CHAPTER XXI - Rivalries in the Mediterranean, The Middle East, and Egypt

Summary

By 1870 it was plain that in the great area, at once a crossroads and a frontier, which is bounded by the waters of the Mediterranean, of the Red Sea, of the Arabian and Indian Oceans, of the Persian Gulf, and by those of the Caspian and the Black Seas, the influence of the European powers was becoming ever more widely extended.

The capitals of St Petersburg, Paris, and London, rather than those of Constantinople, Cairo, or Teheran, had of course long been the centres wherein Near and Middle Eastern policies were decided. If something unforeseen, something spontaneous and native to the area, actually happened, then steps had at once to be taken in those centres to bring the consequences of any such ‘untoward events’ under control. One concert of Europe had, in 1840–1, curbed one such disturber of the Levantine peace, the ambitious Mehemet Ali of Egypt. Another concert had, in 1854–6, taken the measure of a more formidable innovator, someone who was not supposed to be a native of the area at all—Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. In 1856, too, the British had sent gunboats into the Persian Gulf to stop the Shah of Persia from absconding with his Afghan neighbour's property of Herat. The existence of peculiar ‘spheres of interest’ was mutually recognised by the powers: it was their expansion that was objected to. No one went to the assistance of the Circassian leader Shamil in the Caucasus, or to that of Sher Ali in Kabul, of the Bey in Tunis, or of Ahmed Arabi in Egypt, although there have been causes worse.