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The Industrialization of Egypt 1939–1973: Policy and Performance. By Robert Mabro and Samir Radwan. New York, Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. xii + 279. $14.75

This book by Robert Mabro and Samir Radwan is an important study of the Egyptian economy. Although its major theme is industrialization, the book is, in fact, an overall study of the Egyptian economy in the context of development strategy. It should have wide distribution for that reason alone, since it places problems of industrialization in the context of the overall resources available to Egypt for the success of that process. The book is clearly written for economists, and it will be up to them to assess the relative weight of all of the economic actions discussed in the context of economic developmental theory. However, because it is so well written it will be understood and useful for all students of modern Egypt. The historian will find Part I especially useful. It is the best summary available of the period up to 1939 of Egypt's efforts to participate in (Egypt's efforts to cope with being drawn into?) the modern industrial/ commercial world. In effect, the historical section shows why Egypt failed to build "a broad, industrial base" (9) until the 1950s. Beginning with the emergence of the dynasty of Mohammed Ali at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the authors seek to address the question of the motives of this ruler (known as the "father of modern Egypt") in his effort to "modernize" the Egyptian economy, not as an end in itself, but as an instrument for the expression of his political ambitions in the forty or so years during which he governed Egypt. The historical section as a whole deals with the central question in the history of the modern (nineteenth and twentieth centuries) Egyptian economy: why investment was made in urban property rather than industry and how that attitude was transformed in the twenties and thirties of this century. That done, the authors then focus on the last thirty-four years from 1939-1973, when Egypt truly began entering the industrial world. Chapter III is a very good description of the Egyptian economy with special attention to what makes Egypt different from Third World economies that are usually poor, faced with demographic pressures, problems of sanitation, literacy and health, and, above all, trapped by specialization in primary commodity exports. Egypt breaks from this general pattern of Third World economies in its resource endowment, its lack of minerals, its agrarian structure and, within that context, specialty in cotton, which among other things contributed to Egypt's main human problem, its population growth. "Population . . . continued to grow ineluctably at higher and higher rates. The continual deterioration of the man/land ratio is the main structural problem which bedevils economic development in Egypt" (36). In addition to the resource limitations imposed by nature, Egypt's economic development has taken place since the beginning of World War II in the context of three Arab-Israeli wars in 1948, 1956, and 1967, culminating finally in the October war of 1973.