Egypt

THE MODERN HISTORY of Egypt dates from September 13, 1882, when the British army under General Sir Garnet Wolseley defeated an Egyptian force under Colonel Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir. Great Britain had been keenly interested in the fate of Egypt since it had purchased the controlling interest in the Suez Canal [Page 623]under Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in November 1875. The canal provided the shortest maritime route to India, which had formally become part of the British Empire after the defeat of the Indian Mutiny of 1858. When Arabi roused extreme nationalists against foreigners and undermined the role of the modernizing Khedive Tewfik, the British forces were sent in to restore order. As M.J. Williams wrote in Victorian Military Campaigns, after Tel-el-Kebir, the Egyptian forces either “disarmed or simply demobilized themselves.” In fact, as Lord Kinross had written in Between Two Seas: The Creation of the Suez Canal, “Disraeli's purchase of the canal shares was generally assumed to be a prelude to some form of British control over Egypt.” Evelyn Baring, the future Lord Cromer, came to rule Egypt in what would be called the “Veiled Protectorate.” Rather [Page 624]than depose the khedive (ruler) and govern directly, as was the case in India, Baring established the model of the British proconsul remaining in the background and allowing the khedive to actually rule.

The right in Egypt's modern history has been especially active in pursuing nationalistic goals, whether trying to oust the British or fomenting Islamic extremism to topple the secular government and replace it with a theocracy.

No sooner had the British become de facto rulers of Egypt than they became embroiled in a massive revolt in Egypt's southern colony of the Sudan, which Mohammed Ali had seized in 1820. The Sudan erupted in the first modern Islamic extremist revolt under Mohammed Ahmed, the Mahdi, “the Expected One” of Allah, when the Egyptian army under General William Hicks was annihilated at El Obeid in November 1883. An effort to evacuate Egyptians and British from the Sudanese capital of Khartoum ended in disaster. It would not be until September 1898 that Anglo-Egyptian forces under Sir Horatio Kitchener would free the Sudanese from the benighted Mahdist regime. The Mahdi's successor, Khalifa Abdullah, would be killed in 1899.

During the first years of British rule in Egypt, the main problem was to control what was called “brigandage,” the widespread epidemic of criminal gangs in the country. While reforming the Egyptian system of justice, much effort was applied to abolishing the use of torture, specifically flogging, to gain information from suspects in criminal cases. However, although Lord Cromer attempted to end the practice of baksheesh, or “bribes” for government bureaucracy officials, baksheesh may still continue to the present day. At the same time, the British attempted to reform the educational system in Egypt and contributed greatly to the country through projects like the first Aswan dam on the Nile River.