The victorians and Africa: A reconsideration of the occupation of egypt, 1882

The Journal of African History

Volumn 27, Issue 2, 1986, Pages 363-391

  Hopkins, A G ^a  

^a NONE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 84974028923     PISSN: 00218537     EISSN: 14695138     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021853700036719     Document Type: Article

References (173)

1. W. A. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and All That (London, 1930), 105.
2. Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 2nd ed., 1981) 476.
3. I have tried to make the extent of my indebtedness clear in the references which follow, but I should also like to express at this point my particular gratitude to Muriel Chamberlain, Bent Hansen, Bruce Johns, and Alexander Scholch for responding so helpfully to my various enquiries.
4. It will be evident that my references are intended to be representative, not comprehensive.
5. E. Dicey, ‘Our route to India’, Nineteenth Century, 1 (1877), 665-86; idem, ‘The future of Egypt’, Ibid. 11 (1877), 3-14; W. E. Gladstone, ‘Aggression on Egypt and freedom in the East’, Ibid. 11 (1877), 149–66.
6. (1981), 6 M. E. Chamberlain, ‘British public opinion and the invasion of Egypt’, Trivium, XVI 21.
7. A. M. Broadly, How We Defended Arabi and His Friends (London, 1884), 3.
8. Leonard Woolf, Empire and Commerce in Africa (London, 1920), 115.
9. The best introduction to Blunt and his circle is Chamberlain, ‘British public opinion ’. See also John V. Crangle, ‘ The British peace movement and the Anglo-Egyptian war of 1882’, Quarterly Review of Historical Studies, xv (1975/6), 139–50.
10. Broadly, How We Defended Arabi, 98–9.
11. Ibid. 99.
12. W. S. Blunt, A Secret History of the British Occupation of Egypt (London, 1907), 211, 214, 241, 294–5.
13. Ibid. 159–60, 214–15.
14. Ibid. 214.
15. Ibid. 310.
16. Ibid. 199.
17. Chamberlain, ‘ British public opinion’, 23.
18. Woolf, Empire and Commerce, 24, 37.
19. The official view was adopted by most British imperial historians from the 1920s and was passed on, in turn, to generalists. See, for example, R. C. K. Ensor, England, 1870-1Q14 (Oxford, 1936), 77–86.
20. Edward Dicey, England and Egypt (London, 1881), 20, 26–28, 68–73.
21. Baring's role is dealt with by R. C. Mowat, ‘ From liberalism to imperialism: Egypt, 1875-87’, Historical Journal, xvi (1973), 110–23.
22. Alfred Milner, England in Egypt (London, 5 th ed., 1894), 15. See also H. S. Deighton, ‘The impact of Egypt on Britain: a study of public opinion’, in P. M. Holt, ed., Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (London, 1968), 247.
23. Milner, England in Egypt, 16. 24 Ibid. 385.
24. Ibid. 416. 26 Ibid. 436.
25. Ibid. 386–7, 391–440.
26. Sir Auckland Colvin, The Making of Modern Egypt (London, 1906), 1.
27. Ibid. 51–2.
28. Ibid. 13–15, 414-15.
29. Deighton, ‘Impact of Egypt’, 247; Chamberlain, ‘British public opinion’, 22.
30. Sir Charles Lucas, The Partition and Colonization of Africa (Oxford, 1922), 121, 105.
31. J. A. Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion (London, 1922), 599–600.
32. A notable exception is William L. Langer's European Alliances and Alignments, i8yi-i8go (New York, 1931), which remains a remarkably fresh and perceptive study. But Langer was an American and he stood outside the increasingly defensive circle of British imperial historians.
33. Lord Cromer, Ancient and Modern Imperialism, 19–20, 25, 27–8, 33, 35.
34. Ibid. 33, 118–19.
35. J. A. Hobson, Democracy After the War (London, 1919), 87, 89–90. I am grateful to Peter Cain for this reference.
36. See, for example, the scholarly treatment of the Tunisian question in ch. 3 of Empire and Commerce.
37. Dicey, England and Egypt, 251.
38. Lord Cromer, Modern Egypt (London, 1908), 1.
39. Lucas, Partition and Colonization, 133.
40. It will be evident from the preceding survey that the historiography of this subject merits much greater attention than it has received here. It would be particularly interesting to compare the literature in French with that in English, to explore the ideas and influence of American critics of British imperialism, and to trace in more detail the process by which the original ‘official view’ of Britain's action in Egypt was recycled, and appeared, much later, as an orthodoxy of modern scholarship.
41. Robinson and Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians (1st ed., London, 1961).
42. 2nd ed. (London, 1981). All references in the present article are to this edition which reprints the original text in an unchanged form and adds to it pp. ix—xxiii and 473–99.
43. No attempt will be made here to discuss the huge literature on this subject. However, in reapproaching Africa and the Victorians, I have found two very different contributions particularly helpful: Quentin Skinner,'“Social meaning” and the explanation of social action, in Patrick Gardiner, ed., The Philosophy of History (Oxford, 1974), 106–26, and William Dray's essay, ‘A controversy over causes: A. J. P. Taylor and the origins of the Second World War’, in his Perspectives on History (London, 1980), 69–96.
44. Robinson and Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians, 11, 20, 466.
45. Ibid. xii.
46. Ibid. 12-14, xxii-xxiii, 499.
47. Ibid. 22.
48. Ibid. 473.
49. Ibid. 465.
50. See also Professor Robinson's ‘Afterthoughts’ in ibid. 477-9.
51. Ibid. 474.
52. Ibid. 467.
53. Ibid. 84.
54. Ibid. 110, 118.
55. Ibid. 83.
56. Ibid. 94.
57. Ibid. 100.
58. Ibid. 105-8.
59. Ibid. 103.
60. Ibid. 122–55.
61. Ibid. 84.
62. Ibid. 94.
63. Ibid. 96–7.
64. Ibid. 119.
65. Ibid. 104.
66. Ibid. 475, 83.
67. Ibid. 86.
68. Ibid. 113.
69. Ibid. 110.
70. Ibid. 3.
71. Ibid. 11.
72. Ibid. 11-12.
73. D. A. Farnie, East and West of Suez: The Suez Canal in History, 1854-1956 (Oxford, 1969), 292. Naval aspects of the bombardment are dealt with by Colin S. White, ‘The bombardment of Alexandria’, Mariner's Mirror, lxvi (1980), 31–52, and Robert L. Robinson, ‘Gunboat diplomacy, 1882: The United States Navy and the bombardment of Alexandria’, Warship International, xix (1982), 47–56.
74. Farnie, East and West of Suez, 293–4, 334, 455; John S. Galbraith and Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation of Egypt: another view’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 9 (1978), 471–3.
75. Farnie, East and West of Suez, 286-7; Alexander Scholch, ‘ The “Menon the Spot” and the English occupation of Egypt in 1882’, Historical Journal, xix (1976), 775–82.
76. East and West of Suez, 294.
77. Ibid. 289, 290; Scholch, ‘The “Men on the Spot”’, 784; Galbraith and al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 483–5.
78. Farnie, East and West of Suez, 299; Alexander Scholch, Egypt for the Egyptians: The Socio-political Crisis in Egypt, 1878–1882 (London, 1981), 300.
79. Farnie, East and West of Suez, 291-2; Scholch, ‘The “Men on the Spot’”, 774, 784; Scholch, Egypt, 224; Galbraith and al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 472–3, 488.
80. Quoted in Galbraith and al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 473.
81. Scholch, Egypt; F. Robert Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 1805-1879: From Household Government to Modern Bureaucracy (Pittsburgh, 1984). Scholch's study was first published in German as Agyptern den Agypten ! Diepolitische undgesellschaftliche Krise denjahren 1878–1881 in Agypten (Zurich and Freiburg, 1972); in the English version the text is unchanged but the footnotes are severely cut.
82. Scholch, Egypt, 65-9; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 208–15.
83. Scholch, Egypt, 136–53, 177; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 255-16.
84. Scholch, Egypt, 143-7; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 228.
85. Scholch, Egypt, 190–2, 224; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 229.
86. Scholch, Egypt, 163–4, 169, 176, 186–8.
87. Scholch, Egypt, 233–4, 250–52. The definitive account is now M. E. Chamberlain, The Alexandria massacre of 11 June 1882 and the British occupation of Egypt, Middle Eastern Studies, XIII (1977), 14-39.
88. Scholch, Egypt, 202–4, 211, 219–20, 224, 233-4; and Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 189, 195–8 (revealing Nubar's influence on Dicey.)
89. Scholch, Egypt, 202–3, 219; also 204, 211, 220, 233–4.
90. See especially, J. W. Parsons, ‘France and the Egyptian question, 1875-1894’ (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1976), and Richard A. Atkins, ‘The Origins of the Anglo-French Condominium in Egypt, 1875-1876’, The Historian, 36 (1974), 264–82.
91. The relevant segment of the large literature on Franco-Egyptian relations in the nineteenth century is surveyed by Parsons, ‘France’, ch. 1.
92. Parsons, ‘France’, 27–9, 32–3.
93. Jean Bouvier's pioneering article, Les interets financiers et la question d' Egypte (1875-1876), Revue Historique, ccxxiv (1960), 75–104, now has to be read in the light of Parsons, Egypt, 20–29, 35-58, 73-5 347-8.
94. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 20.
95. These intricate negotiations are dealt with by Parsons, ‘Egypt’, ch. 1.
96. Agatha Ramm's article, ‘Great Britain and France in Egypt, 1876-1882’, in Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis, eds., France and Britain in Africa (New Haven, 1971), 73–119, needs some modification to take account of Parsons, ‘Egypt’, and Parsons needs to be considered in conjunction with Atkins, ‘Origins’, and idem ‘The Conservatives and Egypt, 1875-1880’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 11 (1974), 190–205.
97. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 90, 108, 125–7. The role of the French bondholders has also to be reviewed as a result of the important research of B. R. Johns, ‘Business, investment, and imperialism. The relationship between economic interests and the growth of British intervention in Egypt, 1838-82’ (Ph.D. thesis, Exeter University, 1982), 233–47.
98. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 142, 147; Johns, ‘Business’, 231, 250–4, 258, 263–4, 271.
99. Hyam's suggestion that Robinson and Gallagher underestimated the importance of events in Tunisia is supported by Parsons. See Ronald Hyam, ‘The partition of Africa: a critique of Robinson and Gallagher’, in Ronald Hyam and Ged Martin, Reappraisals in British Imperial History (London, 1975), 145-9; Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 189, 191.
100. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 176.
101. Ibid. 180–1, 184, 196; Scholch, The “Men on the Spot”', 775, 782; Galbraith and al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 486–8.
102. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 189, 191–2, 350–4.
103. Ibid. 201, 208.
104. Deighton, ‘Impact of Egypt’, 231–44.
105. E. R. J. Owen, Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820-1914 (Oxford, 1969), and The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800-1914 (London, 1981). See also Johns, ‘Business’, ch. 1.
106. Owen, Middle East, 127, 103–3, 139, 151; Johns, ‘Business’, 91–2, 100, 107, 110-111, 128, 211, 215, 247, 252–4, 271, 281–2, 351.
107. D. C. M. Platt, Finance, Trade, and Politics: British Foreign Policy, 1815-1914 (Oxford, 1968), 154–80.
108. Y. Cassis, ‘Bankers in English society in the late nineteenth century’, Economic History Review, 2nd Ser. 296 (1985), 210–29.
109. This feat is accomplished while still maintaining a sense of balance between these interests and others. See Johns, ‘Business’, especially 57, 75, 79–80, 85, 114–17, 166–70, 258, 271, 320–2, 326–9, 336, 343.
110. Ibid. 138, 140–2, 183-4; Atkins, ‘The Conservatives’, 193; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 182-3; Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 24–5, 35–6, 40, 52, 58–9, 63, 83–4, 100, 370.
111. Atkins, ‘Origins’, 270.
112. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, ch. 2; Johns, ‘Business’, chs 3–4.
113. Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 33-4; Johns, ‘Business’, 146–52.
114. Atkins, ‘Origins’, 277–8, 280-1; idem, ‘The Conservatives’, 195; Parsons, ‘Egypt’, 58–9, 63, 65, 71–5, 83, 100; Johns, ‘Business’, 129, 165–70, 183–4, 200–02.
115. Atkins, ‘The Conservatives’, 195-6; Johns, ‘Business’, 136.
116. Atkins, ‘The Conservatives’, 197-200; Marvin Swartz, The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (London, 1985), 129.
117. Aug. 1878; Quoted in Johns, ‘Business’, 213.
118. Ibid. 215-17; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives, 188–9.
119. Atkins, ‘The Conservatives’, 200.
120. Swartz, Politics, 130.
121. Ibid. 130. And Rothschild's loan finally passed its issue price: Johns, ‘Business’, 231.
122. Johns, ‘Business’, 250, 258–82.
123. Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 479. On the broader context see Swartz, Politics, chs 5–6.
124. Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British Occupation’, 479.
125. Ibid. 479-81; Swartz, Politics, 131–2.
126. This point has been established in an important contribution by M. E. Chamberlain, ‘Sir Charles Dilke and the British Intervention in Egypt, 1882: decision making in an nineteenth-century cabinet’, British Journal of International Studies, 11 (1976), 231–45.
127. Johns, ‘Business’, 301–2.
128. Chamberlain, ‘Sir Charles Dilke’, 233; Johns, ‘Business’, 308.
129. Johns, ‘Business’, 308.
130. Chamberlain, ‘Sir Charles Dilke’, 234–5.
131. Ibid. 235; Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 480.
132. Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 482.
133. Scholch, ‘The “Men on the Spot’”, 779, 781.
134. Ibid. 781–2.
135. Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 477.
136. Scholch, ‘The “Men on the Spot’”, 777.
137. Ibid. 780.
138. Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 481–2.
139. Chamberlain, ‘Sir Charles Dilke’, 236–7.
140. Johns, ‘Business’, 343–4.
141. Quoted in Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 484.
142. Ibid., 485-6; Chamberlain, ‘The Alexandria massacre’, 32–3.
143. C. L. Seymour, ‘The bombardment of Alexandria: a note’, English Historical Review, 87 (1972), 790–94.
144. Chamberlain, ‘Sir Charles Dilke’, 237-238; Swartz, Politics, 136–7.
145. Chamberlain, ‘Sir Charles Dilke’, 238–43.
146. Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 478.
147. David Steele, ‘Britain and Egypt, 1882-1924: the containment of Islamic nationalism’, in Keith M. Wilson, ed, Imperialism and Nationalism in the Middle East (London, 1983), 149.
148. Swartz, Politics, 134–5, 138.
149. John S. Galbraith, ‘The trial of Arabi Pasha’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, Vii (1979), 274–92.
150. Swartz, Politics, 140-2; Deighton, ‘Impact of Egypt’, 245–6.
151. Quoted in Galbraith and Al-Sayyid-Marsot, ‘The British occupation’, 478. On the dissenters see Crangle, ‘The British peace movement’.
152. Robinson and Gallagher, Africa and the Victorians, 466–7.
153. Ibid. 475.
154. Ibid. 476.
155. See also Roger Owen, ‘Robinson and Gallagher and Middle Eastern nationalism’, in Wm. Roger Louis, ed, Imperialism: the Robinson and Gallagher Controversy (London, 1976), 215.
156. An attempt to steer this course has been made by P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism, 1688-1945, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 39 (1986), forthcoming.
157. But the role of manufacturing interests in the events leading to occupation has yet to be fully researched.
158. Michael Edelstein, Overseas Investment in the Age of High Imperialism: The United Kingdom, 1850–1914 (London, 1982); David Landes, Bankers and Pashas: International Finance and Economic Imperialism in Egypt (London, 1958).
159. Mowat, From liberalism to imperialism'.
160. What follows is a speculative statement which draws upon Roger Owen, ‘ Egypt and Europe: from French expedition to British occupation’, in Roger Owen and Bob Sutcliffe, eds, Studies in the Theory of Imperialism (London, 1972), 195-209; Hunter, Egypt under the Khedives; Kenneth M. Cuno, ‘The origins of private ownership of land in Egypt: a reappraisal’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 12 (1980), 245-75; Peter Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism: Egypt, 1760–1840 (Austin, 1979), and the discussion of this book in International Journal of Middle East Studies, xiv (1982), 381–99.
161. Juliette Adam, L'Angleterre en Egypte (Paris, 1922), 73.
162. Swartz, Politics, 140.
163. Mowat, ‘From liberalism to imperialism'.
164. Abdul Nasir Al-Subaiy, ‘ Anglo-Egyptian relations under Lord Salisbury, 1885-1892’ (Ph.D. thesis, Michigan State University, 1980); Milad A. El-Magrahi, ‘British policy toward Egypt, 1875-1885: British imperial expansion and Egyptian nationalist response’, (Ph.D. thesis, Washington University, 1982), ch. 5. See also Keith M. Wilson, ‘Constantinople or Cairo: Lord Salisbury and the partition of the Ottoman empire, 1886-1897’, in Keith M. Wilson, ed., Imperialism and Nationalism, 26–55.
165. Bent Hanson, ‘ Interest rates and foreign capital in Egypt under British occupation Journal of Economic History, Xliii (1983), 867–84.
166. C. W. Newbury and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, ‘French policy and the origins of the scramble for West Africa’, Journal of African History, 10 (1969), 253–76.
167. Langer, European Alliances, 274–5, 277-8; Parsons, ‘France’, 219, 225.
168. Parsons, ‘France’, 242–3, 245–55, 257–8, 260.
169. Ibid. ch. 8.
170. One of the unstudied ironies of France's ‘defeat’ in Egypt in 1882 is that French informal influence expanded and prospered under British rule subsequently.
171. C. M. Andrew and A. S. Kanya-Forstner, ‘Gabriel Hanotaux, the colonial party, and the Fashoda strategy’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, III (1974), 55–104.
172. One alternative approach to West Africa is considered in A. G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London, 1973), ch. 4.
173. M. E. Chamberlain, ‘Clement Hill's memoranda and the British interest in East Africa’, Eng. Hist. Rev. 87 (1972), 533-47; and note 76 above.