Tobacco and Cigarette Exports from Alexandria

Background

Throughout the mid-19th century, tobacco consumption began to gain popularity through the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. The tobacco industry thrived in Egypt alongside the “development of industrialized agriculture cash crops,” and Egypt was known for exporting luxury cigarettes around the world. Beginning in 1860, the Ottoman Empire’s state monopoly on tobacco only awarded Greek and Ottoman tobaccomen the right to cultivate tobacco (Shechter). This led to the expansion of the cigarette industry with the arrival of more tobaccomen from Greece and the Ottoman Empire, with the emergence of large-scale cigarette factories from previously smaller made-to-order tobacco stores. Eventually, in 1903, the Egyptian government adds a separate cigarette section to the annual foreign commerce reports (Shechter).

Research

The initial research question I set out to analyze examined the cigarette and tobacco exports from Alexandria to Constantinople listed under the “Export Manifests.” From using the following queries:

  • //div[@feature='exportManifests']//p[contains(., 'CONST')]/following-sibling::p[1]
  • //div[@feature='exportManifests']//p[contains(., 'CONST')]/following-sibling::p[2]
  • //div[@feature='exportManifests']//p[contains(., 'CONST')]/following-sibling::p[3]

I was able to find several data points under the Export Manifests feature containing the letters “Const” (for Constantinople), and that were in the paragraphs immediately, two, and three after the word “Const.” From the table below, it is evident that there were not enough available data points to draw conclusions or analyze the data available for larger patterns or trends.

DateAmt of TobaccoDestinationCo.
01-29-190620Syria & Const
3-28-190656Piraeus & Const
3-28-1906100Const
12-31-1906120Syria & ConstCie Nav Helienique
06-20-190730Port Said & Const
09-25-190726Const
11-20-190720Const
DateAmt of CigarettesDestinationCo.Unit
04-24-1905146Piraeus & Constcases
11-30-19053ConstED Protapapas & Co.cases
03-23-19063Syria & Constcases
06-22-19061,037Piraeus & Constbaskets
02-14-19071Constcases
06-20-19074Port Said & Constcases
08-01-19072Const and Rhodoscases
09-25-19075Constcases

After conducting a new query that looked at just tobacco exports from the Export Manifests feature, I was able to gather a much wider time series, as follows.

DateAmountDestination
1905-01-1381Syria
1905-03-0310Port Said/Syria
1905-04-251Malta
1905-04-27365Port Said/Syria
1905-06-1292Port Said/Syria
1905-07-0578Port Said/Syria
1905-07-105Malta/Liverpool
1905-08-04115Port Said/Mersina
1905-08-1664Mersina
1905-08-23661Port Said/Syria
1905-09-29186Syria
1905-11-0240Port Said/Syria
1905-11-30125Syria
1905-12-0110Rotterdam/Hamburg
1905-12-1453Marseilles
1905-12-1814Syria
1905-12-289Syria/Const
1906-01-0544Port Said/Syria
1906-01-08291Syria
1906-01-1010Crete
1906-01-2517Malta/Hamburg
1906-01-2520Syria/Const
1906-01-29176Syria/Odessa
1906-01-2920Bremen/Rotterdam
1906-02-05316Port Said/Syria
1906-02-2162Syria
1906-03-0240Syria
1906-03-1230Malta/Hamburg
1906-03-1410Port Said/Syria
1906-03-2217Not specified
1906-03-2856Piraeus/Const
1906-03-28100Const
1906-04-1110Syria
1906-04-1923Syria
1906-05-177Crete
1906-05-1759Syria
1906-06-028Syria
1906-06-08118Syria
1906-07-1732Brindisi and Trieste
1906-08-02281Syria
1906-08-296London
1906-08-3154Port Said/Syria
1906-10-1295Malta/Hamburg
1906-10-1219Syria
1906-10-25165Syria
1906-11-12400Syria
1906-11-152London
1906-11-16106Syria
1906-12-1255Piraeus/Odessa
2906-12-2149Syria
1906-12-31120Syria/Const
1907-01-2912Syria
1907-01-3110Port Said
1907-02-2615Malta/Liverpool
1907-02-2828Marseilles
1907-05-0247Syria
1907-05-291Port Said
1907-06-1414Marseilles
1907-06-2030Port Said/Const
1907-06-2613Marseilles
1907-07-0810Crete
1907-07-15305Malta/Liverpool
1907-07-1629Syria
1907-07-18213Syria
1907-07-2425Syria
1907-09-1631London
1907-09-1821Crete
1907-09-2526Const
1907-11-2010London
1907-11-2021Const
1907-12-0955Port Said
1907-12-2422Piraeus/Odessa
1908-01-2830Port Said

This new time series will allow me to try to examine trends in tobacco exports by data and by the final destination of the exports.

Data Visualization

The results from my initial query were hard to analyze, again, due to a lack of data. When used to visualize changes in exports, it is not possible to draw any conclusions.

1

2

The results from the new query provide a better picture of what tobacco exports looked like from January 1905 to January 1908.

3

4

These two charts show the amount of tobacco export over time (Chart 1) and the density of tobacco exports by final location (Chart 2).

Another avenue of research that required further research was the quantity of cigarettes exported to Germany. The Shechter paper mentions Germany specifically as a top imported of Egyptian luxury cigarettes but does not provide any details further than noting that exports to Germany “dropped sharply after 1905 as a result of new tariff barriers” and that Germany was a “significant importer until 1914” (Shechter).

Conclusion

Even after expanding the query to all available tobacco exports, it is still difficult to draw any conclusions regarding export patterns. There’s no clear trend as far as destination city or seasonal trends in where the tobacco is exported to. Furthermore, it was not possible to expand my query in this way by looking at cigarette exports because there were so many results; however, there were fewer entries under tobacco making it possible to extrapolate the numbers manually.

Works Cited

Shechter, R. (2003). “Selling Luxury: The Rise of the Egyptian Cigarette and the Transformation of the Egyptian Tobacco Market, 1850-1914”. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 35(1), 51–75.

Faith Jankowski
Faith Jankowski
Student

The author, a student at Florida State University, was enrolled in the digital microhistory lab in fall 2021.