The US occupation of Iraq and the ongoing war throw up a number of parallels with British imperial history. Outstanding in this regard is the Gladstone government's 1882 invasion of Egypt, ostensibly to oust a despotic military government. In fact, the many decades-long occupation saw the country virtually bankrupted, suppressed a modernising Islamic movement for constitutional democracy and, in the fall-out from this, fostered in the Sudan a more fundamentalist Islamic movement. The move to war was led by a charismatic politician who had, in opposition, indicted the war-mongering of the Tories but now termed himself `a labourer in the cause of peace'.
A.G. Hopkins , `The Victorians and Africa: a reconsideration of the occupation of Egypt, 1882', Journal of African History (Vol. 27, 1986), p. 388.
2.
Eugenio F.Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment and Reform (Cambridge , 1992), pp. 405, 409.
3.
Trevor Lloyd , The General Election of 1880 ( London, 1968), pp. 14, 22. See also John V. Crangle , `The issue of imperialism in the Liberal campaign ', Indian Political Science Review (Vol. 8, 1974).
4.
K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation 1846-1886 (Oxford , 1998), p. 635.
5.
W. E. Gladstone Mp, Political Speeches in Scotland (London, 1879), pp. 36, 49, 63, 92, 94.
6.
Ibid, pp. 202-3.
7.
`Klondike on the Nile' is the title of the third chapter of David Landes, Bankers and Pashas: international finance and economic imperialism in Egypt (Cambridge, Mass, 1958). He writes (p. 69) of how the cotton famine occasioned by the US Civil War turned Egypt's `fuzzy white fibres into gold'.
8.
Theodore Rothstein , Egypt's Ruin (London, 1910), pp. 34-5, 36-7, 39-41. For Rothstein, see David Burke, `Theodore Rothstein, Russian emigré and British socialist', Immigrants and Minorities (Vol. 2, 1983).
9.
John Marlowe, Anglo-Egyptian Relations 1800-1956 (London, 1965), p. 91.
10.
Leland Hamilton Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (London, 1927), p. 311.
11.
Marlowe, Anglo-Egyptian Relations, op. cit, p. 91.
12.
Rothstein, op. cit, p 39.
13.
Jenks, op. cit, p. 328.
14.
Thomas J.Spinner, George Joachim Goschen: the transformation of a Victorian Liberal (London, 1973), p. 53. Goschen had been a partner in the banking firm of Fruhling and Goschen and had become a governor of the Bank of England when only 27 years old. He entered the Commons in 1863 and was a member of the Liberal Cabinet in 1866. He was Gladstone's personal financial adviser.
15.
Marvin Schwartz , The Politics of British Foreign Policy in the Era of Disraeli and Gladstone (Basingstoke, 1985), p. 130.
16.
CharlesRivers Wilson, Chapters From My OfficialLife ( London, 1916), p. 182.
17.
Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (New York, 1922), p. 9.
18.
Juan R. I. Cole, Colonialism and Revolution in the Middle East (Cairo, 1999), pp. 30, 187.
19.
Lord Cromer , Modern Egypt (London, 1911), p. 53.
20.
For `Muslim Modernism', see Fazlur Rahman, `Revival and reform in Islam', in P. M. Holt, Ann K. S. Lambton and Bernard Lewis (eds), The Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. 2B (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 632-56. For al-Afghani, see Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: a political biography (Berkeley, 1972 ), and Rudi Matthee, `Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and the Egyptian national debate', International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (Vol. 21, 1989). For a recent appreciation of Blunt and Islam, see Michael Berdine , The Accidental Tourist, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, and the British Invasion of Egypt in 1882 (London, 2005).
21.
The standard account of the Egyptian opposition is Cole, op. cit., but see also Alexander Scholch , Egypt for the Egyptians! The socio-political crisis in Egypt 1878-1882 (London, 1981 ).
22.
R.A. Atkins, British Policy Toward Egypt 1876-1882 (Ann Arbor , 1968), p. 200.
23.
Cole, op. cit, p. 44.
24.
Blunt, op. cit, p 157.
25.
Cole, op. cit, p. 16.
26.
Lady Anne Blunt published a two-volume work Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates (London, 1879); Wilfred Scawen Blunt's series of articles for the Fortnightly Review, 1881, were collected and published as The Future of Islam (London , 1882).
27.
Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt ( London , 1907); India under Ripon ( London, 1909); Gordon at Khartoum (London, 1912).
28.
Sir Edward Malet , Egypt 1879-1883 (London , 1909), pp. 162, 163, 239, 242, 248, 249-50. See also John S. Galbraith and Afaf Lufti al-Sayyid Marsot, `The British occupation of Egypt: another view', International Journal of Middle East Studies (Vol. 9, 1978).
29.
David Bebbington, for example, in his William Ewart Gladstone: faith and politics in Victorian Britain (Grand Rapids, 1993 ), has the decision to intervene made when Gladstone `weary from the demands of handling the Irish issue . . . was outnumbered in Cabinet. Britain had been sucked into Egypt against Gladstone's better judgement.' (p. 175) For a far more robust anti-imperialist view, see Robert T. Harrison , Gladstone's Imperialism in Egypt ( Westport, Conn., 1995).
30.
Cole, op. cit, p. 255.
31.
David Nicholls , The Lost Prime Minister: a life of Sir Charles Dilke (London, 1995), p. 97.
32.
Galbraith and Marsot, op. cit, p. 485.
33.
Charles Royle , The Egyptian Campaigns 1882-1885 ( London, 1900), p. 63.
34.
Atkins, op. cit, p. 399.
35.
William Laird Clowes, The Royal Navy, Vol. 7 (London, 1903), pp. 327, 344.
36.
Sir Perry Scott , Fifty Years in the Royal Navy ( London, 1919), pp. 47, 48.
37.
Sir Richard Harrison, Recollections of Life in the British Army (London, 1908), p. 261.
38.
Bebbington, op. cit, p. 174.
39.
M.E. Chamberlain , `Sir Charles Dilke and the British intervention in Egypt, 1882', British Journal of International Studies (Vol. 2, 1976).
40.
Nicholls, op. cit., p 102.
41.
Chamberlain, op. cit, pp. 238-9. For Joseph Chamberlain's role, see Richard Jay, Joseph Chamberlain: a political study (Oxford, 1981), pp. 68-9.
42.
R. A. J. Walling (ed.), The Diaries of John Bright (New York, 1931), pp. 485, 486.
43.
John Morley , The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 3 (London, 1904 ), p. 85.
44.
Blunt, op. cit, p. 181.
45.
J.L. Garvin , The Life of Joseph Chamberlain, Vol. 1 (London, 1935), p. 455.
46.
Walling, op. cit, pp. 487-8.
47.
Garvin, op. cit, p. 450.
48.
Sir William F. Butler, An Autobiography ( London1911), pp. 235-6, 251. His wife, Elizabeth, produced a painting of Wolsely and his staff in Egypt which was `a moderate success'. In her autobiography, she records her husband's objections to the choice of subject: `To beat those poor fellaheen soldiers was not a matter for exultation, he said . . . He thought the theme unworthy and hoped I would drop the idea .' Elizabeth Butler, An Autobiography ( London, 1923), p. 194. She destroyed the painting when her husband died, apparently at his insistence.
49.
Reverend Arthur Male, Scenes Through The Battle Smoke (London, 1901), pp. 453-4, 477.
50.
Dudley W. R. Bahlman, The Diary of Sir Edward Walter Hamilton, Vol. 1 (Oxford, 1972), pp. 325, 339, 342, 344. Dilke considered it `a great pity Arabi was not shot', see Nicholls, op. cit, p. 103.
51.
London Illustrated News (23 November 1882).
52.
Peter Marshall, `The imperial factor in the Liberal decline 1880-1885' in John E. Flint and Glyndwr Williams, Perspectives of Empire (London, 1973), p. 134.
53.
H.C.G. Matthew, The Gladstone Diaries 10 January 1881 - June 1883 ( Oxford , 1990), pp. 1xxii-1xxiii.
54.
London Illustrated News (23 September 1882 ).
55.
Hamilton, op. cit, p. 352.
56.
Blunt, Gordon at Khartoum, op. cit, pp 79-80.
57.
Norman Kelvin, The Collected Letters ofWilliam Morris1885-1888, Vol. 3 (Princeton,1987), pp. 388, 410.
58.
Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (Berkeley, 1991), p. 97.
59.
M. W. Daly (ed.), The Road to Shaykan: letters of General William Hicks Pasha written during the Sennar and Kordofan campaigns 1883 (Durham, 1983), p. 12.
60.
A.M. Broadley, How We Defended Arabi and His Friends (London, 1884), p. 497.
61.
Dudley W. R. Bahlman, The Diary of Sir Edward Hamilton, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1972), p. 794. On 9 February 1884, Hamilton confided to his diary: `With these troubles arising out of Egypt, one is beginning to think that the only party which has emerged from the business creditably and with consistency is that party, numbering Bright and others, who, foreseeing or imagining they foresaw an unknown quantity or risk, declined to countenance our active interference in Egypt.' By 11 January 1885, he could write that `Egypt has been the greatest blunder. We should never have set foot in the country.' (pp. 555, 769).
62.
Roger Owen, Lord Cromer: Victorian imperialist, Edwardian proconsul ( Oxford, 2004), p. vii.
63.
R.C. Mowat , `From Liberalism to imperialism: the case of Egypt 1875-1887', Historical Journal (Vol. 16, 1973), p. 120.
