La modernidad que se expandió desde Europa en el siglo XIX lo hizo como un proyecto fundamentalmente disciplinador, el cual fue adoptado por las elites de países de otras partes del mundo con el propósito de organizar la sociedad y aumentar la productividad, en momentos en que el capitalismo emergía como la fuerza a la que había que plegarse.
Algo que conviene señalar es que la modernidad incluyó no solo los aspectos técnicos o materiales que surgieron durante estos años, y que incluyen la economía como las comunicaciones, sino también un cambio en la percepción del mundo así como la relación entre gobernantes y gobernados. El imperialismo se valió de la modernidad para difuminar las ideas de orden y progreso que justificarían su dominio sobre el resto del planeta, aun cuando las elites de estos territorios acogerían el proyecto modernista con agrado.
El caso egipcio permite analizar con detalle el alcance así como las contradicciones de este proyecto. Colonising Egypt, publicado por Timothy Mitchell, se aproxima a este proceso que ocurre entre la invasión napoleónica a Egipto a inicios del siglo XIX y su incorporación al imperio británico a fines del siglo XIX. Durante las seis décadas entre ambos momentos, las élites egipcias decidieron poner en marcha una ambiciosa transformación con el objetivo de modernizar el país, incorporarlo al capitalismo y evitar futuras invasiones.
Los esfuerzos por implementar esta modernización fueron impresionantes, y según lo reconoce el autor: “Ningún otro lugar en el mundo fue transformado de tal modo para servir a la producción de una sola industria”. Es claro que Mitchell se refiere al algodón, el cual vio aumentar su producción gracias a las obras hidráulicas que se llevaron a cabo en el Canal de Suez. De igual modo, los campesinos fueron obligados a mantenerse en un mismo lugar, para garantizar la producción de algodón para el mercado mundial, el cual representaría el 92% del total de exportaciones hacia la Primera Guerra Mundial.
Paradójicamente, el éxito de las reformas será su perdición, como lo apreciamos en las fuerzas armadas, el cual consistirá en un nuevo ejército nacional, jerarquizado y alimentado con permanentes levas de entre la población rural. Ello llevó a Egipto a convertirse en una potencial regional que anexó territorios aledaños, al punto que se convirtió en una amenaza para la hegemonía británica y propició su invasión y dominio en 1882.
Para ampliar la discusión sobre estos temas, incluyo un informe que presenté sobre el libro con algunas observaciones y críticas a su modelo. Leer libro aquí
Timothy Mitchell. Colonising Egypt (London: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
In 1889 the Egyptian delegation found itself between both sides of a mirror. On the one hand, they were invited to the Eighth International Congress of Orientalists, in Stockholm. On the other hand, before their arrival delegates decided to make a pause in Paris to visit the World Exhibition. In both events the topic was the same: the Orient and its representation. Whereas in Stockholm the Egyptian delegates performed as specialists in the study of Orient, in Paris they were the object of study and curiosity. The distance between one city and another was not so long, but the change of position that they experienced was one of the paradox that the world of the XIXth-century offered to their inhabitants. According to the book, during these years people witnessed the transformation of the world into a giant stage, where the boundaries between represented and representation were not completely clear.
As the author argues, representation is not only the exhibition of objects and contexts in other way. Alongside with this concept there is a project of discipline that supports Western powers and the colonization of non-Western areas, in particular Egypt, exercised in parallel to the use of military force. This process was developed in different spheres, like education, military, agriculture, and urbanism. Mitchell displays before us a complex picture of these processes, their success and contradictions. Using Egypt as a social laboratory, Mitchell rejects the notion that the circulation of ideas coming from West was, in the case of non-Western countries, a mere and automatic adaptation of these in foreign countries. At least in a couple of cases local elites had to deal with problems like the transition from ancient practices to new ones, as happened with writing and the authority embedded in it. One of the most important achievements of this study is the integration of different aspects that were studied as separate processes in the past. The ambition of the elites for transforming Egypt in a geopolitical power in the Middle East is expressed by the author in one single quote: “No other place in the world in the nineteenth-century was transformed on a greater scale to serve the production of a single industry” (10).
Colonising Egypt is rich in suggestions and insights about the process of modernization as a dialogue between West and Middle East. However, I have two observations. In first place, the emphasis on the disciplinary modernization as a vertical project does not permit to observe the resistance offered by those who were the recipients of these practices. The book offers detailed descriptions of the projects and their implementation but lacks in providing aspects of how the population adopted these dispositions, in the opposite of the Indian case. If power cannot work only as a permanent and oppressive force, it is not clear how this external pressure operated among Egyptians. Otherwise, we have to assume that all the projects were efficient and acted over inert bodies. In second place, the distinction between the beginning of the British rule and the end of Egyptian autonomy and how this disciplinary project was incorporated or transformed in the colonial period remains unclear. Additional information about how British administration used the previous disciplinary project would have helped the continuity of the disciplinary project and the success or failure of local elites in its implementation.
Despite these observations, Mitchell provides a powerful narrative and his study of discipline and modernization in Egypt is a masterpiece whose theoretical framework can be applied to other countries and experiences.