Egypt has historically been a crossroads of sorts between East and West. It has also been a continuous pawn in the geopolitics of the Great Powers (whoever that may have been at the time). This post will cover a mere 106 years of that history - from the invasion of Napoleon during the War of the Second Coalition, to the Entente Cordial at the beginning of the 20th Century. These are the “formative” years that shaped the future of the Middle East.
Setting the stage
The year is 1798. In Europe, England, France and just about anybody else you’d care to name have been at war for 9 years - ever since the Revolution. Although the first Coalition War ended in a muddled draw, a new war - the War of the Second Coalition - has begun. The Directory, under Napoleon’s urging and for reasons that remain obscure, decides the best strategy is to threaten British trade to India by invading Egypt and Syria. France had had significant commercial and trade interests in Egypt throughout the 18th Century. It was time to make it a permanent relationship.
In the Ottoman Empire, weakened by internal revolt, an inept semi-feudal military government, loss of their trade-route monopoly, and two brutal but inconclusive wars with Russia in Central Asia, control over their theoretical vassal state of Egypt is weak. Egyptian governors, appointed by the Sublime Porte, are changed as often as one changes socks - the average tenure during the past century is less than one year. The real power in Egypt lies with the Mameluke amirs. The Mamelukes are neither Egyptian nor Arab, but rather the descendants of military slaves from Georgia, Armenia, and Circassia. Only the fact that they remain generally (albeit idiosyncratically) loyal to the Ottomans, and fiercely antagonistic towards each other, has prevented them from throwing out the Turks and proclaiming an independent Mameluke kingdom. Nonetheless, Egypt has never been stable under the Ottomans almost from the time (1517) the Turks seized the area from the Byzantines. Revolts, uprisings, and even a major civil war have characterized the past 280 years.
Egypt gets noticed
On May 19th, 1798, 400 vessels carrying 55,000 men, 1000 canon and 700 horses set out from Toulon, Genoa, and Civitta Veccia. Among this war material were 150 civilians - engineers, artists, scholars, scientists and technicians. These latter were to prove to produce the most important and long-lasting effects of the campaign. On the night of 30 July, Napoleon’s forces landed at Alexandria, and marched against the city seizing it easily. He then marched his troops overland and assaulted the combined Mameluke armies on July 21 near Shuibrah Khit. Although the Mamelukes were defeated and Napoleon entered Cairo, their armies were not destroyed. The Turkish governor fled to Syria, while the Mameluke general amir Murad Bey fled up the Nile. Napoleon’s troubles weren’t over by a long shot. On August 1, Admiral Lord Nelson led the British Mediterranean Fleet in a surprise attack against the remaining French men-of-war anchored at Abu Qir and annihilated them. After a failed attempt to take Syria, and learning of disastrous defeats in Europe, Napoleon returned to France in August 1799, abandoning the bulk of his army in Egypt. The remnants surrendered to a combined Anglo-Ottoman force in 1801 - neither the first nor the last time Moslem and Christian armies joined together against a common Christian foe.
The most important result of Napoleon’s abortive invasion of the Levant was to bring Egypt once again to the attention of the West. In addition, the publication of the fruits of all those civilians, the now-famous Descriptions de l’Egypte, and the discovery of the Rosetta Stone fired the imaginations of European explorers and adventurers. Moreover, Britain quickly realized the strategic importance of Egypt - long an embarkation/debarkation point for British goods to and from India.
From outpost to Empire . and back
The first British attempt to maintain control of Egypt failed when their forces were defeated by a young Albanian officer - Mohammed Ali - in 1807. Although the Ottomans recognized Ali Pasha as their viceroy in Egypt, the Sublime Porte retained little actual control. One of Ali’s first moves was to modernize the Egyptian Army. His second move was to utterly destroy forever the power of the Mameluke amirs by the simple expedient of having them all murdered and their troops massacred.
In 1831 he broke completely with the Sultan, sending his son Ibrahim at the head of the Egyptian Army to invade Syria. Winning where the French had failed, Ibrahim quickly overran Syria and seemed poised to move on Istanbul itself. After the defeat of an Ottoman army at the Battle of Konja in Turkish Anatolia, the Sultan turned to Russia for help. A short-lived treaty brokered by the Russians granted Ali partial control of Syria, all of the Hejaz, and the Island of Crete. In 1839, Ali again proclaimed his rule over Greater Syria. Once again, the modernized Egyptian Army defeated the Ottoman forces sent against him (at the Battle of Nizib). Once again, he seemed poised to move against Istanbul. This time, however, the Europeans intervened more directly. Britain and Austria (and Prussia, with France protesting), in order to forestall any Russian involvement (Austria has always had an uneasy position near to the Russian European borders, and the Great Game in Asia was in full swing) sent a combined British, Austrian and Ottoman land and naval force to crush Ali. The fleet blockaded Alexandria, and the land armies swept over Syria, seizing Acre (again!) and threatening Cairo. In this case, Christian and Moslem armies allied to defeat another Moslem army.
The end result was the defeat of Ali. As part of the peace, he gave up Crete and agreed to withdraw from Greater Syria. The critical difference, however, was that as a result of the peace treaty, the Europeans guaranteed Ali’s successors hereditary control over Egypt. Think about it - for the first time in Ottoman history, an “Ottoman” governor was able to establish a dynasty in an “Ottoman” state, mostly free from Turkish intervention.
Creeping imperialism
The next page in Egyptian history turns against the backdrop of the European great-power rivalry. British explorers and French and German merchants rushed to exploit the new-found opportunities in the Egyptian desert. One of the first things the British accomplished, with the acquiescence of the pro-British Khedive (Ottoman viceroy) Abbas (Ali’s grandson), was the completion of a land route between Alexandria and the Gulf of Suez, including a railroad and telegraph, greatly facilitating communication - although not bulk cargo transfer - between India and the Mediterranean. This railroad was critical to British efforts to quell the Indian Mutiny (1857).
One very significant non-Egyptian event also occurred during this time that was to have great effect on both Egypt and the Middle East in general: the Crimean War. Nicholas I of Russia, frustrated in his territorial ambitions in Central Asia, looked southwest into the crumbling Ottoman empire. A dispute between France and Russia over the protection of Christian holy places in Palestine erupted into war with the Ottomans when the sultan ruled in favor of France. It was a calculated gamble on the part of the Russians. After all, the seizure of a “few” Ottoman provinces (much of what is now Romania with a bit of Ukraine) was thought by the Tsar to be relatively harmless. Russia had already by treaty been granted the protectorship of the Orthodox Christians in that area for over a hundred years. No big deal. Using the excuse that the Ottomans were unable to protect his fellow co-religionists (protect against
whom is an interesting question), Nicholas I moved troops into the region. He didn’t expect the British to complain, and even if they did he expected his old friends in Austria to support him. Wrong again. France, Britain, Sardinia (?!) and the Ottomans all jumped him. Austria, instead of supporting him, threatened to join the alliance against him. Moslem and Christian armies fighting against Christians supposedly over the protection of other Christians. Russia was defeated. Unfortunately for the Ottomans, the war provided the pretext for the Europeans to assume much broader economic and military powers over the Empire - under the guise of insuring Ottoman sovereignty against external threat! The big losers, once again, were the Ottomans - the Russians suffered only a temporary setback. The most significant result of the war, however, was that the Ottomans, for the first time in their history, borrowed money from French and British banks in order to buy weapons to fight the Russians. This was to prove a never-ending economic death spiral. With interest rates as high as 50%, within twenty years the Ottoman Empire was completely bankrupt - and owned lock, stock and barrel by the French and British.
Meanwhile back in Egypt, Khedive Abbas continued his grandfather’s efforts to modernize the country. Although this put him at cross-purposes to a number of prominent Egyptian factions, he manfully carried on with the support of the British. He coldly spurned several attempts by the French to gain influence, spearheaded by French diplomat and visionary Ferdinand Maria, Viscount de Lesseps. Upon his death and the accession of the pro-French Khedive Said, de Lesseps vision - a trans-Suez canal - was swiftly approved. The British, only moderately alarmed (another one of the great British diplomatic mistakes that were to re-occur repeatedly in the 19th Century), derided the idea as “Lesseps’ Folly”. Financed primarily by French bankers, with the British being only a minority shareholder, the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez was granted a 99 year-lease to operate the canal once opened. Construction began in 1858. Once completed, the canal revolutionized world trade - especially the key British dominated trade route from India. The British quickly realized their mistake, but by then it was relatively too late. Fortunately (for the British), the costs of modernization, the collapse of the cotton market (bolstered by British purchases during the blockade of the Southern Confederacy during the US Civil War), and the collapse of the Ottoman economy had placed the new Khedive (Ismael) in tremendous debt. Seizing the opportunity, the British offered to buy out the Khedive’s shares in the canal. Desperate, the Khedive sold them. The French, much to their chagrin, literally woke up one morning to find that the British had gone from an insignificant minority to majority shareholder overnight. The French had had the canal sold out from under them. However, all was not lost - Ismael requested European “advisors” be provided to help his moribund economy. By 1878, the two main Egyptian creditors, France and Britain, were in complete control of Egypt’s economy. The British became Controller of Revenue, while the French became Controller of Expenditures - in effect the two most powerful figures in the Egyptian government.
Total control
Unfortunately for Ismael, although some success was made in reducing Egypt’s foreign debt (which, after all, was the Europeans’ only interest), the arrangement did nothing for Egypt’s internal economy. With European intervention in their country already being viewed with more than a little suspicion, a rising tide of nationalist sentiment began to appear. When Ismael’s government failed to page its soldiers, the first stirrings of mutiny arose. In April 1878, the Khedive decided to take matters into his own (rather inept) hands. Dismissing both the French and British ministers, Ismael gambled in being able to restore his own sovereignty. He failed. In June 1879, at the behest of European bankers, the Sultan sacked Ismael. Their chosen successor, Ismael’s son Tewfik was to prove an ill choice all around. “Dual Control” was re-established. Everyone (i.e., everyone who counted: the European creditors), was happy. Everyone forgot the “curious incident” of the abortive mutiny back in February 1878, and especially the dynamic fellahin-turned-officer, Colonel Ahmad Arabi who was one of the leaders. This was a costly mistake.
In 1881, Arabi led an officers’ revolt against Tewfik under the pretext of throwing out “Christian and Turkish foreigners”. Tewfik attempted to buy him off with a succession of ministerial and cabinet posts, but was ultimately unsuccessful. The incredibly stupid Joint Note, where France and Britain pledged to “support the Khedive against all disturbance”, following closely on the heels of the French invasion of Tunis, inflamed the nationalists - who took it as a declaration of war. In 1882, that’s literally what it became. Anti-European riots erupted in Cairo and Alexandria. In the latter city, over 50 Europeans were killed by the mob. The British - left to “go it alone” when both the Ottoman sultan and the other European powers refused to intervene - bombarded Alexandria. A British expeditionary force was landed in the canal zone, and at the Battle of Tal-al-Qabr met and destroyed Arabi’s army. Although Prime Minister Gladstone declared he wished to withdraw British forces now that the nationalist threat was extinguished, there was simply no government left to control the country. Worse yet, the British invasion had ignited another war far up the Nile: Mohammed Ahmad, a self-proclaimed
mahdi, or reincarnation of Mohammed, inflamed the Sudanese tribes and led them against the Egyptian garrisons. The British general, Charles George Gordon, hero of the China Wars, and Egyptian-appointed Governor of Equatoriana (i.e., Sudan), was besieged in Khartoum and ultimately fell to the
mahdi’s forces. “Remember Gordon” became a rallying cry for British imperialists just as “Remember the Alamo” became a rallying cry for Americans. Permanent British occupation of Egypt was assured.
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