To truly understand U.S. and Middle Eastern relations, we should take a look at the history of those relations. While many are familiar with recent U.S. conflict and involvement in the Middle East, we have had relations and a presence there for well over 200 years. This article will examine how the U.S. and the Middle East used each other in the mid-1800’s, and how Egypt helped the Union win the Civil War and how it could be argued the Civil War truly ended on Egyptian soil.

Slavery is often one of the first things to pop into your mind when you think of the Civil War, but producing cotton in the south was the foundation of that slavery. With the invention of the textile mill in Europe, specifically England, cotton was in as high of demand as oil is today. Most of the world’s supply of cotton came from the American South. In the 1850’s leading up to the war, England received 80% of its cotton from the American South, and in 1859 cotton accounted for 48% of the total value of all U.S. products sold overseas. Even the word cotton itself is derived from the Arabic word qutn.

One week after the start of the Civil War at Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln ordered northern ships to blockade all southern ports. This, right from the start was a major blow to Jefferson Davis and his Confederate army. Cotton growers couldn’t export their crops, and English textile mills couldn’t receive their cotton from southern plantations. Within weeks this set the world from Australia to India halting their wheat production and starting to grow cotton.

A number of years earlier, a French Engineer by the name of Monsieur Louis Jumel chose Egypt for his new breed of cotton. This cotton was a hybrid of an American seed from Georgia and a seed from Peru. He sold this seed to Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of modern day Egypt. The seed became know as “Egyptian Cotton”, which we still find in sheets and linens to this day. Egypt started producing the cotton in the early 1800’s, though very sparingly.

Fast forward to the mid-1800’s, and Ali’s son Said Pasha is the ruler of Egypt. As the Civil War starts and the blockade goes into effect, Great Britain declared themselves neutral in the fight. This was a second blow to the confederacy as they believed England would side with them as the American South kept England’s economy afloat. Jefferson Davis, a cotton planter himself, and the Confederate Government decided to put into effect what was known as “King Cotton Diplomacy”. He believed a cotton embargo would force Great Britain to join the side of the confederacy. He ordered that 2.5 million bales of cotton be burned, creating an instant shortage. They also used cotton to barter for weapons, ammunition, and ships from British manufacturers. Southern ships would slip the blockade and complete these illegal transactions in British controlled Bahamas and Bermuda. The Confederate Government even met with William Mure, the British Consul at New Orleans, to use cotton as a bargaining chip to gain a British treaty.

What the Confederacy failed to realize was that their bumper crops in the 1850’s had created a surplus of cotton in England. The British textile mills did not need the southern cotton to keep production going. They had a supply that would last until the end of 1862. This allowed them ample time to find an alternative source of cotton.

Thus Great Britain turned to Egypt and Said Pasha. At the time cotton made up only 3% of Egypt’s exports. England, as well as the Northern Union, encouraged Pasha to increase cotton production to meet demand in England. Pasha ordered the entire fertile lower Nile region converted to cotton production. England even sent G.B. Haywood, the Secretary of the Cotton Supply Association to Egypt to ask them to increase production, to which they happily obliged. Egypt went from cotton accounting for 3% of their exports to 93% of their exports later in the 1800’s, and Pasha reduced the export duty from 10 cents to .1 cent. The price and value of land in Egypt quadrupled. Their revenue from cotton increased by 1,000%. England was now in a full supply of Egyptian cotton, and reliance on southern cotton diminished.

By August 1861 Egypt had secured over $100 million in loans to develop their cotton industry. Said Pasha even visited London to discuss how he could best assist the Brits in developing more and higher quality cotton. Upon Said’s death in 1863, mid way of the Civil War, he was succeeded by his nephew Ismail Pasha. Ismail started a form of Egyptian industrial revolution implementing the Middle East’s first railway system, telegraph lines, steam ploughs, steam pumps, steam cotton gins, and began building the vitally important Suez Canal. All backed by European dollars.

Egypt kept England afloat economically, with encouragement from the British and the government of Abraham Lincoln, hastening an end to the Civil War as southern soldiers could no longer afford to fight a war. They ensured that the Europeans had no reason to intervene in the war. Wide spread starvation and lack of sufficient weapons, ammunition, and ships resulted in serious battlefield losses for southern soldiers.

Upon President Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, John Wilkes Booth and almost all of his co-conspirators were all quickly apprehended. Save one. John Surratt Jr. escaped to Canada. He then used faked identities to work his way from various parts of Europe to Rome in Italy. Using another false identity he boarded a ship for Alexandria, Egypt. The U.S. General Consul in Alexandria was tipped off to his arrival, and Surratt was arrested on November 23rd, 1866. So you could argue that the last outstanding episode of the Civil War ended on Egyptian soil. Surratt was shipped back to the U.S. for trial, but was never convicted because the statute of limitations had expired on his charges.

After the Civil War, Ismail also increased Egypt’s military by buying millions of dollars of US made Remington rifles, Gatling guns, and ammunition. Additionally he employed around 50 Confederate and Union officers to come to Egypt and create an Egyptian General Staff to train his troops. So the U.S. even had Civil War personnel in Egypt at one point in time.

Egypt’s usefulness also opened the eyes of those in England. After the Civl War the South was able to produce and sale cotton again. Prices for the crop bottomed out. Egypt experienced low prices on overvalued land, large flooding that destroyed huge amounts of cotton, and saw their fruit, vegetable, and livestock industries decimated as so much focus was placed on cotton crops for a number of years. Egypt could not come close to paying back all the loans they had incurred during the Civil War. They ran a huge budget deficit and almost went bankrupt. This led to Great Britain coming in and taking over Egypt’s treasury and setting up Anglo-Egyptian banks. In 1875 Ismail Pasha sold his shares of the Suez Canal, bought by none other than England. They now controlled Egypt’s treasury and the important Suez Canal. Great Britain would militarily occupy the country in 1882 for the next several decades. They would occupy the country until 1954. Many of these woes Egypt has still not recovered from, and western influence and economic assistance still help to keep the country afloat.

At the same time, the United States Department of Agriculture saw how superior Egyptian cotton was to their own. It was better for thread, undergarments, blending with silk, and holding color. They started importing the seed in the early 1900’s. The US sent the seeds to the American Southwest to be tended by the Pima Indians. This type of American-Egyptian cotton is now known as Pima cotton, managed by the Supima organization, named in honor of those early Native Americans who tended the crop.

As you can see, American and Middle Eastern interactions go back to the roots of both countries. Egypt helped to shape several events in the United States, and U.S. and English involvement in Egypt helped to shape some of the biggest early events in the Middle East (such as the dispute, control, and wars involving the Suez Canal). This is not the only U.S./Middle Eastern interaction within the first 100 years of our country. We will be taking a look at another significant one in the next article of this series.

Sources:
Brooks, Rebecca, “John Surratt: The Lincoln Conspirator who got away”, civilwarsaga.com, 12/19/11
Dattel, Eugene, “Cotton and the Civil War”, mshistory.mdah.state.ms.us
Dunn, John, “King Cotton, the Khedive, and the American Civil War”, southwritlarge.com
“Egyptian Cotton, its modern origin and the Importance of the supply, New York Times, 6/26/1864
Henderson, William, “The Lancashire Cotton Famine”, 1934
Homeguides.com, “Supima vs. Egyptian Cotton”
Lanscombe, Stephen, “Egypt and the British Empire”, British empire.co.uk
Marker, Scott, “The Merchants’ Capital: New Orleans and the Political Economy of the Nineteenth Century South”, 2013
Oren, Michael,” Power, Faith, and Fantasy”, 2007
Osborn, Matthew, “How Egypt won the American Civil War”, alarabiya.com, 02/02/12
Schwartzstein, Peter, “How the American Civil War Built Egypt’s Vaunted Cotton Industry and Changed the Country Forever”, smithsonian.com, 08/01/16