Arabs (24 page)

With the exception of France’s violent imperial war in Algeria, the European powers abided by their commitment to preserve the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire from the 1840 London Convention for the Pacification of the Levant to the 1878 Treaty of Berlin. The formal colonization of North Africa resumed in 1881 with the French occupation of Tunisia.

Much had changed between 1840 and 1881—in Europe and the Ottoman Empire alike—as a powerful new idea from Europe took root: nationalism. A product of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, nationalism spread across Europe at a
variable rate during the nineteenth century. Greece was an early convert, achieving its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830 after a decade of war. Other European states, such as Germany and Italy, took shape over decades due to nationalist-inspired unification movements, and only emerged into the community of nations in their modern form in the early 1870s. The Austro-Hungarian Empire began to face growing nationalist challenges from within, and it was only a matter of time until the Ottoman Empire’s territories in Eastern Europe followed suit.

The Balkan nations—Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Macedonia—began to seek their independence from the Ottomans in the 1830s. The European powers grew increasingly supportive of Ottoman Christians seeking to free themselves from the Turkish “yoke.” Politicians in Britain and France tabled motions in support of Balkan nationalist movements. The Russian government gave full support to Orthodox Christians and fellow Slavs across the Balkans. The Austrians hoped to benefit from secessionist movements in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Montenegro to extend their territory at the Ottomans’ expense (and in the process integrated the very nationalist movements that by 1914 would lead to their downfall and set off a world war).

This outside support emboldened Balkan nationalists in their struggle with the Ottoman state. A major revolt broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1875. The following year, Bulgarian nationalists launched an uprising against the Ottomans. The Bulgarian conflict ravaged the countryside, as Christian and Muslim villages were caught up in the violence between nationalist fighters and Ottoman soldiers. The European newspapers, overlooking the higher casualty figures among Bulgarian Muslims, trumpeted the massacre of Christians as the “Bulgarian horrors.” With the Ottomans pinned down by conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria, Prince Milan of Serbia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in July 1876, and Russia followed suit in support of the Slavic peoples of the Balkans.

Ordinarily, Britain would have intervened at this point. Conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli had long advocated support for the Ottoman Empire as a buffer against Russian ambitions in Continental Europe. However, Disraeli found his hands tied by public opinion. The violence—and the press coverage of the atrocities—discredited his Turcophile policies and left Disraeli vulnerable to the barbs of his Liberal opponent, William Gladstone. In 1876 Gladstone published an influential pamphlet entitled
The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East
. Gladstone’s eloquent tirade condemned the Turks as “the one great anti-human specimen of humanity.” His pamphlet advocated the expulsion of the Ottomans from their European provinces altogether. “Let the Turks now carry away their abuses,” he wrote, “in the only possible manner, namely by carrying off themselves.” Gladstone was more in tune with public opinion that Disraeli, and the British government was forced to abandon its support of Ottoman territorial integrity.

Once the principle of Turkish sovereignty over its provinces was breached, the European powers began to consider the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman efforts at reform had not produced a stable or viable state, its European critics argued. They pointed to the Ottoman bankruptcy of 1875 as further evidence that Turkey was the “Sick Man of Europe.” Better to agree a redistribution of Ottoman lands between the European Powers. Germany proposed the partition of the Ottoman Empire, dividing the Balkans between Austria and Russia, giving Syria to France, and awarding Egypt and key Mediterranean islands to Britain. Aghast, the British quickly proposed an international conference in Istanbul in November 1876, to resolve the Balkan crises and the Russo-Turkish conflict.

Diplomacy bought time, but the belligerent powers were bent on war and the volatile situation provided ample opportunities. Russia declared war again in April 1877 and proceeded to invade the Ottoman Empire from the east and the west simultaneously. Moving quickly into Eastern Anatolia and through the Balkans, the Russians inflicted heavy casualties on the Ottoman defenders. By early 1878 Ottoman defenses crumbled as Russian forces swept through Bulgaria and Thrace and pressed on to Istanbul itself, forcing an unconditional Ottoman surrender to prevent the occupation of their capital city.

Having suffered a total defeat to Russia, the Ottomans had little say over the terms imposed on them by the 1878 Congress of Berlin. The longstanding imperative of preserving the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire was abandoned as the European powers embarked on the first partition of Ottoman territory. In the course of the Berlin peace conference, Bulgaria received autonomy within the Ottoman Empire, whereas Bosnia and Herzegovina, though nominally still Ottoman territory, passed under Austrian occupation. Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro gained outright independence. Russia gained extensive territories in Eastern Anatolia. By these measures the Ottoman Empire was forced to surrender two-fifths of its territory and one-fifth its population (half of them Muslim).
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Unable to prevent the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire, the British were intent on securing their own strategic interests in Ottoman domains before the Congress of Berlin even began. As a maritime power, Britain had long sought a naval base in the Eastern Mediterranean, from which it could oversee the smooth flow of navigation through the Suez Canal. The island of Cyprus would serve this purpose nicely. The beleaguered Ottoman sultan Abdul Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) needed an ally more than he needed the island, and so he concluded a treaty of defensive alliance with Britain in exchange for Cyprus on the eve of the Congress of Berlin.

It was the British claim to Cyprus that extended the partition of Ottoman domains from the Balkans to North Africa. Germany gave its consent to Britain’s acquisition of Cyprus, though both the British and Germans recognized the need to compensate France to restore the balance of power in the Mediterranean. They
agreed to “offer” Tunisia to France to consolidate its empire in North Africa and secure its borders with Algeria. Germany, which had annexed the French province of Alsace-Lorraine after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, was only too happy to give its consent to this gift in the hope of fostering a rapprochement with Paris. Only Italy, with its large settler population and significant investments in Tunisia, raised objections—which the other powers were pleased to overlook, suggesting that Italy might instead take satisfaction in Libya (which, in 1911, it did).

The French had permission to occupy Tunisia but had no grounds to justify a hostile act against the compliant North African state. Since its bankruptcy in 1869, the Tunisian government had cooperated fully with French financial advisors in honoring its external debts. The French government first proposed the establishment of a protectorate over Tunisia in 1879, but its ruler, Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey (r. 1859–1882), politely declined to deliver his country to foreign imperial rule.

To make matters more difficult, French public opinion had turned against colonial ventures. A majority believed that Algeria had come at too high a price to France, and there was little support for extending the French presence in North Africa. Without public support at home or a pretext from abroad, the French government was stymied in its efforts to add Tunisia to its North African empire. Meanwhile, Italy took advantage of every French delay to extend its own presence in Tunisia, where the Italian settler community significantly outweighed the French. It was this Franco-Italian rivalry that ultimately drove the French to action.

The French had to find grounds to justify invading Tunisia. In 1880 a French adventurer defaulted on a concession and was expelled by the Tunisians for his pains. The French consul protested, presenting the bey with an ultimatum demanding compensation for the Frenchman and the punishment of the Tunisian officials responsible for the insolvent Frenchman’s expulsion. It wasn’t an insult on a par with the 1827 “fly-whisk” incident in Algeria, but it was deemed sufficient mistreatment of a French national to warrant the mobilization of an invasion force to redeem national honor. The unreasonably reasonable ruler of Tunisia deprived the French of a pretext for invasion by conceding to all of their outrageous demands. The troops were sent back to their barracks to await a more propitious opportunity to invade Tunisia.

French troops were mustered again in March 1881 when a group of tribesmen were alleged to have crossed into Algeria from Tunisia on a raid. Though the bey offered to pay compensation for damages and to punish the tribesmen, the French insisted on taking action themselves. A French cavalry detachment crossed the Tunisian border and, bypassing the territory of the guilty tribe, made straight for Tunis. It met up with a seaborne invasion force in the Tunisian capital in April 1881. Faced with French invasion forces by land and sea, Muhammad al-Sadiq Bey signed a treaty with the French on May 12, 1881, that effectively severed his ties to the Ottoman Empire and ceded
his sovereignty to France. Tunisia’s experience of reform and bankruptcy had led the country from informal European control to outright imperial domination.

While the French were occupied with integrating Tunisia into their North African empire, trouble was brewing to the east in Egypt. As was noted in the previous chapter, reform and bankruptcy in Egypt had led to European intervention in its finances and governance. Rather than restore stability, the measures undertaken by the European powers had so destabilized Egypt’s internal politics that a powerful opposition movement had emerged to threaten the khedive’s rule. What began as concerted action between Britain and France to reinforce the khedive’s authority ended in Britain’s accidental occupation of Egypt in 1882.

Egypt’s new khedive, Tawfiq Pasha (r. 1879–1892), was caught between the demands of Europe and powerful interest groups within his own society. He came to the vice-regal throne suddenly, when Britain and France prevailed upon the Ottoman sultan to depose his predecessor (and father), Khedive Ismail, for obstructing the work of their financial controllers in Egypt. Tawfiq Pasha thus knew better than to cross the European powers. Yet compliance with British and French demands had exposed him to growing criticism within Egypt. Large landholders and urban elites, chafing under the economic austerity measures imposed to repay Egypt’s foreign debts, grew increasingly outspoken against the khedive’s misrule.

The Egyptian elites enjoyed a political platform in the Assembly of Delegates, the early Egyptian parliament established by Ismail Pasha in 1866. Their representatives in the Assembly began to demand a role in approving the Egyptian budget, increased ministerial responsibility to the Assembly, and a liberal constitution constraining the powers of the khedive. Tawfiq Pasha had neither the power nor the inclination to concede to such demands and, with the support of the European powers, suspended the Assembly in 1879. The landed elites responded by throwing their support behind a growing opposition movement in the Egyptian army.

Egypt’s army had been hard hit by the austerity measures imposed after the country’s bankruptcy—particularly the
Egyptians
in the army. There was a deep divide in the army between the Turkish-speaking elite in the officer corps and the Arabic-speaking native-born Egyptians. The Turkish-speaking officers, known as Turco-Circassians, traced their origins to the Mamluks as a martial class. They had strong ties to the khedive’s household and to the Ottoman society of Istanbul. They held native-born Egyptians in low regard and spoke of them dismissively as peasant soldiers. When Egypt’s financial controllers decreed sharp cut-backs in the size of the Egyptian army, the Turco-Circassian commanders protected their own and imposed
the cuts onto native-born Egyptian ranks. Egyptian officers rallied to their men’s cause and began to mobilize against unfair dismissal. They were led by one of the highest-ranking Egyptian officers, Colonel Ahmad Urabi.

Ahmad Urabi (1841–1911) was one of the first native-born Egyptians to enter the officer corps. Born in a village of the eastern Nile Delta, Urabi left his studies at the mosque university of al-Azhar in 1854 to enter the new military academy opened by Said Pasha. Urabi believed himself no less qualified to be an officer than any Turco-Circassian of his generation. He claimed descent from the family of the Prophet Muhammad on both his mother’s and his father’s side—in Islamic terms, a very illustrious lineage that no Mamluk could match, given their origins as Caucasian Christians converted to Islam as military slaves. A man of talent and ambition, Urabi achieved distinction, and his place in the history books, as a rebel, not as a soldier. Indeed, the revolt that bears his name was the event that precipitated the British occupation of Egypt in 1882.