A History of the Middle East

by Peter Mansfield

  I wanted [he said] to render our rule more sympathetic to the Egyptians in general and to the Mohammadens in particular by preventing the British element riding roughshod over the Egyptians, by putting a check on the annual British invasion of new recruits, by giving great encouragement to the Egyptian official class, and last, but not least, by giving a more national character to the educational system.

  Gorst was trying not to end the British occupation but to make it more acceptable and, by so doing, to subdue the nationalist ferment. To the fury of his British colleagues he set about reducing their powers in favour of the Egyptian mudirs (district officers) and he tried to blow life into the moribund provincial councils to act as the mudirs’ advisers. But Gorst’s principal strategy was to restore the authority of the khedive, which had been emasculated by Cromer. His rapprochement with Abbas allowed the khedive to replace the ministers who had been subservient to Cromer with others more to his liking. But the khedive was no democrat: he shared Gorst’s aim of reducing the influence of the nationalists who challenged his authority. As happens so often, however, the modest degree of liberalization merely fuelled the nationalist demands. Agitation increased, and the press heaped an avalanche of abuse on Egyptian ministers as well as the English occupiers. Gorst found himself restoring the repressive press law of 1881 which Cromer had never found it necessary to use because he despised the native press and regarded it as a useful outlet for young Egypt to let off steam. In the countryside there was an alarming new crime wave which partly reflected the rebellious spirit of the nation. Gorst introduced a Relegation Law allowing suspected brigands to be imprisoned without trial in a new penal colony in the Kharga Oasis.

  In common with not a few of the academically brilliant, Gorst lacked political imagination. His next error, in 1910, was to attempt to extend the Suez Canal Company’s original ninety-nine-year concession, due to expire in 1968, by forty years in return for an annual share of the profits. He persuaded the shadowy general assembly to approve the Company’s offer, but even this gathering of elderly and conservative notables was unable to accept something which so outraged Egyptian public opinion. The Canal Company was already regarded as a foreign ‘state within a state’. Only one assembly member dared to vote in favour of acceptance. Gorst was obliged to let the matter drop.

  Two days later Boutros Ghali, the Coptic grandee whom the khedive had chosen as prime minister, was assassinated by a young Egyptian nationalist. Ghali was unfairly regarded as a British stooge and, as minister of justice, he had presided over the Denshawai trial. When Gorst refused to reprieve him from execution, the assassin became a hero in the streets of Cairo.

  Gorst’s policies appeared to be in ruins, and there was uproar in Britain. Arthur Balfour, leader of the Conservative opposition in the House of Commons, used the occasion to deliver a philosophical address on the general unsuitability of self-government for ‘orientals’. The former US president Theodore Roosevelt, who passed through Egypt on his return from an African hunting-trip, told the British to ‘govern or get out’.

  Although he did lack political flair, the well-intentioned Gorst was also unlucky and he faced the obstructive opposition of most of his British colleagues. His term of office began with a financial collapse and an acute recession. He might have recovered the situation if he had retained his energy and interest, but he was facing an agonizing death from cancer of the spine. In 1911 he had to go.

  In some respects Kitchener, the hero of Omdurman, was the obvious successor. Deprived by the Liberal government of his ambition to become viceroy of India, where he had been commander-in-chief, he was glad to accept what he regarded as the almost equally important post of British agent in Egypt. He was soon entertaining visions of the annexation of Egypt to Britain, with himself as the first viceroy of Egypt and Sudan. He shared the dream of Cecil Rhodes – an Africa coloured red on the map from Cairo to Cape.

  The British government warned that, while order must be restored, there must be no simple replacement of civilian rule by the military. Kitchener’s style was much closer to that of Cromer than that of Gorst. He once again emasculated the role of the khedive, his old opponent. He restored the power of the British advisers and increased their numbers. His personal ascendancy – semi-regal in style – was even greater than that of Cromer, who expressed alarm from his retirement. The protectorate’s veil had virtually been removed.

  With a series of repressive measures, Kitchener succeeded in scattering the nationalists (whose morale had not recovered from Mustafa Kamel’s premature death in 1908), but he did not rely merely on coercion. Like Cromer, he showed sympathy with the fellahin, but he took more practical steps to try to help them, attempting to familiarize himself with their problems in a series of quasi-royal visits to the countryside. He ordered the belated establishment of Egypt’s first Ministry of Agriculture. He tried to tackle the problem of acute overflooding in the Delta by means of drainage, and that of fellahin indebtedness with a new law which made it impossible to recover in the courts any money lent to a fellah who owned less than five feddans (a feddan being about one acre), that is 90 per cent of all fellahin The economics of this measure were doubtful, as it undermined the new Agricultural Bank which had been founded to relieve the fellahin from the grip of the usurers. But it at least temporarily raised the morale of the fellahin, who showed reasonable content with Kitchener’s policies.

  Having pacified the countryside – the Egypt which mattered in the view of both Kitchener and Cromer – he felt he could ignore the despised urban intelligentsia. In 1913 he even felt confident enough to allow some constitutional changes, to satisfy both the Liberal government at home and the moderate nationalists in Egypt. A new partially elected legislative assembly was given some powers over taxation and the right to interrogate ministers. This was a cynical exercise, because Kitchener had no more belief than Cromer or Balfour in the value of representative institutions for orientals, but he felt it would be a useful palliative and that those he dubbed the ‘noisy extremists’ would be excluded. But he was wrong. Saad Zaghloul, now emerging as a truly intransigent nationalist, was elected first vice-president of the new assembly. Zaghloul showed himself a skilled parliamentarian and under his leadership the assembly so criticized and discredited government ministers that they were delighted when the parliamentary session ended. The start of the First World War before the next session was due to begin brought the tentative exercise in constitutional government to an end.

  Kitchener claimed credit for restoring order to Egypt, but later experience shows that he was fortunate and his luck would not have lasted. If it had not been for the war, which gave Britain the excuse to clamp down on political activity, the new nationalist ferment could not easily have been contained.

  When the First World War brought Britain, France and Russia into conflict with Germany and Austro-Hungary, Britain hoped that Turkey would remain neutral and that Egypt could be kept out of the war. Britain’s sole strategic concern was the security of the Suez Canal. When Turkey decided to join the Central Powers – Germany and Austro-Hungary – in November 1914, Egypt’s status became a problem, for it was still nominally part of the Ottoman Empire. There were strong voices in the cabinet (in which Kitchener became minister of war) in favour of annexing Egypt and abolishing the Muhammad Ali dynasty. But the remaining British officials in Egypt demurred at the prospect of direct rule and, at a time when Germany was being accused of tearing up international treaties, the Foreign Office was opposed to breaking the countless undertakings not to annex Egypt.

  The typical British compromise was to declare a protectorate, in December 1914, and simply to remove the figment of Ottoman suzerainty. The pro-Ottoman Khedive Abbas was conveniently on a European tour and was informed that he had abdicated. A replacement was found in his elderly and amiable uncle Hussein Kamel. There were still problems: Hussein Kamel could hardly be given the same title as his new suzerain King George V of England, so a compromise was reached on ‘
Sultan’, to be addressed as ‘Hautesse’ instead of ‘Majesté’. The new sultan died in 1917 and was replaced by his younger brother, Prince Ahmed Fuad. Fuad was not satisfactory, however – although no Anglophobe, he had been educated in Italy, where he lived with his exiled father Khedive Ismail, he spoke little Arabic and he made no attempt to hide his lack of sympathy for Egypt and its problems.

  Still unresolved was the question of whether Egypt had become part of the British Empire and the Egyptians British subjects. Cromer, in retirement, considered that Egypt was now in the empire, but in fact the matter was left in abeyance. The protectorate declaration merely said that all Egyptian subjects ‘will be entitled to receive the protection of His Majesty’s government’. Egypt remained officially neutral, with Britain responsible for its defence, but Egyptians were expected to contribute to the war effort. Egyptian troops helped to defend the Suez Canal against the first and only Turkish attack. Over 20,000 Egyptians served in the camel transport and labour corps in Palestine and in France, and suffered heavy casualties.

  The disadvantage of failing to annex Egypt was that Britain was unable to abolish the Capitulations and all the other international commitments. On the other hand, the fact that Britain never colonized Egypt as France colonized Algeria meant that the eventual Egyptian independence was not bought at the cost of a long and bloody war.

  The British remained ambiguous about the concept of an Egyptian nation – as did many Egyptians, although for different reasons. Cromer had described Egypt as a ‘nondescript country’. Since a ‘true Egyptian’ was indefinable, an ‘Egypt for the Egyptians’ policy was nonsense. When Egypt ever achieved a self-governing body, he said, all the communities should have to have representation, and since the Europeans and Levantines (Italians, Greeks, Maltese etc.) – those whom Cromer called the ‘Brahmins of Egypt’ – contributed by far the most to the country’s wealth, these should be represented out of proportion to their numbers. During the war, these ideas were codified by the British judicial adviser in a proposed constitution which would have given the British advisers and the foreign communities permanent control over all legislation. But by then such ideas were not only insensitive but quite unrealistic. The spirit of Egyptian nationalism, although forced underground during the war, emerged with renewed vigour when the war ended. The existence of an Egyptian nation became undeniable.

  6. Turks and Arabs

  Greek independence followed by the enforced Turkish withdrawal from most of the Balkans during the nineteenth century, caused the centre of gravity of the Ottoman Empire to shift inexorably eastwards. Because the sultan/caliph no longer ruled over millions of Christian Europeans, he was no longer a threat and a challenge to the powers of Europe. But he could aspire to leadership in Asia.

  The shift towards Asia was increased by the loss of control over Arab North Africa, which had already achieved a large degree of independence. Algeria and Tunisia went to the French in 1830 and 1881. The great prize of Egypt, whose al-Azhar mosque/university underpinned the caliph’s spiritual authority, was lost almost unnecessarily to the British in 1882. Tripoli, the last Ottoman foothold on the North African coast, was seized by the Italians in 1912, as Lord Kitchener in Cairo ensured Egypt’s neutrality in the Turkish-Italian war.

  However, Sultan Abdul Hamid still controlled the Arab heartland and the first great centres of Arab/Muslim civilization, from Mecca and Medina to Baghdad, Jerusalem, Damascus and Aleppo. Turkey controlled most of the hinterland of the Arabian peninsula – although the British had a colony in Aden, dominated the waters of the Persian Gulf and were establishing special treaty arrangements with the coastal shaikhdoms. Ironically, the opening of the Suez Canal had made it easier to send troops to re-establish the Ottoman Empire’s hold on Yemen.

  The Ottoman hold over this vast territory, with its plains, mountain ranges and river systems, varied in form and intensity. In many areas hereditary local dynasties, strengthened by their geographical remoteness in mountains and valleys, were allowed substantial autonomy in return for maintaining adequate forces, pacifying the surrounding countryside and collecting taxes. In some cases, as in northern Mesopotamia, they were needed to protect the empire’s frontiers against the rival Persian Empire. In others, as in Mount Lebanon where they were indigenous rather than a Mamluke military caste, they were the most effective rulers because they had the loyalty of their people. But there were also large areas of steppe and desert which were dominated by powerful groups of nomadic tribes, such as the Shammar or Bani Sakhr, who could not be prevented from plundering the traditional trade and pilgrimage routes.

  Life in the great cities was fairly stable and secure, but in the countryside it changed considerably and frequently according to the competence and authority of the local governors. It was into this variegated system that, from 1820 onwards, an attempt was made to introduce the reforms of the Tanzimat in order to centralize and streamline the administration of the state. The overall aim was to modernize and strengthen the empire in the face of the European threat.

  Being based on an ideal rather than on reason, these reforms inevitably had indifferent results. They changed much over fifty years and they also disrupted. Since they introduced modern secular ideas, such as citizenship and universal equality before the law, they were opposed by the powerful religious authorities. They undermined delicate relationships which had stood the test of time between the many minorities which composed the Asian empire. Moreover, the disruption allowed the European powers, which were steadily increasing their economic influence throughout the Levant and Mesopotamia in the nineteenth century, to extend their political influence too. Two processes were therefore at work which were ultimately bound to conflict – Ottoman centralization and European penetration.

  Mount Lebanon, with its large Maronite Christian population, provided the most suitable theatre for European intervention. The local rulers – the Shihabi emirs – had converted from Sunni Islam to become Maronites at the end of the eighteenth century. The outstanding Emir Bashir II played off the Maronite peasantry against the Druze peasantry and allied himself with the Egyptians during the period of Ibrahim Pasha’s rule (1831–40).

  When Ottoman rule was restored, the Shihabi princes were removed and, in the face of open Maronite/Druze conflict, Mount Lebanon was divided by the Ottomans, with strong encouragement from the European powers, into two administrative units – one for the Maronites and one for the Druze. Lebanon had its first government on a confessional basis. But this did not work. For one thing, the Maronites formed a majority in the Druze ‘qaimaqamate’. Moreover, the whole region was in a state of disruption, as the traditional economy disintegrated under the invasion of Western products which began under Ibrahim Pasha.

  The instability and tension increased until civil war broke out in 1860. The Druze landlords of Mount Lebanon wished to curb their Maronite tenants, who were increasing in numbers and wealth, and attacked and massacred them in thousands. This sparked off a wave of persecutions of Christians in other parts of Syria. France, which with varying degrees of encouragement from the Ottoman sultan had long regarded itself as the protector of its Maronite fellow-Catholics, landed troops in Beirut and invaded the Druze stronghold of the Shuf. A conference of European powers which had signed the Treaty of Paris following the Crimean War – which included the Ottoman Empire – met in Beirut to consider how Lebanon should be governed. The conclusion was the creation of the autonomous sanjak or province of Mount Lebanon, with a Christian governor chosen by the sultan from outside Lebanon and assisted by a Maronite-dominated council chosen on a confessional basis. This was to be under the protection of the six powers – Britain, France, Russia, Prussia, Austria and Italy.

  Autonomous Lebanon covered only part of the present-day Lebanese Republic. It excluded Beirut, Tyre and Sidon on the coast and the Bekaa Valley to the east, and it was heavily dominated by the Maronites, who formed 90 per cent of the population. Although it prospered for the next half century, i
ts creation was a first step towards undermining the millet system – the ancient network of communities through which the religious minorities shared in the administration of the empire.

  France was the chief patron of the Roman Catholics in the Arab Levant, and Russia of the Orthodox Christians. Britain was left as protector of the Druze and of the small community of Jews, who formed about 4 per cent of the people of Palestine. The unfortunate Armenians in the heartland of the empire lacked any effective outside patron. There were hardly any Protestant Christians in the empire, but American Protestant missionaries played a crucial role in the penetration of Western cultural influence. The founding in 1866 of the Syrian Protestant College – later the American University of Beirut – helped to stimulate alarmed French Catholics to found the Université Saint-Joseph in 1874. The two institutions would play a leading role in the cultural renaissance of the region.

  In Palestine – the region known to the Christian West as the Holy Land, which in the twentieth century was to be given defined borders – European rivalries were peculiarly intense, as might be expected, but their effects tended to neutralize each other. Arab Christians were a minority, although a substantial one, and intercommunal relations between Muslims, Christians and Jews were generally harmonious. From the ending of Egyptian rule in Syria in 1840, the Ottomans were able to pursue their centralizing reforms of the Tanzimat. These meant reimposition of Turkish military control and the reduction of the powers of the local feudal lords, who had become virtually independent – levying their own taxes and fighting among themselves. The effects of the reforms were generally beneficial. Security improved, the population increased and the economy prospered. Jaffa became a household name in Europe through exports of oranges from the great plantations around it.