Source: John Bowring, British diplomat and economist, *Report on Egypt and Candia*, addressed to the British government, 1840.
"The manufacturing state-run establishments of the Pasha [Muhammad Ali] are, for the most part, modern creations, which have arose out of his desire to make himself independent of foreign supplies... The cotton factories, the woollen manufactories, the iron foundries, the arsenals, have all been created by the government. In these, the machinery has been imported from Europe at a great cost, and European directors and artisans have been engaged to superintend them. But the difficulty of obtaining coal and the lack of native skilled labor, combined with the high cost of maintenance, have rendered many of these establishments unprofitable and dependent on continuous state subsidies."
Based on the passage, which of the following best explains why Muhammad Ali’s state-sponsored industrialization program in Egypt experienced limited long-term success compared to Western Europe?
- Egypt lacked key industrial resources like coal and struggled to train native technical experts, leaving its state factories dependent on expensive European imports.Answer
- BGreat Britain formally annexed Egypt as a colony in 1840, dismantling the state-run factories and replacing them with British administrative offices.
- CThe Pasha immediately transitioned Egypt to a free-market capitalist system, which dissolved state monopolies and allowed private enterprises to manage the factories.
- DEgyptian industrialization failed because the state focused its efforts on Second Industrial Revolution technologies, such as electrical grids and petroleum refining, rather than textile mills.