The Conflict of East and West in Egypt

Front matter

THE

CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST

IN

Chapter 1

THE CONFLICT OF EAST AND WEST IN EGYPT.

I.

FROM MEHEMET ALI TO ISMAIL.

It was not until the purchase of the Suez canal shares by Great Britain, in 1875, that the conflict to be described was waged with spirit. The influences and interests of the East and West, however, had clashed for many years. Long before the dawn of the nineteenth century the attention of England had been directed through Egypt to the far away Indian empire, that El Dorado that lured the British merchant-men to brave the storms of the southern seas. But the voyage around the Cape was a hazardous one and a long one; and the growth of commerce demanded that the Eastern empire should be made more accessible. England knew, and the world knew, that the direct route to India lay through the land of the ancient Pharaohs. England thought the way through Egypt should be overland; but France thought it should be by a canal that would one day connect the Mediterranean and the Red Seas.

France was interested in the valley of the Nile. She had put her foot there before England. The great Napoleon knew the value of Egypt. “By seizing and holding Egypt,” he said, “I retain and command the destinies of the civilized world.” And so, in 1798, he seized Egypt; but he did not hold it. The English, under Abercrombie, compelled the French to retire by the battle of Alexandria, in 1801. And now, for a short time, the influence of England was felt in Egypt. But it did not last long; for, after the accession of Mehemet Ali in 1805, Egypt was able to stand by herself. This event marks the starting-point from which it will be necessary to trace in brief the history and development of Egypt, in order to appreciate the government and condition of the country a decade ago, when England purchased the canal shares.

When the firman of the Sublime Porte made Mehemet Ali the governor of Egypt, in 1805, the country was in a state of feudalism. The pasha appointed by the Porte had been only the nominal ruler, the real government of the country being in the hands of the petty lords, or beys, known as the memlûks. They had deference neither for pasha nor for sultan. It is true that a small tribute was promised the Porte every time a new pasha was appointed; but it was almost never paid. The governors had been many since the beginning of the century. "Indeed," says Mr. Patton, in his history of the Egyptian Revolution, "all the pashas that intervene between the French rule and that of Mehemet Ali are a will-o'-the wisp to the historian. A pasha of some sort flies before the eyes, but when we attempt to grasp him he is gone. . . . Thus successively rose and fell Mehemet Khûsuf Pasha, Tahir Pasha, Ali Pasha Gezairli, and Khurshid Pasha. Mehemet Ali alone stands out the distinct historical figure in the foreground."

The obscure Albanian owed his elevation to the pashalic to his success, while a Turkish commander, in quelling the dissensions among the memlûk beys. Once at the head of the government, he set to work in earnest to deprive them of their power, knowing full well that his position as the sultan's pasha would be at best both insignificant and insecure, so long as these feudal lords played fast and loose with the resources of the land. Until 1811, therefore, Mehemet Ali devoted himself to the suppression of the memlûks. Against this grasping for power England entered a feeble protest; not indeed because she sympathized with Egyptian feudalism, but because she happened, at that time, to fall out with the Porte, and desired, therefore, to help the sultan's enemies. She even sent troops to Egypt and took possession of Alexandria. But the occupation was brief; for Mehemet Ali descended from Upper Egypt, where he had been administering such correction to the memlûks as few absolute monarchs ever dared employ, and, proclaiming himself the champion of Islamism, he forced the infidels to retire to Sicily. It now remained for the vigorous pasha to perform the two acts that consolidated his power throughout the valley of the Nile: the first was the revolutionary transfer to his own possession of the landed property of the entire country, and the second was the total extinction of the memlûks by massacre in the citadel of Cairo. The period of destruction was succeeded by one of development. The absolute ruler introduced modern military tactics and established a naval arsenal in Alexandria; he built canals; he introduced the culture of cotton, a product that was destined one day to become the source of enormous revenues; he imported also indigo, forest trees, fruits, spices, etc., for reproduction; he founded medical and educational institutions; he improved the police and rendered travel safe, so that now, for the first time, passengers and letters bound for India were conveyed with perfect safety through Egypt overland to Suez.

But Mehemet Ali was not content with these undertakings and improvements, important and difficult as they were; he longed for greater power. He made war against the Wahabees of Arabia and he conquered the peoples of the Sûdan. And all the time he chafed under his subjection to the Porte. Finally he sent his warlike son, Ibrahim, to pick a quarrel in Syria; and Ibrahim captured Acre and was soon fighting against the troops of his father's suzerain and carrying all before him. It seemed as if Mehemet Ali was about to become the sultan of Egypt and Syria.

This was in 1832, a time when England was keeping a very watchful and a very jealous eye on Russia, ready at any moment to claim a foothold in Turkey. England thought that Egypt, being against Turkey, must be for Russia. From self-interest England could not allow her "ancient ally" to remain between two such fires; this Syrian flame must be quenched. England hesitated, however, to act, and in 1833 the Porte recognized the feudal sovereignty of Mehemet Ali over Egypt, Crete, Syria, and Adana, exacting only a small tribute. The peace did not last long, and in 1839 the Turks were again fleeing before the victorious Ibrahim. It seemed as if Asia Minor and Constantinople must soon succumb to him. But now England intervened with an energy that was wanting in 1832. Her fleet joined those of Turkey and Austria off the coast of Syria, and confronted by British commanders on land and sea the troops of Ibrahim were forced to yield. The hopes of Mehemet Ali were blasted. His son had been overcome by England and he had been duped by France. Thiers promised an assistance that was never rendered.

The war at an end, the Powers endeavored to negotiate a treaty. After the usual diplomatic formalities and delays it was finally agreed that Mehemet Ali should evacuate Syria, Arabia, and Candia, and should receive the hereditary government of Egypt, acknowledging the sultan as his suzerain. The terms of this agreement were embodied in a firman issued by the Sublime Porte in 1841.

Mehemet Ali was now an old man, and during the remainder of his life the influences of his youth and early manhood, as is usually the case with those who have witnessed and participated in great governmental and social revolutions, predominated over the progressive spirit of his most vigorous and potent years. He became more of a despot than ever; and his severity had few of its former excuses. He did, however, permit an association of British merchants to organize a transportation service to India, through Egypt, via Cairo and Suez, by means of which communication with India was made in weeks instead of months.

In 1847 Mehemet Ali's intellect began to weaken, and within a year his dotage had so increased that his son Ibrahim was installed pasha of Egypt in his place. But Ibrahim's rule was cut short by death two months later, and in December of 1848 Abbas was invested with the pashalic. In the summer of 1849 Mehemet Ali died, spent in mind and body. A good idea of the character and work of this "Napoleon of Egypt," as he has so often been called, may be gathered from the following quotation from Mr. Patton's history:

There is much to be said in abatement of his merits. Although superior to a thirst for blood, from mere vengeance and resentment, and an easy pardoner of those who were no longer able to injure him, no compunction ever deterred him from removing the obstacles to his lawless ambition by fraud or force—most frequently by a compound of both. Nor was he able, with all his perseverance, to conquer his aboriginal want of education. Anxious to introduce European civilization into Egypt, he remained to the end of his life in utter ignorance of the economical principles upon which the prosperity of a state reposes. Greedy of the praise of Europeans, and, in the latter part of his career, anxious to count for something in the balance of military power, his allusions on this head showed to himself and to others the wide interval that separates the scientific organization of European military and political establishments from the Egyptian imitations which cost him efforts so lengthened and persevering. But although unable to resist the dictation of any European power, he was—within Egypt—all-potent in establishing an order that had never existed before, so as to afford those facilities that have proved so valuable to the Indian transit. He found Egypt in anarchy: and long before he had terminated his career the journey from the Mediterranean to Nubia was as secure as that from London to Liverpool. He learned to read, and attempted to write, after he had attained his fortieth year; and when we add that the practical result of his efforts was to leave his family in the hereditary government of Egypt, Mehemet Ali must be admitted to have been, without exception, the most remarkable character in the modern history of the Ottoman Empire.

Abbas Pasha succeeded Mehemet Ali. He preceded his uncle Said; for, by the then existing law of succession, the reins of government fell to the "eldest male of the blood of Mehemet Ali." Abbas possessed neither the warlike impetuosity of his father Ibrahim, nor the ambition of his grandfather Mehemet Ali. He did not look beyond the bounds of Egypt for territory to acquire or for customs to imitate. It was enough for him that he was a good Mohammedan; that the wheat and millet fields throughout the valley of the Nile yielded their yearly increase; that the fallahin prospered and paid their taxes without the application of kûrbash and bastinado, and that there was peace among the people who acknowledged him their master. Though he did not court the favor of foreigners, he allowed an English company to begin the construction of a railway from Alexandria to Cairo, which was to be continued across the desert to Suez. But he himself undertook no great works, built no new canals, and did not even carry out the schemes and plans of his predecessors. Abbas has been called a bigot and a miser. He certainly was neither liberal in mind nor lavish with money. It is not surpris- ing, therefore, that at his death he left a large sum of ready money in the Egyptian treasury. Perhaps this was known to those who are said to have strangled him. At all events, the money and the government passed to Said in 1854.

Said Pasha was a very different man from his nephew Abbas. Their tastes, their habits, their dispositions, their lives, and, consequently, their governments, were diametrically opposite. In fact, Said was everything that his predecessor was not. Sociable, witty, extravagant, sensual, and fond of all the delights of life, he seemed rather the gay French courtier than the imperturbable Moslem ruler. He set up a court not unlike that of Louis XIV. He welcomed foreigners and entertained most lavishly. He forgot the sobriety enjoined by the Prophet, so that his dinners and his wines became famed for their richness and excellence. He accepted the suggestions of his foreign parasites, and hastened to adopt this scheme or that scheme, according as the whim of the hour or the persuasive agreeableness of the schemer might move him.

Among the foreigners attracted to Egypt at the beginning of Said's reign was a man of larger and nobler purpose than these grasping tricksters knew, Ferdinand de Lesseps had formed an early friendship with Said, while acting as diplomatic attaché in Egypt years before. At that time, also, he had conceived a plan destined to revolutionize the commerce of the world. It was not a new plan, however. The scheme of constructing a waterway between the Mediterranean and Red Seas had been suggested to all the great rulers of Egypt, the Pharaohs, the Persian, Greek, and Roman conquerors, and the Arab caliphs. Also, according to recent discoveries in the archives of Venice, it seems that the project of cutting the isthmus was considered by the mariners of the fifteenth century." A canal between the two seas via the river Nile actually existed for an unknown period in the dynasties of the Pharaohs, and again for a period of more than four hundred years under the Romans, and lastly for a period of more than a century after the Arab conquest. But Mehemet Ali, though he had considered, had not favored the great canal scheme, and Ferdinand de Lesseps was obliged, therefore, to await a more opportune time for broaching his plan. He brooded over his idea of a waterway while England secured the construction of a railway.

With the accession, now, of his old friend Said, the cherished hopes of de Lesseps were kindled to expectation. Nor was he deceived in believing that the opportune time had arrived. He went at once to Egypt and laid his plan before the viceroy. It was accepted by him on the 15th of November, 1854, in these words: "I am convinced. I accept your plan. We will talk about the means of its execution during the rest of the journey. [They were taking a Nile trip together.] Consider the matter settled. You may rely on me."

The concession had no sooner been announced than English influence was brought to bear against the canal scheme. Mr. Bruce, the English consul in Egypt, told the viceroy that he was acting too hastily in the matter. At Constantinople Lord Stratford de Redcliffe threw obstacles in the way of the scheme, while in England the general attitude toward the canal was unfavorable, and even hostile. In January, 1855, the London Times declared against the proposed canal as an absolute impossibility. Lord Palmerston opposed the scheme from first to last. He held that the Porte must give its consent before the viceroy could allow the canal, forgetting that the English government had informed a former viceroy that he might construct a railway from Alexandria to Suez without the consent of his suzerain.

In February the sultan's council was on the point of granting the necessary permission, when Lord Stratford interposed his influence to produce delay. His lordship urged that the railway would be sufficient without any canal. He hinted to the Porte that a canal might so increase Egypt's importance that the child would break with its parental authority. An influence also was brought to bear upon the viceroy, but probably not of so intense a kind as de Lesseps imagined, for he wrote at the time: "He [the viceroy] is even threatened with the displeasure of England, whose fleets might attack him when the business on the Black Sea is ended."

The whole matter had by this time assumed an international importance, with France at the head of the nations who favored the canal, and with England leading the opposition. Lord Clarendon, in communication with the French government, said that Her Majesty foresaw inconvenience in leaving the matter to be decided between the sultan and his viceroy. He submitted the following objections to the scheme: 1. The canal is physically impossible. 2. The project would require a long time for completion; it would therefore retard the projected railway and injure Indian interests. 3. Her Majesty's ministers consider the scheme to be founded on an antagonistical policy on the part of France toward Egypt. The same objec- tions and arguments were repeated by Lord Palmerston.

All this time Said Pasha was harassed by doubts and fears; but at last, without receiving the authority of the Porte, and disregarding the attitude of England, he signed the final concession for the canal on January 5, 1856. It is said that he was influenced by the assurance that the canal would redound to his immortal honor and glory. Be that as it may, it is, in a measure, a monument to the generosity of the good-natured viceroy, whose name, at least, is perpetuated by the port at the Mediterranean terminus.

In 1858 de Lesseps launched his Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, with a capital of £8,000,000. More than half of this amount was subscribed for—the greater part being taken in France—and in 1860 Said took up the remainder, amounting to £3,500,000. De Lesseps began the work in the spring of 1859, although the consent of the Porte was not given until 1866.

The attitude of England toward the canal remained unfriendly. When the engineering question had been settled, and the feasibility of constructing the canal proved, the English began to assert that it could not be made to pay. The policy of opposition has been kept up even to the present day. As the question of the canal is to be dismissed now, and to be taken up again only incidentally, as in its financial bearings upon the relation of England to Egypt, it may be well to notice how England has persisted in what appears a jealous opposition toward the Compagnie Universelle. A single quotation will show how the London papers sought to bring the canal into discredit at a time when its success was still a matter of doubt: "The Peninsular and Oriental Company's steamer 'Poonah,' with the Indian and China mails, which arrived at Southampton yesterday, experienced, while in the Suez Canal, a severe sand-storm, which commenced at sunrise and continued, more or less furious, until five in the afternoon. During the storm she laid [!] right across the canal powerless. Tons of sand were thrown on the deck, and the masts and gear were covered with a thick coating."

Of late years the British ship-owners have come to wish for a canal of their own, and they are inclined to dispute the claim of the Compagnie Universelle that it has the sole right to control the canal question until the ninety-nine years of the concession are up. The British government, however, advised by the lord chancellor and the law officers of the crown, has been forced to declare that the company's claim is well grounded. It is to England's credit that the opinions of such men as R. T. Reid, Q. C., M. P., prevailed. This honorable gentleman said:

The claim of M. de Lesseps and his company to equitable treatment is well known, and is more creditable to him than to the intelligence of our past rulers. The Suez Canal is the work of his lifetime. He undertook it under circumstances of great discouragement. He completed it in spite of the disapproval of the British government. And when it has proved an immense success, and the navies of the world are reaping the benefit of his speculation, we are invited to find a flaw in his title, to chop logic as to the meaning of his concession, and to creep out of a difficulty which is a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence, by refining upon words in defiance of the intention. Such conduct would be unworthy of the British government. . . .The canal is of enormous value to our shipping interests. It has saved us millions upon millions of pounds by halving or nearly halving the route to India, and greatly reducing the distance by water between us and our entire Eastern dominions. It is admittedly of the utmost political advantage to us with reference to India. This vast profit, infinitely exceeding anything gained by the canal company, has been acquired without risk of any kind to the British Government, and, indeed, has been forced upon us against our will by the enterprise of M. de Lesseps. When the company who bore the brunt of the outlay ask for an infinitesimal part of the profit conferred upon England, and ask it in the form of dues stipulated before the outlay was incurred, we are invited to beat them down by the threat of a rival canal. This would not be creditable in an individual. It would be wholly unworthy of a great nation."

And so the great nation decided.

But to return to Said Pasha. Having described his relations to the Suez Canal, it only remains to record that he died in 1863. But, in passing, it must be noticed that a financial cloud, that was destined to blacken the Egyptian sky, and to let loose its bolts of distress and bankruptcy on the land of the Nile, was already discernible on the horizon. Said had exhausted the surplus accumulated by Abbas, and had left a debt of more than three millions sterling. How this was doubled, quadrupled, and doubled again under his successor, the sequel will show.

Chapter 2

II.

ISMAIL'S AMBITIOUS DESIGNS.

ISMAIL, the son of Ibrahim, the son of Mehemet Ali, succeeded Said. It is said that Abbas, long before, had been very jealous of him. He must, at least, have disliked him heartily; for the two men had nothing in common, and everything that the one shunned the other courted. While Abbas was ruling Egypt with a rigorous economy, Ismail sought the more congenial atmosphere of Paris. He obtained, in one capital and another, an intimate acquaintance with the civilization of the West, and stored his mind with all those pictures of European development that, though the result of centuries in Europe, he thought might be reproduced in Egypt within his lifetime. Having secured thus "a European education," Ismail returned to Egypt, after the accession of Said, and received from him a governmental portfolio. He seems to have had the entire confidence of the viceroy, for twice he acted as regent. He commanded, also, the year before Said's death, an expedition to the Sûdan. On his accession in 1863, therefore, Ismail was a man of experience—such experience as should have given him exceptional qualification for a ruler. But greater than all the wisdom, was the ambition that his observation had begotten.

It seemed as if Ismail's dreams of wealth and power were to be realized immediately upon his accession. Our Civil War was to furnish the means to this end. Europe had depended upon our Southern States for cotton, and when, by the war, the supply was cut off, there followed throughout Europe what has been called "a cotton famine." Especially in England the want threatened to become a great distress. The factories were closing, and legislators and economists were puzzled to find a way out of the danger. The shrewd Ismail, at this juncture, was not slow to perceive that the seed introduced into Egypt by his grandfather might bring him the coveted wealth, and he bent his entire energies to the production of cotton, borrowing money to buy the implements and tools, to secure the proper irrigation, and planning for work on a grander scale than the fellah at his shadûf had ever dreamed of. Ismail's success was greater than he could have expected in his most visionary moments. The soil of the Nile valley seemed admirably suited to the new industry, and every yield was enormous. The fellahin, the most conservative people under the sun, forsook their lentils, their millet, and their wheat, and hastened, in their humble way, to acquire wealth after the manner of their lord and ruler. And they prospered as their race has never been known to prosper from the time when their remote ancestors were the pyramid-builders of the Pharaohs, down to the present day. It was the Golden Age of modern Egypt. In three years the exports rose from four and a half millions to more than thirteen millions sterling. As is usually the case with those who enjoy unaccustomed and unexpected affluence, neither the viceroy, nor the great pashas, nor the lowly fellahin, made wise use of their prosperity. Their extravagances increased with their wealth. The viceroy thought that the influx of gold would be permanent, and he spent and wasted accordingly; the pashas believed that the vast estates that favoritism had bestowed upon them would continue to produce in luxuriance the white flower that was so easily convertible into yellow gold, and they lived their voluptuous life of Parisian and Oriental excess in their daira palaces; and the fellahin thought not and cared not, so long as their burdens were light and they could enjoy the sensual life that the Prophet Mohammed allowed them. They all counted in vain. Our Civil War had come to an end, and the Southern states were again supplying the markets of Europe; the naturally fertile valley of the Nile, denied the necessary rotation of crops or the chemical fertilizers that the agricultural science of to-day substitutes, had been ruinously exhausted; and as a consequence the Golden Age was ended. All the extravagances reacted upon the fellahin. The viceroy could not or would not contract his expenses, and, of necessity, he turned to the money-lenders and the task-masters. The latter ground down the fellahin to a life that was nothing more than existence. Exorbitant taxes were forced from them with the aid of the kûrbash, and their condition was more miserable than before their recent prosperity. At this time the cattle murrain made its appearance in the Nile valley, and the loss was overwhelming, and, of itself, sufficient to impoverish the people for a time. The Egyptian government, slow usually to give such assistance, was obliged to expend £5,000,000 to aid the suffering fellahin. But, to offset the gift and in lieu of unpaid taxes, the land of the unfortunates was appropriated, not by the government, but by the viceroy himself. In the years that followed he became master, in this fraudulent manner, of one-fifth of the cultivable land of Egypt.

As the condition of the fellahin grew worse, the extravagances of Ismail seemed to increase. In 1866, at a time when he should have economized to the last degree, not only to relieve his country but to pay his own debts, which were already of a threatening size, Ismail, yielding, as ever, to his inordinate ambition, purchased the title and rank of khédiv-el-misr (King of Egypt) from the Sultan. The firman that granted these honors and raised the limit of the Egyptian army from eighteen thousand to thirty thousand men, cost Egypt the increase from three hundred and seventy-six thousand to six hundred and seventy-five thousand pounds of yearly tribute to the Porte. From this time on the Khédive Ismail, through the most prodigal use of money-bribes and presents, secured a succession of firmans from the Porte. A firman of 1867 empowered him "to make laws for the internal government of Egypt, and to conclude conventions with foreign powers as to customs, duties, and the police, postal, and transit services." A firman of 1872 conceded to the Khédive the power of contracting loans without the Sultan's authorization" —a power how used and abused!—and established the law of primogeniture in his family. A firman of 1873, "which Ismail obtained by bribery at Constantinople on a more than ordinary scale, removed all limit from the numbers of his army, and empowered him to conclude conventions with foreign states concerning all internal and other affairs of Egypt in which foreigners might be concerned." So much for Ismail's expensive relations with his suzerain. They had brought him, it is true, a power such as Mehemet Ali had dreamed of after the fall of Acre, but they had helped drag him deeper into the meshes of a financial snare, from which he was destined to escape only with the loss of all the powers he had inherited or so dearly purchased.

Ismail's extravagances at home were equally enormous. When cotton was no longer recognized as king in the Nile valley, the khédive quickly proposed to substitute the culture of sugar. Not only did he proceed to cultivate the cane, but he planned to manufacture the sugar. For this purpose he built nineteen factories and refineries, and imported the best of machinery from Europe. This attempt to convert agricultural Egypt into a manufacturing country must always be regarded as the crowning farce of Ismail's reign. The country may be said to be absolutely without fuel; for there are no coal mines, and the tax-paying trees are too few and far too valuable to serve as firewood. With all his advanced ideas, the khédive seems not to have learned the first principles of political economy. Besides the building of the factories, a railroad was required to make them accessible. This was constructed from Cairo to Assiût at vast expense. Canals, also, were needed for the proper irrigation; and they, of course, involved another great outlay. But there was never any hesitancy on account of expense; and, the money being borrowed, the works were pushed ahead.

It would not be right, however, to attribute all the debts of Egypt, incurred during Ismail's reign, to his inordinate extravagance. The cattle mur- rain, for example, cost the government and people dear, as has been seen, but not through any fault of Ismail. In another matter the Khédive laid a heavy burden on the government, but at the same time he won, and deservedly, the gratitude of his people and the applause of civilized nations. Said Pasha had promised to furnish the Suez Canal Company with a large amount of labor each year for the construction of the canal, and this labor was to be provided by the corvée, a system of forced service, in use as far back certainly as the age of the pyramid-builders. But it was disastrous to the agriculture of the country to have twenty thousand of the fellahin torn from their homes each month and forced to work on the canal. Ismail recognized this fact and abolished the corvée. It is generally admitted that he was influenced by humanitarian motives. And well he might have been! Our own most dreadful tales of slavery could be paralleled with the sufferings and tortures of those miserable mortals who were wrested from what little they had to make them happy in the fertile valley to endure the privations and almost certain death of that desert highway. Whatever the motive here, Ismail must always be credited with having performed a noble action. The Canal Company, deprived of the promised assistance, naturally demurred. This and a few other disputed ques- tions were finally referred to the Emperor Napoleon for arbitration, and he awarded the company the somewhat exorbitant indemnity of £3,360,000. This was in 1864. In 1866 Egypt repurchased for the sum of £400,000 a domain that had been sold to the Canal Company five years before for £74,000. It was a modest advance! Of course such extraordinary expenses as these necessitated new loans. All the loans that Ismail raised are themselves so extraordinary that their details must be noticed as well as the methods that the Khédive employed in his endeavors to bear the burden of his obligations.