THE PYRAMID AND THE CROWN: THE EGYPTIAN BEER INDUSTRY FROM 1897 TO 1963

Abstract

AbstractThis paper focuses on a long-running and understudied Egyptian economic institution, the beer industry. While the presence of a well-developed beer industry in a predominantly Muslim country is noteworthy in itself, it is the consistent profitability of this industry despite the vicissitudes of Egypt's economic and political development that have made it truly remarkable. Relying heavily on archival material, including documents preserved in Cairo's Dar al-Wathaʾiq (Egyptian National Archives), this paper tracks the development of the beer industry in Egypt from 1897, when Belgian entrepreneurs started the Pyramid and Crown breweries, to the 1960s, when the Egyptian government nationalized the two companies. This analysis uses the history of the beer company to map larger social and economic trends in the colonial and semicolonial Egyptian economy (1882–1963) and to further problematize the foreign/Egyptian dichotomy that shapes discussions of it.