This book is an economic and business history project that aims at charting the relation between the Egyptian state and the local entrepreneurial elite over the course of two centuries, from 1805 until 2014. The authors are practitioners in finance, private business, international economic organizations, and more. They follow the patterns of relations that existed between the state and entrepreneurs under Muhammad Ali Pasha in the early 1800s, Khedives Ismail in the mid-1800s, British colonialism between 1882 and 1952, and consecutive military presidents from 1952 until 2011. The first chapter of the book lays out in detail theoretical insights into state and entrepreneurs at large in international literature. The authors then move in the second and third chapters to cover chronologically the Egyptian state’s changing policies regarding private business. Chapter Four attempts to closely describe various business owners and their reactions to these policies. Finally, the last chapter presents recommendations to the current Egyptian state about reforming its relation with private business.

The authors identify seven “modalities” of the relation between the Egyptian state and local or foreign entrepreneurs over 200 years. In the authors’ words, these modalities are: Muhammad Ali’s centralized power for industrialization by employing foreign experts; Khedive Ismail’s development by using foreign investment and attracting European capital; British colonial administration’s fiscal reform and “selective interventionism”; “the Liberal Age” from the 1920s through 1940s that was marked by the rise of national entrepreneurs who benefited from the government’s economic and political reforms; “Nasser’s brutal command” practiced through nationalization of native and foreign business and applying socialism; Sadat’s re-opening of the market and empowering the business elite through the infitah policy; “Mubarak’s pro-business initiatives” through International Money Fund-designed neoliberal policies. All described modalities involve a degree of government interventionism (see Table 2.2 and p. 71). The book finally advises the current Egyptian president, al-Sisi, to carry on with Mubarak’s model of economic liberalization in accordance with the IMF recommendations.

For the historical period between 1805 and the 1960s, the authors mainly relied on secondary sources published in English. No archival records or primary documents were used—the type of sources that are essential to trained economic historians. Most of the secondary sources are relatively old publications in the field rather than recent research that came out in the past two decades. They also relied on publications of the World Bank, the IMF, and USAID—which carry their own neoliberal biases in evaluating the Egyptian state and economy. Thus, the ideological orientations of the authors come across clearly in the text. They adhere to the neoliberal dicta and recommend the current Egyptian government to adopt them. The authors do not carefully scrutinize the fact that the side effects of the market economy, such as business cronyism and social disparities, were the main reasons behind the 2011 uprisings and the fall of Mubarak. Moreover, the book’s authors convey another unmistaken political bias of favoring the monarchical and colonial period of Egyptian modern history over the post-colonial decades. They do not present necessary economic figures and statistics to justify such subjective orientation.

The limited sources and ideological biases of the book are particularly reflected in its coverage of the periods of Muhammad Ali Pasha and Nasser. For Muhammad Ali’s period (1805–1848), the authors describe him as “the ultimate entrepreneur” because his state initiated numerous modern factories using the help of foreign experts (p. 35). While economic historians classify the Pasha’s policies as state capitalism led by government intensive intervention and protectionism, the authors do not use these scholarly terms, but instead commend the Pasha as a “sole industrial entrepreneur” who enjoyed a monopolistic status (p. 37). The authors make no references to the fact that he employed forced labor corvée in building the infrastructure for these projects and applied oppressive labor rules. They also skip describing that the ultimate collapse of these projects after the 1838 Anglo–Ottoman free trade agreement forced the Pasha to terminate his protectionist policies. Although economic historians of Egypt usually draw close comparisons between the state capitalism of the Pasha and Nasser, the authors overlook such comparisons because of their apparent bias against Nasser. Nasser (1952–1970) adopted socialist policies with a high level of protectionism in order to embark on an ambitious industrialization project. Like those of the Pasha, Nasser’s public projects eventually suffered. While the authors praise the Pasha and ignore his failures, they harshly criticize problems with Nasser’s industries. Similarly, the authors noticeably adopt less critical language in describing other historical periods that were marked by economic liberalism, that is, those of British colonialism, Sadat, and Mubarak.

Although the book aims at exploring entrepreneurs, the reader is left with little knowledge about the main entrepreneurial names of each historical period. The fourth chapter is dedicated to private businesses’ reactions to state policies, but it includes limited information on their capital, sources of technology, management systems, labor rights, domestic and external markets, profitability, etc., and how changing government regulations directly or indirectly impacted these factors. Moreover, for Mubarak’s period (1981–2011), the authors do not emphasize the problem of clientelism, or the patron–client relations that existed between the authoritarian regime and a small circle of business tycoons who benefited from economic liberalization. Crony capitalism and corrupt businessmen during this time generated political oppression and severe social disparities that led to the 2011 uprisings, which mainly demanded social justice, fair wages, and so on. Such important aspects of the relationship between Mubarak’s regime and favorite businessmen do not receive necessary analysis in the book.

More importantly, the authors ignore the fact that the Egyptian military institution created its own business empire from the 1980s onward, and particularly expanded it with economic liberalization throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The superior status that military businesses enjoyed within the state profoundly distorted the liberalized market and negatively impacted private entrepreneurs. The authors needed to highlight the relationship between private and military businesses under Mubarak’s neoliberal policies and under al-Sisi today. Moreover, although the authors call the time between the 1950s and 2011 “the military” period, they refrain from using the same term to describe the period between 2011 and 2012, when the Supreme Council of Armed Forces directly ruled the country, and the recent two years (from 2014 through today) when another military president has come to power. This new military president has drawn new relations with a select group of business tycoons.

Regarding its writing style, the book could have benefited from extensive editing. Many parts lack coherence, and suffer from repetition and usage of less formal language. The authors do not use the concluding section in each chapter very wisely, as they either introduce new information or reiterate the same sentences or words previously used in the given chapter. Overall, most academics in the field of economic and business history might not find this book useful because of the limitedness of its sources. Practitioners might view it as a brief and helpful read, but they should be aware of the authors’ ideological biases.