ARTICLE Usurpers of Technology: Train Robbery and Theft in Egypt, 1876–1904 Xiaoyue Li History Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Corresponding author. Email: yasinli@umich.edu Abstract This article examines banditry, embezzlement, and other insider crimes along Egyptian railway lines during a period when British officials exerted centralized control over the Egyptian railway and financial austerity had a negative impact on the rail sector. Byexploring the motives and tactics of railway crimes, I posit that crim- inals, by making claims on and use of the technology outside the purview of state regulations, expressed their heterogeneous desires to redistribute social wealth, repurpose the technological promise of modern railways, and confound intentions of colonial governance. Using new archival materials, this article utilizes a bottom- up approach to examine grassroots activism, everyday knowledge, informal networks, and the social mores and norms that criminals harnessed to discern infrastructural vulnerabilities and elude surveillance from the colonial state. Ultimately, I contend that criminal acts uncovered social crises otherwise hidden under the shadow of the exterior prosperity and stability of late 19th-century Egypt. Keywords: colonialism; bandits; Egypt; infrastructure; railways In April 1893, immediately after the establishment of the Railway Police (Bulis al-Sikka al-Hadidiyya) under the Ministry of Interior (Diwan al-Dakhiliyya), the new department conducted a survey of local station ghaffirs (guards) that intended to inspect the rampant crime along Egyptian railway lines. 1 On 18 May, Bimbashi (equivalent to Lieutenant Colonel) E. Marten, the first commandant of the Railway Police, presented a summary of this inspection to the Egyptian Railway Administration (Administration des chemins de fer, des télégraphes et du port d’Alexandrie, henceforth ERA). Marten described in-transit cargo theft as the “chief class of crime on the railway.” 2 In search of a reason, he blamed the Egyptian police for being a parochial, shorthanded, under-skilled, and badly organized force, and more often than not an institution that cooperated with criminal activities rather than prevent- ing them. 3 Marten’s assertion that the rampant crime was a result of an inadequate police force resonated with the accounts of Lord Cromer (Evelyn Baring), the British consul-general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907. With his stated goal of “a well-established reign of law,” the viceroy expressed his disappointment in the ineptitude of law enforcement in Egypt, noting that the “law [did] not inspire sufficient terror to evildoers.” 4 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press 1 The Arabic word ghafīr is rooted in the verb ghafar, “to watch, to guard.” In the Egyptian context, it denotes a wide range of security personnel outside the government police system. In this article, ghaffirs vary from railway staff responsible for public safety to privately hired security guards, or young male sentries at the service of village shaykhs. As I use the term, ghaffirs were decentralized forces who protected the train’s safety in stations and villages, supplementing the modern centralized police force (shurt  ā or d  ābit  ) that was becoming widespread during the late 19th century. For British reform of the ghaffir system in Egypt, see Harold H. Tollefson, Policing Islam: The British Occupation of Egypt and the Anglo-Egyptian Struggle over Control of the Police, 1882–1914 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 29–32; and ʿAbd al-Wahab Bakr, al-Bulis al-Misri: Madkhal li-Tarikh al-Idara al-Misriyya, vol. 1 (Cairo: Dar al-Kutub wa-l-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya, 2016), 311–12. 2 Diwan al-Dakhiliyya (Ministry of Interior; hereafter DD) collection, Dar al-Wathaʾiq al-Qawmiyya (National Archives of Egypt, Cairo; hereafter DWQ) [2001-024969], October 1892–November 1893. 3 Ibid. 4 Evelyn Baring, Modern Egypt (London: Macmillan, 1911), 870–71. International Journal of Middle East Studies (2021), 53, 195–212 doi:10.1017/S0020743820001221 use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743820001221 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Univ of Michigan Law Library, on 16 Jul 2021 at 14:25:30, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of