European-owned Egyptian factories disciplined landless wage workers with whips and police flogging

Evidence

Similar methods of supervision and control were required at a local level for the new methods of capitalist production, in particular the cultivation and processing of cotton. Private ownership of large estates and the investment of European capital were creating a class of landless workers, whose bodies needed to be taught the disciplined habits of wage-labour. Two Englishmen who owned a cotton-ginning factory in the new town of Zagazig employed an English youth to oversee ‘Mansoor’, their Egyptian overseer. Mansoor’s job, in turn, according to the English youth, was ‘watching the natives whilst at work and keeping them in order, for most of them were naturally of indolent disposition … As moral persuasion was of very little use, he carried with him a sort of kourbash or long whip, with which he encouraged industry among the men and boys; when, however, any man had been found stealing or committing a more serious crime, he was sent round to the police headquarters for punishment, and it fell to me to accompany him, explain the crime to the chief officer, and see that he was properly flogged.’ — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 321

Categorization

• SEED: A concrete micro-case of how colonial capitalism imported a disciplinary apparatus — the whip inside the factory and the police flogging outside — at the level of a single ginning factory; a vivid anchor for an essay on the technology of labour discipline in colonial production.
• SHARE: The image of an English youth escorting workers to the police station to ‘see that he was properly flogged’ is a precise detail for anyone working on colonial labour or the kourbash as an instrument of discipline.