ABSTRACT
Since the defeat of Muhamed Ali and the European Powers' imposition of free trade, the economic system was reoriented from a self-sufficient industrializing economy to mono-culture (cotton) in a classical pattern known as the primary-product export-oriented growth model. Under successive rulers following Muhamed Ali until the British invasion in 1882, the whole economic strategy of Egypt depended on agriculture and the building of the infrastructure necessitated by this type of economic specialization, i.e., irrigation projects, building the railways, the ports, a commercial navy, etc.. Under Ismail, (1863–79) most of the country's modern infrastructure was built by the state in addition to an active urbanization growth.
