A History of the Middle East

by Peter Mansfield

  As Egyptian national feelings hardened, so too did those of the British and French governments and their representatives in Egypt. The latter reported that the country was dissolving into anarchy, although this was far from being the case – Egypt was effervescent but not in chaos. Members of the British cabinet, preoccupied by a state of near rebellion in Ireland, convinced themselves that native Egyptians were incapable of governing themselves – only the Ottoman Turks were considered a natural governing race – and that vital British interests were at stake. Even Gladstone – anti-imperialist and notoriously anti-Turk – accepted this view. Later he told the House of Commons, ‘It has been charitably believed, even in this country, that the military party was the popular party, was struggling for the liberties of Egypt. There is not the smallest rag or shred of evidence to support that contention.’ This blatant untruth was an apparent attempt to satisfy his conscience.

  Still hoping for Turkish intervention, although under Anglo-French supervision, Britain and France sent a powerful joint naval force which stood off Alexandria. Shortly afterwards an event took place which seemed to justify all the fears of the alarmists: a major riot in Alexandria left several hundred killed or injured, including some fifty Europeans. Relations between Europeans and Egyptians had certainly deteriorated as the oratory of Muslim shaikhs whipped up national feeling and every European came under suspicion of hoping for a European invasion, but that the riot had been instigated by the military, as European officials on the spot at first claimed, was highly improbable if only because it would have provided justification for European occupation. In fact the rioting started with a brawl and then spread, but it was the presence of the Anglo-French squadron which inflamed the situation. The action of the interventionists was self-justifying. Fearful Europeans evacuated Alexandria in thousands.

  The attitude of the British government was now harder than that of the French. British suspicions that De Freycinet was planning a secret deal with Arabi were confirmed when the French premier refused a British proposal for Anglo-French protection of the Suez Canal on the ground that the only danger to the Canal came from outside intervention. When, on 19 July 1882, the British admiral issued an ultimatum to Arabi that Alexandria would be bombarded unless he dismantled the fortifications he was erecting around the city, De Freycinet withdrew the French fleet. A joint Anglo-French invasion of Egypt no longer remained a possibility.

  The cabinet council, presided over by the khedive and attended by the sultan’s representative, decided it would be dishonourable not to reject the ultimatum. Both Tewfik and Abdul Hamid were still uncertain whether Arabi’s forces could resist and were hedging their bets. The British fleet bombarded Alexandria for ten hours, destroying all the forts and part of the city. Arabi evacuated his forces, leaving Alexandria in flames.

  Sultan Abdul Hamid at last accepted the principle of sending Turkish troops to restore order, but he still prevaricated as he bargained with the British ambassador about the terms under which he would intervene. As he had not abandoned all hope of appearing to the Egyptians as their protector against the infidel, he failed to declare Arabi a rebel. Arabi still enjoyed popular support in the country and was maintaining a reasonable degree of order and security.

  Meanwhile the mood in Britain was becoming increasingly jingoistic. Gladstone and some of the cabinet were still against invasion, fearing the consequences. France and the other European powers were not unhappy with the bombardment of Alexandria but they were totally opposed to any unilateral British occupation of Egypt. In the end the imperialists in the cabinet, supported by the British public, prevailed. Gladstone’s request for funds for an expeditionary force was overwhelmingly endorsed by the House of Commons. He justified his action by claiming that Arabi and his followers were anti-Christian militarists who cared nothing for the liberties of the people. The insecurity of the Suez Canal was only a symptom, for ‘the seat of the disease is in the interior of Egypt, in its disturbed and its anarchical condition.’

  Arabi was no great military leader and he was dilatory in manning Egypt’s defences – partly because he still believed that Britain would come to terms. Also he honestly believed that Britain would respect the neutrality of the Suez Canal, and he accepted the urgent appeals of the aged de Lesseps that he should do the same. He failed to cover his eastern flank. British warships appeared at Port Said and Suez and closed the Canal. Arabi’s 10,000 regular troops and a rabble of hastily recruited fellahin were no match for the 30,000 troops of the British expeditionary force. At the battle of Tel el-Kebir, on 13 September 1882, the Egyptians were surprised and routed. Ten thousand Egyptians were lost, compared with the fifty-seven British dead and twenty-two missing. The British commander wrote in his official report on the battle, ‘I do not believe that in any previous period of our military history have the British Infantry distinguished itself more than upon this occasion.’

  British troops occupied Cairo. Arabi and his associates surrendered, and the khedive’s authority was formally restored as the council of ministers made submission. In a laconic decree, Tewfik announced that the Egyptian army had been disbanded. But it was not possible to return to the previous status quo; for all his failings, Arabi had permanently changed Egypt through his unsuccessful movement. For the first time, a subject oriental people had attempted to throw off the domination of a privileged minority to establish its own form of constitutional representative government in defiance of the European powers. As one of his admirers, General Gordon, remarked, ‘He will live for centuries; they will never be “your obedient servants” again.’

  The fact that most of Arabi’s former political allies now deserted to the khedive could not disguise the reality that the khedive was now a British puppet. The national party had been destroyed, but his real authority had gone with it. He was not even allowed to shoot Arabi without trial as a rebel: Britain insisted that the colonel should have a fair trial, and his costs were paid for by liberal-minded British sympathizers. (He was eventually sentenced to exile in Ceylon, where he spent eighteen years.)

  Britain now faced a dilemma. Despite dark French and Ottoman suspicions that it had always intended to seize control of the Suez Canal and the Lower Nile, Britain knew that the acquisition of Egypt and its incorporation into the empire was out of the question. For one thing it would almost certainly have provoked a European war for which the British government, with its small army and its continued preoccupation with Irish affairs, was quite unprepared. A month after Tel el-Kebir, in response to a question in the House of Commons as to whether Britain contemplated an indefinite occupation of Egypt, Gladstone replied, ‘Undoubtedly, of all things in the world, that is a thing which we are not going to do.’ On the other hand, immediate evacuation was also out of the question, as the puppet khedive’s regime could hardly have survived and vital British interests were at stake. The Gladstone government sent Lord Dufferin, a sophisticated statesman (a former governor-general of Canada and a future viceroy of India), to Cairo to recommend a solution. He roundly concluded that ‘The Valley of the Nile could not be administered from London as it would arouse the permanent hatred and suspicion of the Egyptians.’ He rejected both direct rule as in the colonies and indirect rule through a British resident as in the princely states of India. But Dufferin’s own well-intentioned solution was vague: it was a matter of persuading the Egyptians that all Britain wanted was to help them to govern themselves ‘under the uncompromising aegis of British friendship’.

  In the end the Egyptians got neither direct nor indirect rule but a unique and curious hybrid. Egypt was not incorporated into the empire but it became the most important link in Britain’s imperial system – a situation which lasted until the Second World War. British power in Egypt was overwhelming, but it always had to be exercised with apparent restraint. For one thing the other European powers, led by France, were bitterly jealous of Britain’s control of the Nile and the Canal and retained important rights. Anglo-French dual control was a
bolished but the Caisse of Public Debt, the Capitulations and the international status of the Canal remained.

  The person chosen to manage this unprecedented type of relationship between two countries was Evelyn Baring, who had returned to India after his first service in Egypt on the Caisse but was now brought back with the misleadingly modest title of British agent and consul-general in Egypt. Despite his unusual position, Baring – later Lord Cromer – was to become the archetype of the British imperial proconsul at the zenith of the empire. He was upright and dedicated, if quietly arrogant (being nicknamed ‘over-Baring’). His genuine sympathies for the Egyptians – especially the fellahin – were always patronizing. In his twenty-four years as the real ruler of Egypt, he never learned any Arabic (leaving that to his oriental secretary). He had no love for Egyptian nationalists who believed that their people were capable of governing themselves. He acquired extraordinary influence in London – British foreign secretaries came and went, but Cromer remained.

  When Cromer (as he will now be called) arrived in 1883, he believed he could set up a stable regime with British advisers which would make it possible for British troops to be withdrawn – provided the British government could end all interference by other European powers. But this was quite impractical, as he soon realized. Moreover, Egypt was under serious military threat from the south. Muhammad Ali’s quasi-empire in the Sudan had remained under Turco-Egyptian rule for some sixty years until in 1881 it was destroyed by a rebellion under the inspired politico-religious leadership of Muhammad ibn Abdullah – ‘the Mahdi’. Egyptian garrisons were overwhelmed and then in the spring of 1883, just as Cromer was arriving in Egypt, an entire Sudanese-Egyptian force led by British officers was wiped out by the Mahdi’s troops. Egypt itself was under threat.

  The Gladstone government was now fully aware of what it had taken on in Egypt. Britain had not only to stabilize the regime but also to protect it. There was no question of recovering the Sudan from the Mahdi with the forces available so, with Cromer’s approval, an evacuation policy was forced on the reluctant khedive and his ministers. Cromer did not, however, approve of the government’s decision to send the eccentric General Gordon to oversee the orderly evacuation of the remaining scattered Egyptian garrisons. This had huge public support in Britain – Gordon was a popular hero who had served in various parts of the empire as well as acting as governor-general of Sudan in the time of Ismail, vainly attempting to put down the slave trade. ‘Chauvinists and humanitarians’, in Cromer’s words, now combined to pursue a more forward Sudanese policy. As Cromer had suspected, when Gordon was appointed, rather than carrying out the evacuation policy, he stayed on in beleaguered Khartoum in the belief that he could come to terms with the Mahdi and end his rebellion. A relief expedition from Egypt failed to reach him in time, and in January 1885 Khartoum was overwhelmed by the Mahdist forces and Gordon was speared to death on the steps of Government House.

  The Mahdi himself died during the siege, but Sudan now came under the rule of his successor, the Khalifa, for thirteen years until it was slowly and painfully recaptured by an Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener.

  The Sudanese question was now temporarily shelved. The Mahdist forces were unable to penetrate Upper Egypt, as had been feared. The British troops in Egypt, who had begun to reorganize the Egyptian army, were capable of seeing to the country’s defence, but there could be no question of their immediate withdrawal. However, the British government – now led by the cool and calculating Tory Lord Salisbury – was still prepared to try to reach an agreement with the sultan and the European powers which would allow a British evacuation within a few years provided Britain’s interests were safeguarded. Salisbury sent Sir Drummond Wolff as his representative to Istanbul to negotiate with the Sultan, and Wolff and the sultan’s envoy went to Egypt to arrange a settlement which would allow the British troops to withdraw from Egypt ‘in a convenient period’. But the other powers, led by France and Russia, were bitterly opposed to Salisbury’s insistence that Britain should have the right to return to Egypt whenever it pleased. As Sultan Abdul Hamid characteristically prevaricated, Salisbury’s attitude hardened. While he continued to give priority to the maintenance of a European balance of power, he foresaw the coming scramble for Africa and also Egypt’s crucial importance as both the gateway to India and the outlet of the Nile. While he had not abandoned the belief he had inherited from Disraeli that the survival of the Ottoman Empire was the best protection against Russian encroachment in the eastern Mediterranean, he was beginning to look on it as fatally diseased and to consider Egypt as a substitute.

  In May 1887 Wolff and the Turkish envoys provided for the evacuation of the British garrison, leaving Egypt a neutral territory. However, Article 5 of the draft Anglo-Turkish Convention stipulated that British troops would not withdraw ‘if there was any appearance of danger in the interior or without’. Abdul Hamid was faced with a dilemma. If he ratified the Convention it would set a precedent for other powers to occupy parts of his empire and then claim the right of re-entry before leaving. If he refused to ratify it he would in effect be abandoning even his nominal suzerainty over Egypt. In the event he decided to reject the Convention, and the most important part of the Arab world was lost to his empire.

  Cromer was delighted with the sultan’s decision – he felt he had managed to obtain a grip on Egyptian affairs and was restoring the country to solvency. As he characteristically wrote in his retirement, ‘All history was there to prove that when once a civilized Power lays its hand on a weak State in a barbarous or semi-civilized condition, it rarely relaxed its grasp.’ The British occupation of Egypt, which was to last seventy-four years, had happened almost by accident – it was neither planned nor foreseen. However, although Britain periodically affirmed its intention to withdraw (one calculation was that various ministers declared withdrawal to be imminent no fewer than seventy-two times during those years), the British came increasingly to take Egypt for granted. It was not coloured red on the map, but every British schoolboy somehow perceived that it was. It was inconceivable that Britain should give up control of the gateway to its empire in Asia and Africa.

  However, as we have seen, Britain’s control over Egypt was far from absolute. Annexation was out of the question as the European powers, led by France, had made clear that this could lead to war. The Caisse of Public Debt and the Capitulations remained the instruments of international control over Egypt’s finances. It was twenty-two years before the 1904 Entente Cordiale between Britain and France settled a number of outstanding differences between the two colonial powers in Africa and Asia (and also prepared the way for the Anglo-French alliance against Germany in the First World War). In particular, the Entente provided that Britain would renounce its rights and interests in Morocco (preparing the way for France’s occupation of Morocco a few years later) while the French did the same for Egypt, accepting that no time-limit should be fixed for the British occupation. The Caisse of Public Debt was not abolished but its authority was much reduced.

  Lord Milner, another great British imperial proconsul, called British rule in Egypt ‘the Veiled Protectorate’ – a system by which Cromer ruled from behind a screen provided by the khedive and his cabinet, whose members all had British advisers in their ministries. There were two main strands to Cromer’s thinking: in politics he was an arch-imperialist, and in financial and economic matters he was a Gladstonian laissez-faire liberal. Fortunately, in Egypt the two ideologies were easy to combine. He had no belief that the Egyptians were capable of governing themselves, or ever would be. To use one of his own favourite phrases, they were a natural ‘subject race’, in contrast to the supreme Anglo-Saxon example of a ‘governing race’. The Turkish aristocracy had the remnants of a capacity to rule, but its members were hopelessly decadent and corrupt. Like many of his colleagues, he had a patronizing affection for the hard-pressed fellahin, but he saw no point in training them to manage their own affairs – money spent on their educati
on above the very lowest level was a dangerous waste. He had no doubt that Egypt would benefit from the europeanization of every aspect of life, although he realized with regret that this was impossible.

  Egypt’s commitments to repay Ismail’s debts absorbed more than half its revenues, requiring the utmost financial prudence (which in any case fitted Cromer’s Gladstonian principles). Fortified by his experience in India, Cromer believed in the thesis of John Stuart Mill, which had been adopted by Gladstone, that taxation should be as low as possible, to allow money to ‘fructify’ in the pockets of the producing classes. Accordingly there were no tax increases (the public could hardly have borne them) with the significant exception that, on the free-trade principle, countervailing duties were imposed on the products of Egyptian industries to equalize their prices with those of foreign imports. This virtually wiped out the Egyptian tobacco industry.

  Slowly and painfully the economy recovered, and by the 1890s the budgets were showing small surpluses. The mainstay of the recovery was the increase in the output of agricultural crops – principally cotton, but also cereals, beans and rice. This was greatly assisted by one of the only kind of public works that Cromer was prepared to countenance – irrigation. British engineers, most of them with previous experience in India, set about repairing the great Delta barrages and canals built under Muhammad Ali and Ismail and expanding the system. Their crowning achievement was the building of a new dam at Aswan in Upper Egypt. Completed in 1902 and raised further in 1907 and 1912, this saved vast quantities of water by evening out the flow of the Nile between the autumn flood season and the rest of the year.

  Unable to reduce taxes, as they would have wished, Cromer and his advisers set about improving the lot of the fellahin by replacing the corvée with paid labour and preventing the use of the kurbaj. This was gradually achieved during the first decade of British rule.