Mortgage banking and tenure security in Egypt (1900--1939).
详细信息
文摘
Egyptian nationalism took on new life following World War One. Sad Zaghlul formed the Wafd party, with the near-singular aim of negotiating complete political independence from Britain. Other nationalists, such as Talat Harb and Ismail Sidqi, focused their energies on economic independence. These “economic” nationalists had two goals. First, to fill important credit gaps in the European-dominated banking system, and second to weaken European domination of banking and credit generally. Talat Harb founded Bank Misr in 1920, with the intent to supply much needed industrial capital in an effort to promote import substitution industry. Although historians have examined Bank Misr, other efforts at banking reform have been overlooked. Second, in addition to filling gaps in the credit system, economic nationalists sought to weaken European domination of banks, especially mortgage banks, and at the same time establish new banks under Egyptian state control.;The earliest effort to simultaneously weaken European mortgage banks and establish government banks was made under the first premiership of Ismail Sidqi (1930–1933). During the global depression of the 1930s European mortgage banks were short of liquid funds needed to pay bondholders, coupled with sharp rise in mortgage loan defaults. From 1932 through 1933 the Sidqi administration successfully renegotiated the terms and conditions for repayment of defaulted loans in foreclosure before the Mixed Courts, using surplus government funds. Sidqi transferred the restructured loans into two new state-controlled mortgage banks which he created on behalf of the government, namely, the Crédit Hypothécaire Agricole and the Crédit Agricole Egyptien. This approach to relieving tenure insecurity was continued by administrations that followed Sidqi, and in 1936 the Egyptian government negotiated the outright purchase of the Mortgage Company of Egypt, becoming, in a single stroke, the third largest mortgage lender in Egypt.;Given the connection historians make between tenure insecurity in the 1930s and political radicalization, as well as contemporaneous efforts to de-institutionalize British imperial control over Egypt through the abolition of the Mixed Courts, as represented by the Montreaux Conventions, the history of mortgage lending and of tenure security deserves a deeper level of investigation. Such is the purpose of this study. This study therefore makes extensive use of information in the Journal des tribunaux mixtes d'Egypte, the Annuaire Statistique d'Egypte, and an internal history of the Crédit Foncier Egyptien (Egypts's largest mortgage lender). These sources were utilized in an effort to isolate and study the mortgage loan factors influencing tenure security.