ABSTRACT
In comparing the migration patterns of Egyptians after 1850 with those of the previous period, it is clear that the percentage of immigrant households in the total population declined. In spite of protests by Egyptian merchants who argued that the quest for profit would vitiate the impartiality, honesty, and accessibility of the guild's members, the viceregal government accepted the guild members' demand for individual wages. The Maghribi merchant community in Egypt, with its formerly numerous and influential communities in Cairo and Alexandria, experienced a decline relative to its position in the eighteenth century. The signal fact is that, in the urban ecology of Alexandria, the indigenous folk of Egypt found themselves in direct competition with the immigrants from outside the Nile valley at a time when demographic pressures in Egypt were already driving down incomes.
