British Occupation of Egypt
British forces occupied Egypt in September 1882 and stayed for seventy-four years, having said repeatedly that they were leaving shortly. The cause was debt. Ismail Pasha had borrowed enormously in the 1860s and 1870s for the Suez Canal, railways, sugar mills and Cairo's rebuilding, at ruinous rates from European banks, and by 1876 the state was bankrupt. Britain and France imposed a Dual Control over Egyptian finances, took the revenue at source, and had Ismail deposed in 1879 when he resisted. Disraeli had bought his canal shares in 1875 with money borrowed from Rothschild over a weekend. The Egyptian response was a nationalist movement in the army under Colonel Ahmed Urabi, whose slogan was Egypt for the Egyptians and whose grievance was that the officer corps was Turkish and Circassian while the taxes were Egyptian. He forced his way into the cabinet in 1882. Riots in Alexandria in June killed some fifty Europeans. A British fleet bombarded the city in July; the French squadron sailed away rather than take part. Garnet Wolseley landed at Ismailia, marched into the desert, and destroyed Urabi's army at Tel el-Kebir on 13 September in a dawn attack after a night march, in about half an hour. Gladstone's government had opposed the intervention on principle and carried it out anyway, and issued some sixty-six declarations of intent to withdraw. Egypt was made a protectorate in 1914, nominally independent in 1922, and the last troops left the canal zone in 1956. Urabi was tried, sentenced to death and exiled to Ceylon instead.
- Year: 1882 CE
- Category: Military
