Arabs (26 page)

In January 1882, the British and French governments drafted a joint communiqué, known as the Gambetta Note, in a bid to restore the khedive’s authority. One might have expected better from two states that prided themselves on their mastery of diplomacy. The British and French hoped, by giving assurances of “their united efforts” against all internal or external threats to order in Egypt, that they might “avert the dangers to which the Government of the Khedive might be exposed, and which would certainly find England and France united to oppose them.” Nothing could have weakened Tawfiq Pasha’s position more than this poorly-veiled threat to protect the khedive from his own people.

The clumsy Gambetta Note was followed by European demands that Urabi be dismissed from the cabinet. Urabi’s domestic standing was greatly reinforced when the unpopular European Powers sought to bring him down. Tawfiq, in comparison, became even more isolated. Urabi accused Tawfiq Pasha of acting on behalf of European interests and of betraying his own country. The prime minister resigned with most of his cabinet. Under the circumstances, no one was willing to form a new government. Urabi remained in office, which meant that the government was effectively under the control of its most popular and powerful minister. In seeking Urabi’s dismissal, the European powers had unwittingly left him in control of the Egyptian government.

As the situation escalated, Britain and France resorted to gunboat diplomacy; in May 1882, the two powers dispatched a joint naval squadron to Egypt. This show of force left Khedive Tawfiq’s position untenable. On May 31 he left Cairo for Ras al-Tin Palace in Alexandria to be closer to the protection of the British and French ships. Egypt was essentially being ruled by two men: the legally recognized head of state, Khedive Tawfiq, confined to his palace in Alexandria; and the popular leader, Ahmad Urabi, at the head of the acting government in Cairo.

With European warships cruising off the coast, tensions between Egyptians and Europeans exploded into violence in Alexandria on June 11, 1882. What began as a street fight between a British subject and an Egyptian coach driver turned into a riot against foreigners that claimed over fifty lives. Hundreds more were wounded, and thousands were left destitute by the destruction of homes and work places. The European press played up the Alexandria riots as a massacre of Christians and Europeans, putting pressure on the British and French governments to respond forcefully to the breakdown in order in Egypt.

Urabi knew that anti-European riots were likely to provoke the British and French to intervene. He even suspected Khedive Tawfiq of instigating the riots to precipitate foreign intervention, though there is no evidence to support this allegation. Urabi dispatched 12,000 troops to Alexandria to restore order—and to reinforce the city
against the expected European response. Urabi placed Egypt on a war footing, turning to his supporters among the large landholders to ask for peasant recruits to bolster his armed forces. Emergency taxes were levied to provide Urabi’s government with financial resources to withstand a European attack.

Sure enough, the commander of the British fleet, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, issued a series of escalating ultimatums, threatening to bombard Alexandria unless the city’s sea defenses were dismantled. Undaunted, the Egyptian army set about reinforcing the defenses of Alexandria, extending the ramparts on the waterfront and building gun emplacements to face the threat of European ships. With neither the Europeans nor the Egyptians willing to back down, armed conflict was imminent.

The threat of military action had one unforeseen consequence: the withdrawal of the French fleet after months of concerted Anglo-French efforts. The French government was bound by its constitution to obtain the consent of parliament before entering into hostilities with any country. France was still recovering from its terrible defeat to Germany in 1870, the cost of subduing Algeria in 1871, and the expenses associated with the occupation of Tunisia in 1881. The French treasury was overextended, and the Chamber was unwilling to enter into any new foreign entanglements. On July 5 the French government explained its position to the British and withdrew its ships from Alexandria.

Now the British faced a momentous decision: either back down or go it alone. Britain did
not
want to occupy Egypt. A bankrupt state with a discredited ruler and an army in revolt is not an attractive proposition to any imperial power. Moreover, Britain’s presence in Egypt would upset the balance of power in Europe that Whitehall had worked so long to preserve. Even more problematic was the exit strategy: once British troops had entered Egypt, when would they be in a position to withdraw? Given Britain’s objectives of assuring the security of the Suez Canal and repayment of Egypt’s debts to British creditors, the risks of military action seemed to outweigh the benefits.

Backing down, however, was never really an option. Victorian Britain would not have considered itself “Great” had it conceded to rebellious officers in less-developed countries. Admiral Seymour was given the government’s approval, and on July 11 he opened fire on the ramparts and city of Alexandria. By sunset the city was ablaze, and the Egyptian forces were in retreat. A detachment of British soldiers occupied Alexandria on July 14. It was the beginning not just of a war but of a British occupation that would last three-quarters of a century.

 

Between June and September 1882, Ahmad Urabi served both as head of an insurrectionary government and commander in chief of Egypt’s defenses against the British. Urabi enjoyed widespread support in both the cities and countryside for standing up to foreign invaders. While the khedive remained confined to his palace
in Alexandria, many of the princes, attendants, and women of the royal household threw their support behind Urabi and contributed money, grain, and horses for the war effort.
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He continued to enjoy the full support of the landed elites and the urban merchants, as well as of the religious establishment. Urabi’s partisans did all they could to support the coming war, but the professional army was neither large nor confident enough to take on the British, and the peasant volunteers lacked the discipline and training to hold their ground under fire. Even as Urabi’s numbers swelled, his chances remained slim.

The British were surprised by the stiff resistance they encountered from Urabi’s irregular army. Sir Garnet Wolseley reached Alexandria at the height of summer at the head of a 20,000-man campaign force. He marched his troops from Alexandria to seize Cairo, but his progress was checked by Urabi’s Egyptian defenders for five weeks, forcing the British to abandon the effort. Wolseley returned to Alexandria to ship his men to the Suez Canal zone, which the British were able to secure with extensive naval power in early September 1882. While in the canal zone, Wolseley received reinforcements from British India, after which he prepared to march westward toward Cairo. Urabi managed to surprise the British forces before they departed the zone and inflicted heavy casualties on the invaders before withdrawing in the face of superior numbers. The Egyptian forces fell back to a spot in the Eastern Desert halfway between the canal and the delta called Tall al-Kabir, to protect Cairo from invasion. Wolseley’s forces attacked before the Egyptians had the time to lay down proper defenses. The British marched to within 300 yards of Egyptian lines in the predawn hours and surprised the defenders with a bayonet charge at sunrise on September 13. The battle was over within one hour as the exhausted Egyptian troops finally succumbed to superior British forces. The road to Cairo now lay clear before the invading forces.

The insurrectionary government of Ahmad Urabi collapsed with the Egyptian defenses at Tall al-Kabir. Urabi was captured in Cairo two days later. He and his colleagues were tried on charges of treason, found guilty, and had their death sentences commuted to a life in exile on the British colony of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). Khedive Tawfiq was restored to his throne, though he never recovered full sovereignty. With British troops occupying the country and British advisors posted to all levels of government, the real ruler of Egypt was the British Resident, Sir Evelyn Baring (later elevated to the peerage as Lord Cromer).

 

Urabi left behind a mixed legacy. Following the collapse of his movement, many criticized him for having provoked the British occupation of Egypt. Yet there is no denying the broad-based support he had enjoyed when standing up for the rights of native-born Egyptians. Some of his most outspoken supporters were women of the royal household. Urabi’s lawyer, A. M. Broadley, recorded a conversation with one
princess who enthused that they all “secretly sympathised from the first with Arabi [sic], because we knew he sought only the good of the Egyptians.... We saw in Arabi a deliverer, and our enthusiasm for him knew no bounds.”
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Princess Nazli, one of Muhammad ’Ali’s granddaughters, explained Urabi’s appeal in more universal terms:

Urabi spent eighteen years in exile before being allowed to return to his native land by Tawfiq’s successor, Khedive Abbas II (r. 1892–1914), in 1901. Granted a formal pardon by the Egyptian government, he pledged his loyalty to the khedive and forsook all political activity. A new generation of young nationalists hoped to gain his support for their fight against the British occupation, but Urabi kept his promise and stayed out of politics. An elderly man, Urabi wanted to see out his days in his beloved Egypt. His eyes were firmly fixed on the past, not the future. He spent the last decade of his life reading all of the books and newspaper accounts on the Urabi Revolt and dedicated his remaining years to clearing his name of all accusations of wrongdoing.
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He wrote a number of autobiographical essays and circulated them widely to authors in Egypt and abroad.

In spite of his efforts, two charges stained Urabi’s name for decades after his death in 1911: responsibility for provoking the British occupation of Egypt, and treason against the dynasty of Muhammad ‘Ali, the legitimate rulers of Egypt. It was only after a new generation of young Egyptian colonels overthrew the last of Muhammad’Ali’s line in the 1952 revolution that Urabi was rehabilitated and was admitted to the pantheon of Egyptian national heroes.

T
he British occupation provoked upheaval well beyond the frontiers of Egypt. French dismay turned to hostility as they saw their British rivals establish an enduring imperial presence in Egypt, which since Napoleonic times had been an important French client state. The Egyptians had drawn upon French military advisors, sent their largest educational delegations to Paris, and imported French industrial technology; in addition, the Suez Canal was established as a French company. France refused to be reconciled to the loss of Egypt and sought by all means to settle scores with “perfidious Albion.” The French took their revenge by securing strategic territories in Africa, both to restore their imperial glory and to put pressure on British
overseas interests. What ensued came to be known as the “scramble for Africa,” as Britain and France, followed closely by Portugal, Germany, and Italy, painted the map of Africa in their imperial colors.

Between 1882 and 1904, colonial rivalries led to a deep antagonism between Britain and France. The nadir of this competition came in 1898, when the two imperial powers very nearly went to war over rival claims to an isolated stretch of the Nile in Sudan. Neither side could allow the antagonism to fester and threaten open conflict. The only solution was to restore the imperial balance of power in the Mediterranean by conceding territory to France to compensate for Britain’s position in Egypt. Given France’s holdings in Tunisia and Algeria, the obvious solution lay in Morocco.
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The problem was that France wasn’t the only European power with interests in Morocco. The Spanish held colonies on the Mediterranean coast, the British enjoyed significant trade interests, and the Germans were proving increasingly assertive in their own right. There was also the consideration that, after centuries of independent statehood, the Moroccans neither sought nor provoked invasion. The French foreign minister, Théophile Delcassé, set out his strategy in 1902, saying that he was interested “in distinguishing the international question from the French-Moroccan question, and to settle the former separately and successively with each power in order ultimately to enjoy full freedom to settle [with Morocco].”
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Over the next ten years, France haggled with each of the European powers in turn before imposing its rule on Morocco.

The power with the least interest in Morocco was Italy, so Delcassé turned to Rome first, striking a deal in 1902 that recognized Italian interest in Libya in return for Italy’s support of French ambitions in Morocco.