DESCRIPCIÓN DE LAS PRINCIPALES CUENTAS COMPONENTES

At a time when Edouard Empain headed a large integrated business group active in rail transport, manufacturing and energy supply, he set himself to an entirely new project: urban development. Between 1905 and 1929, Empain dedicated a great deal of his time and energy to the development of Heliopolis, a new town in the desert near Cairo. He yearly spent several months there for the rest of his life. According to Robert Ilbert, the authority on the history of Heliopolis, it is hard to explain why Empain all of a sudden decided to start an urbanistic project in Egypt. In addition, Heliopolis remained almost

totally isolated from the rest of the business empire.132 _{The following paragraphs argue}

that this is only partly true. Empain ended up as a real estate developer because he wanted to produce and sell electricity in the first place.

130 _{“Forges et Ateliers de la Longueville: Statuts,” no. 1317, AMB, 11 Feb 1920; Forges et ateliers de la Longueville,} 9 Sep 1915, Messager de Paris, 65AQK274, ANMT; “Les bois de Lanières n’appartiennent pas à la Société Krupp,”

Le Matin, 4 Jul 1911.

131 _{Lanthier, “Constructions,” 489-90.}

At the turn of the twentieth century, housing prices in the ever-expanding Egyptian capital were skyrocketing. Many entrepreneurs had transformed into frenetic speculators, as their previous occupation was much less profitable. In some areas, an

unbuild surface was more expensive than a large city palace in Paris.133 _{Land speculators}

primarily bought large plots directly north of Cairo’s old town, because everybody believed that the city was to expand in that direction. A few years later, the speculators hoped to sell the land at a large profit. Many housing projects next to the city center such as Zamalek and Garden City bet on the very same expansion. Other suburbs had been developed further away from Cairo and relied on a railway connection with the capital. In the 1890s Maadi and the spa resort Helwan 15 km more to the south had emerged as

satellite cities along the Nile.134

As the Cairo-Helwan railway was the lifeline of the two suburbs, it drew the attention

of the manager of the group’s Tramways du Caire, who informed Empain in 1904.135 _{By then,}

the group had acquired precious expertise in railroad operation and electricity production and had even tried to electrify long-distance railroads (see Chapter 4 on the Brussels-Antwerp interurban). In Cairo, Empain was considering doing all three things. Firstly, he wanted to build a large power station near Cairo to supply electricity to the entire agglomeration. Secondly, he also intended buying the short Cairo-Helwan and Cairo-Matarieh railroads. He would electrify them and supply them from the new power plant. Thirdly and consequently, the Empain group could offer a faster connection with Cairo to the inhabitants of the suburbs. However, this integrated plan failed as soon as the competitor Delta Light Railways acquired the railway to Helwan before Empain could make an interesting bid. Moreover, the Egyptian State refused to sell the Cairo-Matarieh line.136

If electrifying existing connections to suburbs was not an option anymore, Empain changed his tack. The new concept consisted of constructing an electric railroad to a new town, yet to be developed. However, as opposed to Maadi and Helwan, Heliopolis was much larger and resolutely went against the idea of expansion along the Nile banks. Empain and his local business partner Boghos Nubar Pacha opted for the creation of a garden city in the desert northeast of Cairo. Because no one else was interested and Boghos Nubar had excellent connections, the government sold them 2500 hectares

133 _{Ilbert, Le Caire, 8.}

134 _{James Moore, “Making Cairo modern? Innovation, urban form and the development of suburbia, c. 1880–} 1922,” Urban History 41, no. 1 (2014).

135 _{Meeting of 28 Sep 1903, Tramways du Caire, Minutes of the Board of directors, I 30/5775, ARA2.}

136 _{Maskens (Cairo) to Minister of FA (Brussels), 5 Apr 1905, Egypte: Correspondance Consulat Général (1901-1909),} AFRI447, BMFA.

(tripled to 7500 hectares in 1910) at a ridiculously low price.137 _{While terrains in the most}

distant outskirts of Cairo were sold at 1 £.E. per m², they paid 4200 times less.138

For Empain, the lucrative combination of electrified transport and electricity production remained the main goal. In the early years of the Heliopolis project, he confided to the French ambassador in Cairo that the electric railway was “what interested

him the most.”139 _{It yielded a higher and more stable revenue than real estate}

development. However, Heliopolis quickly surpassed the power station and the railroad. It became a Gesammtkunstwerk in which Empain put his vision and creative urge.

Initially, the plan was to construct a city of leisure for the European tourists and the Cairo elite, as the next section on the Marseille-Alexandria shipping line will also show. Soon, a gigantic hotel, a race court, a Luna Park and an airfield emerged. After the collapse of the Egyptian economy in 1907, the Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oases Company (HOC) shifted the project’s scope to include residential areas for Egyptians of all classes. The housing company especially aimed at middle-class citizens working in Cairo that were looking for an affordable and comfortable place to live. The fares of the electric railway and tramways were kept low to encourage this. By 1914, the city already housed

5000 inhabitants, but the population multiplied to 24,000 at the end of the 1920s.140

So, contrary to the assertion of Ilbert, the origins of Heliopolis were related to the core business of the Empain group. Only, he had the guts to create a demand for electric transportation by developing a town in the desert himself. The development of Heliopolis shows other links with other investments of the group as well. First, the electric railway, completed by two tramway lines, to the new town perfectly fitted in Cairo’s existing tramway network, operated by the Empain group. Secondly, obtaining a government concession and executing public works was Empain’s core business. Of course, the Empain group had never developed a whole city, including selling land plots and organizing urban life. However, in the last twenty years, the business group had gained the experience to construct a power station and grid, streets, sewers, water supply and other infrastructure. Third, the large scale of these (electric) public utilities provided extra work for the general contracting services of the group as well as a lot of orders for ACEC and ACENE. Finally, the pursued strategy did not differ from the general strategy of the group. Heliopolis was an all-encompassing project in itself, showing the group’s vertical

137 _{This was larger than the surface area of Paris}

138 _{Converted to Belgian francs, the price they paid was 0.06 francs/m² as opposed to the normal price of 25 à 30} francs/m². Ilbert, Le Caire, 13.

139 _{For the same reason, he vainly tried to buy the Helwan railroad a second time in 1914. Defrance (Cairo) to} Jonnart (Paris), 24 Jan 1913, Egypte: Établissements de crédit -Chemins de fer - Mines d’or - Sociétés diverses, B-0031291, CAEF.

integration on a micro-scale. Like for Empain’s other public utility companies, the massive investments in infrastructure and housing were meant to pay in the long run. It lasted 10 years before the HOC broke even for the first time. Yet, the long-term profits were secured considering their monopoly on transportation, water and electricity

distribution in a growing city.141