During the first half of the twentieth century, the Egyptian Nile Delta was  a crucial site of cotton production for the global economy. Even as the region was disarticulated from the British Empire, it remained a leading cotton supplier for the world market. This talk will explore the links between decolonization, global market dependence, and ideas about agrarian capitalism. It will challenge well-entrenched narratives that equate anti-colonial development efforts with industrialization. Instead, the talk will situate Egyptian nationalist economic thought and postcolonial state formation in a wider set of global dynamics: the volatilities of an interwar world economy and a transnational circulation of ideas that connected agrarian reformers in different parts of the world. In doing so, it will reconsider the politics of decolonization and development during a tumultuous era of global economic crisis and challenges to empire.