Gladstonian Liberalism: Imperialism in Egypt and Coercion in Ireland

Summary

The British government agreed to pay £ million for the purchase of 176,000 shares, out of 400,000, in the Suez Canal Company. The buyer entrusted Messrs N. M. Rothschild & Sons to make the necessary payment to the bankrupt Khedive of Egypt. This purchase of stock in the company, in 1875, was widely viewed in Britain as a sign of Prime Minister Disraeli's ‘spirited policy’. News of the development generated considerable excitement among conservatives in the United Kingdom, and speculation abroad, especially in France. In Ireland, an editorial in the conservative Dublin Evening Mail saw the purchase as a political masterstroke: ‘In this ostensibly peaceful, commercial act we have no doubt the world will recognise the boldest and wisest stroke of statesmanship that has been performed by an English Minister in the present generation.’ By contrast, Gladstone, while in opposition, famously condemned the purchase of shares as ‘the almost certain egg of a North African Empire, that will grow and grow’.

Disraeli's government argued that its purchase of shares in the company would prevent a monopoly, especially a French one, from ever controlling the strategically important waterway. The Suez Canal was increasingly viewed as a vital concern for trading links in the British Empire as about seventy-five percent of shipping tonnage that passed through it annually sailed under the Union flag. The purchase of shares from the Khedive, so conservatives argued, would give Britain a strong stakeholder's voice in the management of the Suez Canal and secure speedy passage for merchant vessels travelling to the Queen's possessions in the East. Some press commentators thought that it was the first step in the British buying the canal outright. The government, however, was adamant that it did not covet the annexation of Egypt itself. But what was clear was that a peaceful and friendly Egypt would be in Britain's future self-interest.

Britain since the Napoleonic Wars had recognised the strategic value of Egypt as a gateway to India and the Far East. As part of the Ottoman Empire, the country was governed by a Khedive. Disraeli's purchase of shares in the Suez Canal Company was followed by an Anglo-French assumption of control over Egyptian finances. Simmering tensions in Egypt, owing to the country’s indebtedness and foreign involvement in domestic affairs, boiled over into a nationalist revolt in September 1881.