Problems Prior To 1952
Prior to the 1952 coup that installed Naguib as President, less than six percent of Egypt's population owned more than 65% of the land in Egypt, and less than 0.5% of Egyptians owned more than one-third of all fertile land. These major owners had almost autocratic control over the land they owned and charged high rents which averaged 75% of the income generated by the rented land. These high rents coupled with the high interest rates charged by banks plunged many small farmers and peasants into debt. Furthermore, peasants who worked as laborers on farms also suffered, receiving average wages of only eight to fifteen piastres a day. The combination of these circumstances led historian Anouar Abdel Malek to call the pre-reform Egyptian peasantry "an exploited mass surrounded by hunger, disease and death". Another historian, Robert Stephens has compared the state of Egyptian peasants before land reform to that of French peasants before the French Revolution.
Read more about this topic: Egyptian Land Reform
Famous quotes containing the words problems and/or prior:
“While the onset of puberty can vary by as much as six years, every adolescent wants to be right on the 50-yard line, right in the middle of the field. One is always too tall, too short, too thin, too fat, too hairy, too clear-skinned, too early, too late. Understandably, problems of self-image are rampant.”
—Joan Lipsitz (20th century)
“Less smooth than her Skin and less white than her breast
Was this pollisht stone beneath which she lyes prest
Stop, Reader, and Sigh while thou thinkst on the rest
With a just trim of Virtue her Soul was endu’d
Not affectedly Pious nor secretly lewd,
She cut even between the Cocquet and the Prude.”
—Matthew Prior (1664–1721)