The Unforeseen Path of Debt Imperialism: Local Struggles, Transnational Knowledge, and Colonialism in Egypt

In 1876, Egypt defaulted on its foreign debt, opening the way to European powers’ involvement in the country’s finances, which ultimately culminated in the British occupation of 1882. While the case of Egypt has been analyzed as a classic case of international financial control, this chapter revisits this trajectory by focusing on the role of experts and expertise. It shows how European experts and creditors sought to develop specific statistical and accounting instruments to manage public debt. Yet, rather than analyzing this process as a transfer of expert knowledge from Europe to the “periphery,” the chapter shows how technical debates intersected with political struggles, involving multiple actors. Furthermore, this chapter pays attention to transnational flows of expertise that shaped Egypt’s debt liquidation and it analyzes, in turn, how the Egyptian experiment informed later cases of international financial control (IFC).