Suez 1956, page 5
Cromer’s closest ally in the campaign to persuade opinion in Britain that Egypt was to all intents and purposes part of its imperial system was Alfred Milner, a former journalist who was recruited by Cromer to serve as his director general of accounts. In 1891, Milner published England in Egypt, a book in praise of the British talent for exercising fair and just government over the ‘motley mass’ of Egyptians. Not surprisingly his views did not go down too well with the natives, but political circles in London were favourably impressed. In 1885 Lord Salisbury returned to power, this time at the head of a determinedly pro-empire Tory administration. His trust in Cromer was made clear when, in response to a telegram asking for instructions, he responded with a laconic ‘Do as you like’.13 As Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain took the same line, having declared on returning from a visit to Egypt that Britain had ‘no right to abandon the duty which has been cast upon us’.14
The objective of advancing Egypt to self-rule seemed to recede with every official pronouncement. Instead, the imperial grip tightened. Having rebuilt and retrained the Egyptian army, General Sir Herbert Kitchener was ordered to reconquer the Sudan. It was all done in the name of the khedive, but while, to use Salisbury’s words, the twenty-two-year-old ‘Abbas Hilmi was keen to plant the Egyptian foot further up the Nile’,15 he was well aware that he was acting on behalf of his British overlords. Against a background chorus of ministerial squabbling over the costs of the operation, Kitchener planned meticulously for the advance. Though the dervishes were without modern arms, under the Khalifa’s leadership their fighting spirit demanded respect.
In March 1896, Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian force congregated on the banks of the Nile, where there were steamers to carry them as far as Wadi Halfa. From there, and taking no chances, Kitchener built a railway to take his supply line to within 200 miles of Khartoum. Having accumulated three months of supplies, he advanced towards the dervishes’ camp at Omdurman, near Khartoum. At 5.30 on the morning of 2 September 1898 his 25,000-strong army stood to arms behind stone barricades. Twenty minutes later, the first line of dervishes were spotted as the Khalifa signalled a mass frontal attack. Kitchener waited until his adversaries, the fuzzy-wuzzies, as they were known to the British forces, were within 2,000 yards before opening fire with artillery, Maxim machine guns and Lee-Metfords, the army’s first repeating rifles. When the dervishes fell back the battlefield was strewn with the dead and dying.
The fighting was not quite over. But the battle of Omdurman, in which the Anglo-Egyptian forces suffered fewer than five hundred casualties, was decisive. Among the dervishes, the dead alone were some 11,000. Two days later the British and Egyptian flags were raised over Khartoum and a funeral service was held on the steps where General Gordon was thought to have perished. The Sudan was never fully conquered. As recent events have shown, internecine warfare has continued to frustrate civilised government. But the slaughter of the dervishes extended British influence to the upper Nile and thus to the northern edge of central Africa, where the European nations were carving out their colonial patches. So it was that the Suez Canal made another gain in commercial and strategic value.
Kitchener rounded off his triumph by journeying upriver to confront a French force that had raised the tricolour at Fashoda, in the southern wilds of the Sudan. The dispute was handled in gentlemanly spirit with Kitchener insisting that he was acting on behalf of the khedive, whose territory had been violated by the French. It was not until after the French government had reluctantly decided to give way that the Union Jack was run up alongside the Turco-Egyptian Star and Crescent. As a further acknowledgement of French sensitivity, Fashoda disappeared from the map, the settlement being renamed Kodok. Thereafter, Britain was given a virtually free hand in Egypt and Sudan, a French concession formally recognised by the entente cordiale, which, in return, left France unchallenged by Britain in Morocco.
Victory at Omdurman seemed to confirm the jingoists’ claim that when the natives were restless a tough response would soon restore normality. Possibly for this reason, Cromer ignored the discordant notes that were reported back to him by his officials. It was not hard to find reasons for popular discontent. To start with the most obvious, a healthy economy, for which Cromer was much praised at home, had done little to ease the lot of the fellahin, who struggled to raise large families while paying off debts at exorbitant rates of interest. There was resentment too at the ever growing number of Europeans employed at inflated salaries at state expense in jobs that could quite easily have been filled by Egyptians.
Even those Egyptians who had done well under the Cromer regime found it hard to reconcile themselves to a government that was so clearly alien. Partly it was a matter of religion. Nine-tenths of the population were followers of Islam, whose allegiance, in so far as it lay anywhere outside Egypt, was to the sultan, the Protector of the Faithful. But social distinction played the bigger part in creating disaffection. Having no great opinion of Egyptian capabilities, Cromer was sufficiently aware, or maybe just sufficiently polite, not to broadcast his views in circumstances that would give offence. Those lower in the European pecking order were less inhibited in voicing prejudices as established truths. The typical Egyptian was seen as oily, idle and corrupt. It was an image hardened by the time-honoured custom of baksheesh, mitigating against the performance of any task, however simple, without the appropriate backhander. The Egyptians saw it as fair game; anyway, complaints of financial chicanery came ill from unwelcome guests who carried exploitation to the level of purloining over 70 per cent of the revenues from the Suez Canal.
In the 1890s nationalism grew apace. Khedive Abbas Hilmi, a relatively sophisticated product of the royal line who spoke excellent Turkish, French, German and English, made no secret of his resentment of the British occupation. It was a French-educated lawyer, however, Mustafa Kamel, who caught the popular mood by founding a National Party dedicated to the libertarian and egalitarian ideals of the French Revolution. Localised disturbances – a riot in Alexandria, an attempt to blow up the arsenal at Khartoum, demonstrations supporting Turkish sovereignty – culminated in the Denshawai incident, an event that was as powerful a stimulant to nationalism in Egypt as the 1916 Dublin uprising in Ireland or the Amritsar massacre in India.
The trouble started when a shooting party of English officers killed some birds reared by Denshawai locals. An unfortunate accident, it was later claimed; a deliberate provocation, argued Mustafa Kamel. In a subsequent encounter in the same village, on 13 June 1906, a gun went off, wounding at least one resident, whose neighbours retaliated with a shower of stones. An officer who was sent off to get help was struck on the head and died that same evening from a combination of concussion and sunstroke. It was time for another firm smack of government, decided Cromer. A special tribunal presided over by the minister of justice was set up to try the miscreants. Cromer was en route home for his annual leave when the sentences were handed down – four to hang publicly, eight to be flogged, two to endure penal servitude for life and ten to five terms of imprisonment ranging from one to fifteen years.
In the biggest mistake of his career, Cromer chose to back his deputy, who had confirmed the sentences. His defenders argued that he had no choice, but this was to ignore the obvious let-outs. The khedive, had he been asked, would almost certainly have granted a pardon or recommended less savage punishments. As it was he was furious at having been deliberately bypassed. Cromer could have justified intervention without seeming to retreat before nationalist pressure. It was he, after all, who had approved the abolition of public execution some years earlier and who had led the way in putting an end to the use of the kourbash or heavy whip, the one-time instrument of persuasion common to tax-gatherers and overseers of forced labour. But the law, such as it was, took its course. The reaction in Egypt was to transform nationalism into a mass movement.
In London, Cromer’s old enemy, the Tory anti-imperialist Wilfred Blunt, who had long campaigned for Egypt to be handed back to the Egyptians, took up his pen. In a diatribe translated into Arabic and published in two Cairo newspapers in October, he attacked all things British in the Egyptian administration. But it was Bernard Shaw, already famous for his anti-establishment stance, who did most to quicken the liberal conscience. In his play John Bull’s Other Island, a parody of Anglo-Irish relations, he devoted a preface to the Denshawai Horror, in which he challenged his readers to:
Try to imagine the feelings of an English village if a party of Chinese officers suddenly appeared and began shooting the ducks, the geese, the hens and the turkeys and carried them off, asserting that they were wild birds as everybody in China knew, and that the pretended indignation of the farmers was a cloak for hatred of the Chinese, and perhaps for a plot to overthrow the religion of Confucius and establish the Church of England in its place.16
In the play itself Shaw derided the British character in business and politics, embodying a world where action overrode the emotions and intellect.
After Cromer retired – soon after but not as a result of the Denshawai incident – the heavy hand of British administration in Egypt was relaxed somewhat. There was greater freedom of debate and more opportunities for educated Egyptians to join the civil service. Those imprisoned as a result of the Denshawai trial were released. The concessions came too late to pacify the nationalists, who vented their frustration on Boutros Ghali, the first true-born Egyptian ever to be appointed prime minister, but who also had the less enviable distinction of being the presiding judge at the Denshawai trial. What ended his career, however, was Suez. Having negotiated better terms for his country, Boutros was vilified by the nationalists for agreeing to a forty-year extension to the company’s territorial concession. A single bullet fired by a Muslim fanatic killed Boutros and the Suez agreement.
The assassination brought the inevitable response from London. What was needed in Cairo, it was said in clubland, was a strong man who the Egyptians would respect. Kitchener of Khartoum was admirably fitted to the task – a single-minded, none too imaginative autocrat capable of staring down the mob. It was Cromer all over again, but with the difference that Kitchener had more sympathy for the Egyptian underclass. For his land reforms he was hailed as the ‘Friend of the Fallah’, a rallying cry that served him well on his regal tours of the countryside. Where Kitchener failed, as Cromer had failed before him, was in not giving the Egyptians the chance to run their own affairs. Another influx of Englishmen to fill administrative jobs nurtured resentment, as did their smug, patronising manners and their total inability to realise when they were giving offence.
It did not help that Cairo was seen as a soft posting, one in which a government official of no great distinction might while away his days in genteel pursuits until seniority earned him a decent pension. Lord David Cecil, who was Kitchener’s financial adviser, parodied Colonial Service recruitment with an invented but not untypical letter of application.
Dear Sir – I am fifty years of age, and have never had a profession. It was suggested to me by a friend who lives near me, and whom I see almost every day, that the only cure for the weak health from which I have been suffering for some years would be to go abroad for a long period. He suggested some hot climate would suit me best. I thought of Egypt. Could you give me a post under Government with light duties and a moderate salary? I write a good hand and am a great admirer of Mr Balfour, whose governess’s second cousin married a connection of my wife’s. Awaiting a favourable reply, – Believe me, Yours. PS – I should add that I am slightly deaf.17
In another popular travelogue, With Kitchener in Cairo, the journalist Sydney Moseley explained why the Englishman was disliked. ‘The Land of Paradox’, he found, ‘has become the City of British Snobs. Officialism is there in its element. Petty tyranny, narrow-mindedness, tactlessness, and bumptiousness germinate and thrive.’ Though contemptuous of the half-Turkish upper-class Egyptian, he thought the friendship of the ‘growing Egyptian’ well worth cultivating, but appreciated the barrier imposed by his servile manner. ‘The cringing and abjectness of the native have transformed many responsible Britons in Egypt from masters tolerant towards their inferiors into the kind of tyrant who recalls Egypt’s darkest hour.’18
Cairo was not to everybody’s taste. When Harry Boyle, a devoted Arabist and one of Cromer’s closest aides, first arrived, Cairo was, in his own words, ‘still an Oriental town’.
There was, of course, a considerable European quarter and European houses dotted about, but these were of very little account compared with what they have been for a good many years past. Where now stand ‘Maisons de Rapport’, seven and eight stories high, were then large wooden mansions belonging to the Egyptian or Turkish dignitaries, surrounded by extensive gardens thick with palm trees and flowers. All the streets were lined with acacia trees and dimly lighted at night by occasional oil lamps . . . The native quarters were practically as they had been in the time of the Mamelukes; large tracts within the city were waste land littered with every sort of filth and refuse, and the nightly haunt of prowling thieves and prostitutes. The whole city was teeming with dogs.19
Nonetheless, in the European quarter life was elegant and congenial.
A typical Cairo sun shone over the bevy of stylishly dressed ladies at the Winter Flower Show at the Ghezireh on Saturday, and one’s fancy was perhaps as much taken with their smart summer toilettes as with the dazzling display of roses, though these were undeniably beautiful. The magnificent palms and decorative plants from Prince Hussein’s gardens transformed the central hall into a fit setting for the gorgeous blooms exhibited, among which a charming collection shown by the Countess of Cromer gained a well-merited prize.20
4
With the close of the first decade of the new century, European political thinking was preoccupied with the rise of Germany and the threat of continental war brought on by territorial rivalry. Little attention was given to Egypt and even less to Turkey. Weak and tottering though it was, the Ottoman Empire was assumed to be so dependent on Anglo-French diplomacy to keep it going that the sultan would never dare do anything to compromise his friends in Paris and London. But the oldest allies are not necessarily the most reliable. What passed notice in the Quai d’Orsay and in Whitehall was the assiduous efforts made by Germany to gain favour in Constantinople. As early as 1889 the Kaiser had paid a state visit to the sultan, the first and only Christian monarch to do so, and he came again with even grander ceremony in 1898, the year of Omdurman. Tokens of friendship included the latest German weaponry, along with instructors to modernise the army. Egypt as a factor in Britain’s vulnerability, the concept fostered by Napoleon, was discussed openly by German strategists.
Relations with Turkey were made more problematic after 1909, when a revolutionary movement known as the Young Turks forced the abdication of Abdul Hamid in favour of his brother Reshad (Mehmed V), who was content for the country to be handed over to the ‘unstable rule of ambitious and insecure army officers’.1 Threatened by a resurgence of Turkish nationalism, the Balkan states formerly under Ottoman rule fought to maintain their independence and to eliminate Turkey’s role in Europe. The loss of Christian dependencies was accepted with relative equanimity but religious and cultural affiliations with the Arab provinces put the Middle East in a different category. The Young Turks had visions of a unified Islamic state centred on Istanbul. Germany offered encouragement.
Even so, with rather more attention from Britian a declaration of Turkish neutrality might well have been secured. But as war came closer, British impatience gave an edge to diplomatic requests, making them sound more like demands. The general failure in communication tipped over into crisis when Britain purloined two battleships being built for the Turkish navy on Tyneside. This was on 31 July 1914, four days before Britain responded to the violation of Belgian neutrality by declaring war on Germany. On 2 August, Turkey signed a secret treaty with Germany while proclaiming her intention of avoiding hostilities. The pretence lasted until early November, when Turkey formally joined the war.
The British response was to declare Egypt a British protectorate, a wonderfully ambiguous term implying that a request had been made rather than an order given. The lie was quickly put to any suggestion that Egyptian wishes had been taken into account when Abbas Hilmi, whose Turkish sympathies were well known and who happened to be on a European tour when the war started, was told to extend his travels indefinitely. He was replaced by his uncle, Prince Hussein Kamel, who, in a calculated snub to his former sovereign, was proclaimed Sultan of Egypt. But his power was illusory. Martial law was declared and the citizenry dragooned into supporting the British war effort. Government was in the hands of the senior British military officer and of the consul-general, now known as the high commissioner, who assumed absolute control over foreign affairs.
The first objective – at this stage, the only objective – was the protection of the Suez Canal as an exclusive preserve of Britain and her allies. Though it was in direct contravention of the 1888 Convention, which pledged freedom of navigation, there can be no doubt that Germany had ambitions to occupy the Canal Zone for its own purposes. In January 1915, after the British had been forced out of Gallipoli, a German-led expedition of some twenty thousand Turkish troops crossed the Sinai Desert, intending to launch an attack across the canal on pontoons and rafts. The main blow was struck on the night of 2/3 February, between Tussum and Serapeum, while a secondary attack was launched in the direction of the Ismailia ferry post. The fighting, which began in a heavy sandstorm, continued until the late afternoon. Only three of the craft succeeded in crossing to the west bank.2
