima, Karim, “Tawzi ⊃al Dakhl Bayn al Hadar Wa la Rif, 1952–1975,” Third Annual Conference of Egyptian Economists, Cairo, 1978.Google Scholar
6 See Robert, Mabro. The Egyptian Economy. 1952–1972 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 76–79; also Waterbury, “Administered Pricing and State Intervention.”Google Scholar
7 USAID, Near East Bureau, “Egypt: Recent Socio-Economic Data,” 10 1977, p. 17.
8 Mahmoud, Abdel-Fadil, Development. Income Distribution and Social Change in Rural Egypt (1952–1970): A Study in the Political Economy of Agrarian Transition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 120;Google ScholarSamir, Radwan, The Impact of Agrarian Reform on Rural Egypt (1952–1975) (Geneva: The International Labor Organization, 1977), p. 76; Waterbury, “Administered Pricing and State Intervention”; Karim, “Tawzi.”Google Scholar
9 Karim, “Tawzi.”
10 CAPMAS, al Kitab al Sanawi, 1977.Google Scholar
11 See Radwan, . Impact of Agrarian Reform.Google Scholar