Gladstone And The British Occupation Of Egypt In 1882

The Thesis has made an investigation on the policies toward Egypt of British Prime Minister Gladstone and his government in the early 1880's, and with the purpose to analyzing their background, causes, and influence. It is divided into three chapters:Chapter One makes an inquiry into the British policy toward Egypt before Britain occupied Egypt and the evolution of Gladstone's Egypt policy. Before 1875, Britain maintained the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire and prevented Egypt's independence to preserve imperial safeguard. From 1875 to 1882, firstly Britain purchased the Suez Canal shares. Then, Britain established the Dual Control in Egypt with French. Both of these are the bases of British occupation of Egypt in 1882. After Gladstone became British Prime Minister in 1880, he adopted placation policy to Egypt as before. But with the development and change of Egyptian Nationalist Movement, Gladstone turned to intervene at last.Chapter Two discusses the course that Gladstone's government invaded Egypt. This process is divided into two stages. The first stage is to head for the military interference. Gladstone wanted to persuade France to force Turk to suppress the Arabi Nationalist Movement, but he failed. And the Alexander riot was a decisive event that directly affected Gladstone's decision to intervene in Egypt In the second stage, Gladstone's government took part in the international conference in order to rationalize British military intervention, and gain moral support from the European Concert for British action in Egypt. Beneath all the rhetoric about moral force, however, the government had been making anarchy in Egypt and preparing for war. Finally, Britain occupied Egypt.Chapter Three mainly analyzes the reasons and influence of the British invasion of Egypt in 1882. For Britain, Egypt and the Canal had the vital strategic and economic interests to her empire. So, the strategic and economic interests were the primary factors that pushed Britain inexorably to their intervention in Egypt's internal affairs and finally occupied Egypt. The factors of Gladstone and his government also must be valued during the course. Most government members supported the military aggression in Egypt. And the British agents in Egypt were the advocates and executors of the intervention policy. The British occupation of Egypt created two results. First, Egypt became a colony of British Empire actually. Second, British's relationships with France and the Ottoman Empire had broken. Britain now found herself increasingly mistrusted and not so splendidly isolated from the European Concert. In addition, the partition of Africa took place in the context of the British occupation of Egypt.