Ismail deposed: Tewfik Pasha: Revolt of Arabi Pasha: Lord Wolseley and the Battle of Tel-el-Kebir: The Mahdist Rising: General Gordon in the Sudan: Death of Gordon: The Sudan abandoned and re-conquered: Battle of Onidurman: Khartum College: Financial Stability: Abbas II.: Education, Law, and the improved condition of the Fellaheen: The Caisse de la Dette
The official deposition of Ismail Pasha by the sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid, occurred on June 26, in the year 1879, and his son Tewfik assumed the khedivate, becoming practically the protégé of England and Egypt. To understand how this came to pass, it is necessary to review the account of the financial embarrassments of Ismail. In twelve years he had extracted more than $400,000,000 from the fellaheen in taxes. He had borrowed another $400,000,000 from Europe at the same time, of which nominal sum he probably received $250,000,000 in cash. The loans were ostensibly contracted for public works. Possibly ten per cent, of the borrowed money was profitably laid out. The railways were extended; Upper Egypt was studded with sugar factories,—most of them doomed to failure,—and certain roads and gardens were made about the city of Cairo.
The remainder of this enormous sum of money was spent in purchasing a change in the law of succession, and the new title of khédive; in disastrous Abyssinian campaigns; in multiplying shoddy palaces, and in personal extravagance, which combined Oriental profusion with the worst taste of the Second Empire. Useless works engaged the corvee; the fellaheen were evicted from vast tracts, which became ill-managed estates; and their crops, cattle, and even seed were taken from them by the tax-gatherers, so that they died by hundreds when a low Nile afflicted the land. The only persons who flourished in Ismail’s time were foreign speculators and adventurers of the lowest type. As these conditions became more serious, the khédive attempted to find some means of protection against the concession-monger. He adopted a suggestion of the wise Nubar Pasha, and instituted the mixed tribunals for adjudging civil cases between natives and foreigners.
The Powers agreed to the establishment of these tribunals, and intended to enforce the decisions of the courts, even in case that Ismail himself were the delinquent. When later the khédive repudiated the mixed tribunals, this action precipitated his fall. It became increasingly difficult for the khédive to meet his accumulated obligations. The price of cotton had fallen after the close of the American war, and there was less response from the impoverished people to the Cour-bash, which in 1868 was still more strictly enforced; and soon this enforcement by the mixed tribunal of debts due to foreigners by an agricultural population, who lived by borrowing, and were accustomed to settle their debts by haggling, aggravated the misery of the fellaheen, and led to that universal despair which was to give strength and significance to the Arabist revolt. It was no uncommon procedure for the Levantine money-lender to accompany the tax-gatherer into the provinces with a chest of money. He paid the taxes of the assembled and destitute fellaheen, who in return were obliged to give mortgages on their crops or holdings.
The desperate state of Egyptian finance, which led to the sale of the precious Suez Canal shares, at last opened the eyes of the bondholders. Mr. G. T. Goschen (Viscount Goschen) and M. Joubert were deputed to Egypt on behalf of the foreign creditors. The accounts were found to be in a state of wild confusion, with little or no chance of learning the actual facts controlling the financial situation. The minister of finance, or “Mufet-tish,” Ismail Pasha Sadeck, was now arrested and banished to Dongola.
There was an immediate prospect of a dual control by England and France. Commissioners were appointed to constitute a caisse, or court, for receiving the interest due to the bondholders. The great mass of the debt was then unified, but the Goschen and Joubert arrangement was found to be too severe for the impoverished country. A low Nile and a famine resulted in a demand for an investigation into the administration, and the following year Ismail was obliged to authorise a commission of inquiry. The waste, extravagance, and wholesale extortion from the peasantry revealed by this report made a deep impression upon Europe, and Ismail was forced to disgorge the estates which he had received from the fellaheen.
In the meantime, the khédive was not inactive in taking measures to prevent the advent of a confirmed foreign control. He created a constitutional ministry, upon whom the responsibility rested for the different branches of the administration. He likewise fomented an outburst of feeling among the Moslems against the foreign element in the constitutional ministry. This was intended to strengthen the pro-Egyptian element in the government, and Ismail thus hoped to demonstrate to the European Powers the uselessness of attempting to subordinate the Egyptians to foreign methods of finance and control. Ismail subsequently dismissed the ministry, and soon afterwards the controllers themselves. Knowing well the jealousy which existed between England and France, he believed that there was a chance that he might successfully play off one Power against the other. If the Moslems had not been so severely oppressed by taxation, and Ismail had acted with courage and firmness, it is probable that he might have held his own, and Egypt might have refused to again accept the dual control.
Bismarck now intervened, and hinted to the sultan that he would receive the support of the Powers, and Abdul Hamid immediately sent a telegram to the Egyptian government that Ismail Pasha was deposed from the khedivate. At this moment his courage gave way, and Ismail surrendered his throne to his son Tewfik.
