Cotton and the Politics of Monopoly

The story of the commercial production of Palestinian cotton is not a new one, for this commodity has found its way to European shores since at least the tenth century, although the major market at that time, and until the eighteenth century, was Egypt. Whether most of the exported cotton was in a raw or processed form (such as yarn or clothes) depended on the health of the domestic economy and the nature of demand. Between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, for example, processed cotton constituted the bulk of exports. But by the early fifteenth century, Venice, which dominated trade with the Greater Syria, imported mostly raw cotton and exported processed cotton goods.^[6]

From the sixteenth to the early eighteenth centuries the chief commodity in Palestine’s trade with Europe was processed cotton, mostly in its carded and spun forms.^[7] During this period, France replaced Venice as the primary European trading partner with the Levant and practically monopolized the northern coast of Palestine.^[8] In general, the French supplied woolen goods in exchange for primary products, especially raw cotton and cotton yarn, which were needed for their quickly expanding textile industry. French demand for Levant raw cotton increased more than fivefold over the eighteenth century, while its imports of processed cotton actually decreased (see Table 2).

This was part of a general trend of increasing European demand for raw cotton, for Europe’s industrialization was spearheaded by textile production. Other parts of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul empires witnessed a similar increase in the commercial production of cotton for export around the same time (see Table 3).^[9]

Cotton and the Rulers of Acre

In order to secure their supply of raw cotton, French merchants took to investing in cotton production at the local level beginning in the 1720s. Following the example of local merchants (see Chapter 4), they paid village shaykhs for cotton harvests one year in advance.^[10] The direct access of European merchants to Palestinian cotton, however, was severed two decades later, when Zahir al-Umar made Acre the seat of his rule in the mid-1740s and, with the help of Ibrahim Sabbagh, his long-time financial manager and political advisor, managed to implant himself as the middleman between French merchants and the cotton-growing villages under his domain.^[11] The idea was to corner the surplus and control the prices at the point of sale to foreign merchants. Profits from this less-than-perfect monopoly system helped Zahir al-Umar transform Acre from a little town into an imposing fortress city and the seat of an autonomous enclave within the Ottoman Empire.^[12]

In 1784, nine years after Zahir al-Umar’s death, his successor, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (1775–1804), was able to enforce an even stricter monopoly over the buying and selling of cotton and cereals. By 1790 he had managed to break the French merchants’ grip on the cotton trade and expelled them to Sidon.^[13] By better controlling the supply end of the cotton market, Ahmad Pasha stood to make greater profits: he could increase his options among prospective buyers and put a stop to the French practice of bypassing his revenue-collecting apparatus through direct investment on the village level.

That same year Volney, an astute French observer who traveled widely in the region, wrote:

The dependencies of Saida [Sidon province, whose de facto capital was Acre] are Sur [Tyre] and the towns of Palestine such as Ramleh, Jerusalem, Lydda, and Majdal. This area is one of the most important, importing 800–900 bales of woolen cloth for which it pays in raw cotton and cotton yarn. Here the French face no competition. In Saida they have one or two agents who buy cotton every Monday or Tuesday. They wished to do the same in Acre, but the pasha cornered all cotton stocks, forbade all sales, and became sole master of the market; since the merchants needed to buy goods in return for what they sold, he put a duty of 10 piasters on each quintal of cotton.^[14]

The politics of monopoly were not unique to Palestine. The heavy-handed methods of Zahir al-Umar and Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar were quite common at the time for strongmen who ruled semi-independent enclaves within the Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul empires.^[15] Indeed, a monopoly system over agricultural commodities destined for overseas exports reached its epitome under Muhammad Ali (1805–1848), the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt.^[16] Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar’s efforts, however, took place in a context very different from that of Egypt. The expulsion of French merchants might not have helped him raise more revenues, because the areas of cotton cultivation, as shall be seen, had spread to regions beyond his control: that is, to Jabal Nablus. It is also likely that the trade in cotton might have become less profitable, due to transportation difficulties during the Napoleonic Wars as well as to increased competition from Anatolia and India (Egypt did not witness a substantial increase in cotton production until the early nineteenth century). Finally, there is reason to believe that the economic and demographic base of Acre began to decline during the last years of Jazzar’s rule.^[17]

In any case, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar’s monopoly system did not survive his death intact. In addition to the growing weakness of Acre and the spread of cotton cultivation to areas beyond its control, his successor, Sulayman Pasha al-Adil (1805–1819), instituted a more decentralized political and fiscal set of policies. The difference in the approach of these two rulers is symbolized by the marked contrast in the appellations they acquired: Jazzar (butcher) versus Adil (just). Of course, just about anyone who succeeded al-Jazzar was bound to look good in comparison: his cruelty earned him this title long before he came to Palestine, and his death was greeted by celebrations as far away as Damascus. In fact, not a single contemporary chronicler had a kind remark to make about this Bosnian mercenary turned pasha.^[18]

In order to reduce his expenses and to minimize the threat of rebellion, Sulayman Pasha gutted al-Jazzar’s formidable military machine and relaxed his political control over Acre’s dependencies. According to his sympathetic scribe, Sulayman Pasha preferred diplomacy over violence and rarely interfered in the affairs of his appointees.^[19] Far from minutely supervising the affairs of his subjects, he turned the day-to-day operations of his regime in 1806/1807 to his three main advisors: Ali Pasha, his deputy; Haim Farhi, his financial manager; and Ibrahim Awra, his head scribe.^[20] All had strong relations with the local merchant community. Ali Pasha’s house was frequented by the local Muslim religious figures and merchants, and Haim Farhi and Ibrahim Awra—a Jew and a Christian, respectively—aggressively defended the interests of these two minority communities, many of whose members were well-to-do merchants.^[21]

Political decentralization was accompanied by relaxation of control over the collection and sale of cotton, grains, and other commercial commodities. Merchants were no longer subject to extortion and confiscation on a routine basis, as was their fate under Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar. On the contrary, Sulayman Pasha was so eager to reinvigorate the local economy that he gave the Acre merchants virtual ownership of the government-owned shops they had long rented, and many properties of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar were sold off to them as well.^[22] Sulayman Pasha’s more relaxed fiscal policy was based, or so we are told, on the following advice from his powerful financial manager, Haim Farhi:

We must…reduce the taxation of our subjects and impose it on the foreigners. That is possible if the sale of grain, oil, and cotton to foreigners is limited exclusively to Acre; the people can get what they need directly from the peasants without imposts. Trustworthy agents should be appointed for this purpose, and at the end of every day the surplus of these three commodities taken in, over and above the needs of the [local] people, should be taken from the owners and they should be paid the price at which it was sold during that day. That which is obtained should be deposited in storehouses and sold by the government to the ships of foreigners at the highest possible price.^[23]

Farhi—who served Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, Sulayman Pasha and, for a time, the latter’s successor, Abdullah Pasha (1819–1831)—was proposing a limited monopoly that would not preempt local and regional consumption of, and trade in, cotton. In these two crucial spheres, peasants and merchants were to enjoy a relatively free cotton market. Farhi thus sought to maintain some political control over a profitable trade, but without endangering the peasant base of production that had suffered greatly under Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar. Theoretically, artisans and merchants who needed to purchase cotton for local trade and manufacturing would not have to compete with foreign merchants who were willing to offer high prices in order not to return in empty ships.

This delicate balancing act seems to have been implemented in one form or another. During the reign of Sulayman Pasha there were five permanent employees dealing solely with buying, storing, and selling cotton, more than for any other agricultural product, including wheat. According to Awra, these employees included Rustum Kashif, who, along with two assistants, supervised the government’s cotton storehouse in Acre, and the head of customs, who, along with an assistant, worked as an accountant for “the ginned cotton that comes from the storehouse, and which was bought from village peasants.”^[24]

The government, it seems, did not limit itself to purchasing the surplus left in the market at the end of each day. It also intervened directly at the production level to ensure adequate supplies of cotton that it could resell to French traders. It is not clear where Farhi drew the line in terms of how much cotton was bought, what prices were offered to the peasants, and how much foreign merchants were charged. Suffice it to say that he and other high-ranking Acre officials amassed large fortunes through speculation in cash crops and stood to gain a great deal, personally, from loopholes in the monopoly.

Because these decisions directly affected the livelihoods of peasants, merchants, and foreign traders, the balancing act was fraught with tension and conducive to conflict and smuggling. Smuggling—essentially an attempt by merchants, peasants, and bedouins to bypass local and regional monopolies—was spurred on by increasing European demand, making it a common phenomenon all over the Middle East and North Africa.^[25] Smuggling not only undermined the politics of monopoly but also constituted a perennial problem for the Ottoman state in general, which was concerned about losing control of the movement of commodities and the customs revenues they generated.^[26]

If the accession of Sulayman Pasha heralded the slow decline, from above, of monopoly politics in northern Palestine, and if smuggling eroded the politics of monopoly from below, the Egyptian invasion of Greater Syria in 1831 dealt it a quick and fatal blow, for this invasion spelled the end of Acre rulers’ political and economic influence in Palestine in general. Surprisingly, the Egyptian authorities made no effort to corner the cotton market in their newly acquired territories, even though monopoly was Muhammad Ali’s firm policy in Egypt at the time and even though he was keenly aware that the profits from his control of the cotton trade were essential to the war effort.^[27] In a communiqué dated September 1833, Muhammad Ali instructed his son that the cotton harvest in the districts of Acre, Nablus, Jaffa and Gaza need not be purchased because of its small size (even though 1833 was a bad year for Egyptian cotton exports). Instead, the inhabitants (ahali was the word used in the communiqué) were to be allowed to dispose of it as they wished.^[28] It is ironic (if the reason given was indeed true) that although the monopoly of Acre rulers was partly undermined by the expansion in cotton cultivation to areas beyond their political control, this expansion was not impressive enough for the Egyptians to impose their own monopoly.^[29] A more likely explanation for Muhammad Ali Pasha’s decision is that he wanted to allay the European powers’ concern that Greater Syria would be subjected to the same economic policies as Egypt, policies they considered to be obstacles to free trade.

Cotton Production in Jabal Nablus

The politics of monopoly never took hold in the rest of Palestine. As mentioned above, the large increase in lands devoted to the cultivation of cotton spilled over into areas not under the control of Acre’s governors, primarily Jabal Nablus.^[30] The strong position of the merchant community in Jabal Nablus, as well as the decentralized political structure of this region, meant that competition, not monopoly, characterized the politics of trade in cotton. Using their local trade networks—that is, the thick web of connections with specific villages, clans, or individuals—Nabulsi merchants were able to secure a regular supply of raw cotton, mostly as payments for debts.^[31] By the 1830s, if not earlier, Jabal Nablus had become the largest producer of cotton not only in Palestine but in Greater Syria as a whole (see Table 4).

The figures in Table 4, of course, provide only a snapshot for one year.^[32] But by that time, cotton grown in the Nablus region had already established a reputation as the best in the Fertile Crescent, and it commanded a ready market.^[33] Fifteen years later, the quantity of cotton production in Jabal Nablus was still important enough for the central Ottoman government to initiate efforts to improve the quality of seeds in this region, as part of its general policy of promoting the export of cotton to Europe.^[34] On April 28, 1851, the Nablus Advisory Council received a letter from the governor of Sidon province, informing them that they would soon receive four uqqas of cotton seeds courtesy of Ottoman officials in Istanbul. In return, they were to execute the following instructions:

[The] cotton seeds are to be distributed to the ahali [inhabitants] under the supervision of the council and experts. [The ahali] are to plant [the seeds] this year in the good arable lands that accommodate the cultivation of this specie. [You are to] greatly motivate their willingness in this regard and do not allow them to ignore this order for cultivation. Send word upon arrival [of the seeds]. In addition, it is not permissible to charge the ahali a price for the above-mentioned seeds; when the cotton matures you are to put two plants produced by them [along] with [the] soil in a box and seal it. [You are also] to put some of the cotton in a second box and seal it and send word to us. The entire crop [produced from these seeds] is to be put under safekeeping until orders are received from Istanbul.^[35]

Five days later the council replied that they had delivered two uqqas of seeds to peasants in the Jenin area and one each to those in the subdistricts of Bani Sa‘b and Sh‘arawiyya al-Gharbiyya.^[36] This reply provides the first concrete evidence as to the general areas in which cotton was grown in Jabal Nablus during the mid-nineteenth century. The names of the villages were not mentioned. Fortunately, however, a series of documents detailing human and material losses during factional fighting in 1850 provides additional clues in this regard. These documents listed, among other things, stolen properties supposed to be returned as part of a peace agreement between the peasant clans involved in the fighting. In many instances, raw and ginned cotton as well as cotton seeds and implements were the most important agricultural commodities listed.^[37] Just one clan, for example, had 8,300 waznas of cotton-in-the-boll (qashqutun), 505 waznas of ginned cotton, 7 qintars of spun cotton, 145 waznas of cotton seeds, and a large amount of locally produced textiles, all to be returned by another clan that had plundered its village.^[38] The villages of cotton-producing clans listed in this and other local sources include Attil, Dayr al-Ghusun, Zayta, Baqa, Shwayka, Qaqun, Talfit, Muqaybli, Arrana, Kafr Dan, Zaboya, and Dannaba.^[39] Other villages not mentioned in the sources but still known for their cotton production include Zir‘in, Jalama, Yamun and Silat al-Harithiyya.^[40]

Never subjected to the politics of monopoly, the city of Nablus easily became Palestine’s center for cotton processing and trade after the demise of the Acre rulers in 1831. Over time, Nablus became the place to which peasants from the cotton-growing areas sent their cotton to be ginned and sold, even though Acre and Jaffa, the ports from which much of this cotton found its way to Europe, were actually closer to many of these villages than was Nablus proper. Nabulsi merchants also organized the local production and sale of this cotton to European merchants. In 1837, for example, a full three-quarters of the entire harvest of Jabal Nablus was exported to the port of Marseilles, France.^[41]

Decline of the Cotton Connection

Ironically, the production of cotton declined precisely when the integration of Palestine and the commercialization of its agriculture began to expand by leaps and bounds. Having helped pave the way for increased trade with Europe, it was overtaken during the mid-nineteenth century by the other commodities that became more important cash crops for export: wheat, barley, sesame seeds, olive oil, and, eventually, the famous Jaffa orange.

This decline was not a linear process. The decade of Egyptian rule most likely witnessed an overall increase in cotton cultivation, because the Egyptian authorities encouraged commercial agriculture and the trade with Europe. It is estimated, for instance, that Ibrahim Pasha’s policy of “forced cultivation”^[42] led to the doubling of the cotton-growing areas in Greater Syria by the end of the 1830s, but these figures are only guesses.^[43] In short, cotton production seems to have declined by the mid-nineteenth century, peaked during the cotton famine in the early 1860s, then declined again (see Table 5).^[44]

Regional competition, the changing nature of European demand, and the stagnation of textile-manufacturing sector were all important factors in the initial period of decline. First, both the quality of Egyptian cotton after the discovery of the Jumel (Mako) long-staple plant (1820) and the vast quantity produced in the Nile Valley greatly reduced the importance of Palestine as a source of cotton.^[45] This small region’s topography and climate simply did not allow for economy of scale or for the development of a monocrop economy, as Egypt’s did, and the short staple of its cotton became less desirable.

Second, British demand for grains (wheat and barley), especially after the repeal of the Corn (wheat) Laws, caused a shift in the percentage of land allocated for this purpose.^[46] Peasants welcomed this change, for they preferred to grow grains. Compared with cotton, grains were more hardy, easier to grow, needed less water, did not exhaust the soil as much, and involved far less labor. Grains were also a less risky proposition: there was always a local and regional market for wheat, whereas that for cotton was vulnerable to international price fluctuations and to the health of regional textile industries. Finally, increasing imports of machine-produced yarn from England undercut local and regional demand for Palestinian raw cotton and cotton yarn, because the English material was stronger and of better quality, though not necessarily always better suited for local manufacture.^[47] The impact of foreign competition, as shall be seen in the last section of this chapter, was less than devastating due to continued local and regional demand, and the role of Nablus as the cotton-processing center of Palestine survived well into the early twentieth century.^[48]