The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The 193.30-kilometre-long (120.11 mi) canal is a key trade route between Europe and Asia.
The Suez Crisis or the Second Arab–Israeli War, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression in the Arab world and as the Sinai War in Israel, was a British–French–Israeli invasion of Egypt in 1956. Israel invaded on 29 October, having done so with the primary objective of re-opening the Straits of Tiran and the Gulf of Aqaba as the recent tightening of the eight-year-long Egyptian blockade further prevented Israeli passage. After issuing a joint ultimatum for a ceasefire, the United Kingdom and France joined the Israelis on 5 November, seeking to depose Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and regain control of the Suez Canal, which Nasser had earlier nationalised by transferring administrative control from the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company to Egypt's new government-owned Suez Canal Authority. Shortly after the invasion began, the three countries came under heavy political pressure from both the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as from the United Nations, eventually prompting their withdrawal from Egypt. Israel's four-month-long occupation of the Egyptian-occupied Gaza Strip and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula enabled it to attain freedom of navigation through the Straits of Tiran, but the Suez Canal itself was closed from October 1956 to March 1957. The Suez Crisis led to international humiliation for the British and the French in the wake of the Cold War, which established the Americans and the Soviets as the world's superpowers. It also strengthened Nasser's standing.
The Entente Cordiale comprised a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and the French Republic which saw a significant improvement in Anglo-French relations. On the surface, the agreement dealt with minor issues related to fishing and colonial boundaries. Egypt was recognized as part of Britain's sphere of influence, and Morocco as part of France's. The Entente was not a formal alliance and did not involve close collaboration, nor was it intended to be directed against Germany. However, it paved the way for a stronger relationship between France and Britain in the face of German aggression. It should not be mistaken for the official Anglo-French military alliance, which was only established after the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
Ahmed ʻUrabi, also known as Ahmed Ourabi or Orabi Pasha, was an Egyptian military officer. He was the first political and military leader in Egypt to rise from the fellahin (peasantry), ʻUrabi participated in an 1879 mutiny that developed into the ʻUrabi revolt against the administration of Khedive Tewfik, which was under the influence of an Anglo-French consortium. He was promoted to Tewfik's cabinet and began reforms of Egypt's military and civil administrations, but the demonstrations in Alexandria of 1882 prompted a British bombardment and invasion which led to the capture of ʻUrabi and his allies and the imposition of British control in Egypt. ʻUrabi and his allies were sentenced by Tewfik into exile far away in British Ceylon, as a form of punishment.
Khedive was an honorific title of Classical Persian origin used for the sultans and grand viziers of the Ottoman Empire, but most famously for the viceroy of Egypt from 1805 to 1914.
Isma'il Pasha, also known as 'Ismail the Magnificent, was the Khedive of Egypt and ruler of Sudan from 1863 to 1879, when he was removed at the behest of Great Britain and France. Sharing the ambitious outlook of his grandfather, Muhammad Ali Pasha, he greatly modernized Egypt and Sudan during his reign, investing heavily in industrial and economic development, urbanization, and the expansion of the country's boundaries in Africa.
Anglo-Egyptian Sudan was a condominium of the United Kingdom and Egypt between 1899 and 1956, corresponding mostly to the territory of present-day South Sudan and Sudan. Legally, sovereignty and administration were shared between both Egypt and the United Kingdom, but in practice the structure of the condominium ensured effective British control over Sudan, with Egypt having limited local power and influence. In the meantime, Egypt itself fell under increasing British influence. Following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, Egypt pushed for an end to the condominium, and the independence of Sudan. By agreement between Egypt and the United Kingdom in 1953, Sudan was granted independence as the Republic of the Sudan on 1 January 1956. In 2011, the south of Sudan itself became independent as the Republic of South Sudan.
The 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended the 1948 Arab–Israeli War by delineating the Green Line as the legal boundary between Israel and the Arab countries, left the Kingdom of Egypt in control of a small swath of territory that it had captured and occupied in the former British Mandate for Palestine: the Gaza Strip. This period saw the creation of the All-Palestine Government within the All-Palestine Protectorate, an Egyptian client state that would last until 1959, a year after the Republic of Egypt and the Second Syrian Republic merged to form a single sovereign state known as the United Arab Republic. The Egyptian occupation of the Gaza Strip was briefly subsumed by Israel during the 1956 Suez Crisis and ended entirely during the 1967 Arab–Israeli War, after which the Israeli Military Governorate was established in the territory and succeeded by the Israeli Civil Administration in 1981; the direct Israeli presence in the Gaza Strip ended with the 2005 disengagement plan.
The Suez Company or Suez Canal Company, full initial name Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez, sometimes colloquially referred to in French as Le Suez, was a company formed by Ferdinand de Lesseps in 1858 to operate the Egyptian granted concession of the Suez Canal, which the company built between 1859 and 1869. Initially, French investors held half of the Company's stock, with Egypt's ruler Sa'id Pasha holding most of the balance. In 1875, financial distress forced Sa'id's successor Isma'il Pasha to sell the country's shares to the government of the United Kingdom. The Suez Company operated the canal until Egypt's new president Gamal Abdel Nasser revoked its concession in 1956 and transferred canal operation to the state-owned Suez Canal Authority, precipitating the Suez Crisis.
The Egyptian Revolution of 1952, also known as the 1952 coup d'état and 23 July Revolution, was a period of profound political, economic, and societal change in Egypt. On 23 July 1952 the revolution began with the toppling of King Farouk in a coup d'état by the Free Officers Movement. This group of army officers was led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. The Revolution ushered in a wave of revolutionary politics in the Arab World, and contributed to the escalation of decolonisation, and the development of Third World solidarity during the Cold War.
The British conquest of Egypt (1882), also known as the Anglo-Egyptian War, occurred in 1882 between Egyptian and Sudanese forces under Ahmed ‘Urabi and the United Kingdom. It ended a nationalist uprising against the Khedive Tewfik Pasha. It established firm British influence over Egypt at the expense of the Egyptians, the French, and the Ottoman Empire, whose already weak authority became nominal.
The Kingdom of Egypt was the legal form of the Egyptian state during the latter period of the Muhammad Ali dynasty's reign, from the United Kingdom's recognition of Egyptian independence in 1922 until the abolition of the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan in 1953 following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Until the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936, the Kingdom was only nominally independent, as the United Kingdom retained control of foreign relations, communications, the military, and Sudan. Officially, Sudan was governed as a condominium of the two states, however, in reality, true power in Sudan lay with the United Kingdom. Between 1936 and 1952, the United Kingdom continued to maintain its military presence, and its political advisers, at a reduced level.
The Muhammad Ali dynasty was the ruling dynasty of Egypt and Sudan from the 19th to the mid-20th century. It is named after its progenitor, Muhammad Ali of Egypt, regarded as the founder of modern Egypt.
The Bombardment of Alexandria in Egypt by the British Mediterranean Fleet took place on 11–13 July 1882.
The Khedivate of Egypt was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, established and ruled by the Muhammad Ali Dynasty following the defeat and expulsion of Napoleon Bonaparte's forces which brought an end to the short-lived French occupation of Lower Egypt. The Khedivate of Egypt had also expanded to control present-day Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, northwestern Somalia, northeastern Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Greece, Cyprus, southern and central Turkey, in addition to parts from Libya, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda, as well as northwestern Saudi Arabia, parts of Yemen and the Kingdom of Hejaz.
Egypt–United Kingdom relations are the diplomatic, economic, and cultural relationships between Egypt and the United Kingdom. Relations are longstanding. They involve politics, defence, trade and education, and especially issues regarding the Suez Canal.
The Caisse de la Dette Publique was an international commission established by a decree issued by Khedive Isma'il of Egypt on 2 May 1876 to supervise the payment by the Egyptian government of the loans to the European governments following several modernisation projects including the construction of the Suez Canal. The Khedive had defaulted on paying back Egypt's foreign debts, which were mostly owned to the British and the French. These governments in turn joined to impose a system of supervision over Egypt's debts. The goal of the commission was to investigate everything regarding Egypt's foreign debts; what Egypt could afford to pay, in what way the taxes were collected, how high the amount of floating debt was, and how that debt had been incurred.
The history of Egypt under the British lasted from 1882, when it was occupied by British forces during the Anglo-Egyptian War, until 1956 after the Suez Crisis, when the last British forces withdrew in accordance with the Anglo-Egyptian agreement of 1954. The first period of British rule (1882–1914) is often called the "veiled protectorate". During this time the Khedivate of Egypt remained an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire, and the British occupation had no legal basis but constituted a de facto protectorate over the country. Egypt was thus not part of the British Empire. This state of affairs lasted until 1914 when the Ottoman Empire joined World War I on the side of the Central Powers and Britain declared a protectorate over Egypt. The ruling khedive, Abbas II, was deposed and his successor, Hussein Kamel, compelled to declare himself Sultan of Egypt independent of the Ottomans in December 1914.
The Egyptian–Ethiopian War was a war between the Ethiopian Empire and the Khedivate of Egypt, a autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire, from 1874 to 1876. The conflict resulted in an unequivocal Ethiopian victory that guaranteed continued independence of Ethiopia in the years immediately preceding the Scramble for Africa. Conversely, for Egypt the war was a costly failure, severely blunting the regional aspirations of Egypt as an African empire, and laying the foundations for the beginning of the British Empire's 'veiled protectorate' over Egypt less than a decade later.
The Dufferin Report issued on 6 February 1883 was the result of Lord Dufferin being sent by Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone to assess the situation of the Egyptian government after the defeat of the 'Urabi Revolt. The report suggested reforming the Egyptian government to preserve British influence, establish a 'veiled protectorate' and ensure that Britain was the sole western influencer in Egypt.
