THE EGYPTIAN LABOR CORPS: WORKERS, PEASANTS, AND THE STATE IN WORLD WAR I

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Labor and Economy

During World War I, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians--most of them illiterate workers and peasants from the countryside--worked in the Egyptian Labor Corps (ELC). At the height of the war, at least 10,000 ELC laborers were working in French port cities such as Marseilles, Calais, and Boulogne.¹In France, they served alongside other migrant laborers recruited from places as far-flung as China, the West Indies, and South Africa, loading and unloading ships and transferring their contents to the nearest railhead for transport to the Western Front. When the Ottoman Empire entered the war, the British changed Egypt's legal status from an Ottoman province to a British protectorate, and recruited hundreds of thousands of Egyptians to work as logistical laborers supporting British imperial troops against the Ottomans and their allies in the Dardanelles, Mesopotamia, the Sinai Peninsula, Palestine, the Western Desert, and Sudan (see Tables 1 and 2).²

TABLE 1.

Schedule of Egyptians employed with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, March 1916-June 1918

Date	ELC	CTC	ICC	HTA	Remount	VS	Total
March 1916	8,935	10,423	16	0	0	163	19,537
June 1916	15,296	11,016	40	0	0	543	26,895
September 1916	26,231	15,077	56	625	0	428	42,417
December 1916	37,454	19,029	112	555	246	1,085	58,481
March 1917	49,036	20,739	170	1,275	218	1,110	72,548
June 1917	49,656	19,886	170	2,244	1,326	1,305	74,587
September 1917	55,263	21,109	168	4,217	1,165	1,459	83,381
December 1917	60,041	24,944	275	5,772	1,740	2,128	94,900
March 1918	62,675	23,872	219	5,949	2,025	2,838	97,578
June 1918	72,162	23,667	56	5,643	2,164	3,158	106,850

Source: FO 141/797/2 No. 2689/142 Wingate to Balfour, 15 September 1918.

Note: ELC, Egyptian Labor Corps; CTC, Camel Transport Corps; ICC, Imperial Camel Corps; HTA, Horse Transport, ASC; VS, Veterinary Service.

TABLE 2.

Total number of Egyptians recruited for service with the British army from 17 March 1917 to 30 June 1918

Corps	Totals
Egyptian Labor Corpsa	237,407
Camel Transport Corps	62,686
Imperial Camel Corps	530
Horse Transport, ASC	14,057
Veterinary Service	7,207
Remount Service	5,312
Total	327,199

Source: FO 141/797/2 No. 2689/142 Wingate to Balfour, 15 September 1918.

^aIncluding France, Mesopotamia, Salonika, Mudros, and Aqaba.

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