For the lands and seaports of the eastern Mediterranean, the opening of the Suez Canal was a godsend–though it took them a little time to realise the fact. No longer were they stuck in a comparative backwater; now at last they could recover their old status as important stopping places on the trade routes of the world. Even the countries of the Far East profited, as their own commercial links with the west were strengthened. The world had become a smaller place.
From the day of the Canal’s opening, however, the Suez Canal Company was in financial trouble. The shareholders, persuaded by de Lesseps that they had invested in a gold mine, wanted an immediate return on their money; but Europe was slow to take advantage of the new possibilities. In its first year of operation, fewer than two ships a day passed through the Canal. De Lesseps had expected an annual income of ten million francs; he received only four. There followed a fierce international argument over the finances, which a conference called by the Sublime Porte did little to settle. At last a furious de Lesseps threatened to close down the Canal altogether, whereupon the Khedive–backed up by the Porte–sent a military force to the Canal and two warships to Port Said, with instructions to seize the Canal if the Company persisted in its plans. France, which had previously backed de Lesseps, now withdrew its support and he had to admit defeat.
But the Franco-Prussian War had dealt the Second Empire its death blow, and French influence in Canal affairs was on the wane. That of Britain, on the other hand, was rapidly increasing. The government of Lord Palmerston and its successors had violently opposed the construction of the Canal, which they had seen as a French imperialist threat, but now that the French were effectively out of the way, opinion in London was changing fast. Suddenly, the distance to India had been halved; from Bombay to Calcutta, what was later to be known as the tourist industry took wing. Within twenty years the annual influx of marriageable young women arriving in India in search of husbands–generally known as the Fishing Fleet–became an institution.266 From 1873 onwards the fortunes of the Canal itself began to improve, with more and more ships using it with every passing year. Two-thirds of those vessels were British, and the Khedive told the British Agent in Cairo not only that he would be glad to see the Canal the property of an English company, but that in the event of such a company being formed he would do everything in his power to facilitate its transfer into their hands.
Egypt, meanwhile, was plunging further and further into debt, and by November 1875 the Khedive found himself in urgent need of some four million pounds to meet his obligations. His only course was to sell or mortgage his own shares in the Suez Canal Company. Two separate groups of French bankers began contending with each other in Paris, but neither was as quick or decisive as Benjamin Disraeli, who had recently succeeded Gladstone as Prime Minister and who was being kept informed of exactly what was going on by his friend Lionel de Rothschild, with whom he regularly dined on Sunday evenings. Negotiations dragged on for a while, but on 24 November 1875 it was agreed that the British government would purchase from the Khedive of Egypt 177,642 shares in the Suez Canal Company for four million pounds sterling. ‘You have it, Madam,’ Disraeli wrote to the Queen. ‘The French government has been out-generalled.’ The Queen replied that this was indeed ‘a great and important event’. ‘The great sum,’ she added characteristically, ‘is the only disadvantage.’267
But the four million pounds still had to be raised. Once again Disraeli turned to de Rothschild, to whom he sent his Private Secretary, Montagu Lowry Corry. In later years Corry loved to tell the story of how he went to Rothschild’s office and told him that the Prime Minister wanted four million pounds.
‘When?’ asked Rothschild.
‘Tomorrow.’
Rothschild picked up a muscatel grape, ate it, spat out the skin, and asked: ‘What is your security?’
‘The British government.’
‘You shall have it.’
A few days later the shares were delivered to the British Consulate-General in Cairo. They were counted, and were found to number only 176,602–1,040 short of the number contracted for. The price was accordingly reduced to £3,976,582. Lionel de Rothschild was not, one suspects, unduly concerned.
Britain, it should be emphasised, had not bought the Canal; she had not even bought control. With her 40 percent holding, however, she had prevented that control from passing entirely into French hands, as it would assuredly have done had she not acted as she did. She now had the right to appoint three out of the twenty-four directors on the board of the Company–a figure which a few years later was to be increased to ten. Of all the shareholders, moreover, she was the strongest and the richest.
Was her purchase of the shares in some degree a prelude to the reestablishment of a British presence in Egypt? The Liberal Opposition certainly suspected–and suggested–as much. In fact, Disraeli seems to have had no particular interest in anything of the kind. At the same time, it was obviously of vital importance that the Canal should be adequately protected, and whereas in former days such protection might have been satisfactorily afforded by the Ottoman government, the Sultan’s power had now been effectively assumed by the Khedive, who had shown again and again by his extravagance and irresponsibility that he could not be trusted–to the point where in 1876 the Egyptian budget was placed under the supervision of two controllers, one British and one French. The Dual Control, as it was called, checked the collapse to some extent, but all too soon it became clear that the Khedive would have to go. Britain and France made a joint appeal to the Sultan, and in June 1879 he was deposed. His son Tewfik, who succeeded him, was almost immediately faced with a major revolt by the Egyptian nationalists who in 1881 staged a coup d’état, establishing what was in effect a military dictatorship. This was followed nine months later by riots in Alexandria, during which more than fifty Europeans were killed.
By this time Britain had sent a naval squadron to Alexandria, in response to which the nationalist leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Ahmed Orabi–known in the West as Arabi Pasha–had begun to construct new fortifications on the seaward side. The British admiral ordered him to stop, and when he refused to do so shelled the buildings to bits. A British force was then landed in the name of the Khedive and went on to occupy the city. But Arabi now replied with a new threat: to block the Sweet Water Canal, which linked the Nile with the isthmus of Suez, providing it with virtually its only supply of fresh water. With the situation fast deteriorating, a full-blown British expeditionary force under the famous General Sir Garnet Wolseley landed on 19 August 1882 at Port Said, further troops being already on their way from India to Suez. A month later, on 13 September, this force had little difficulty in inflicting a decisive defeat on Arabi at Tel el-Kebir on the edge of the delta, and occupying Cairo on the following day.
Where, it might be asked, was France during this crucial time? She too had sent a squadron to Alexandria, but this had almost immediately–and unaccountably–sailed on to Port Said, taking no part in the bombardment or the landings. Had it remained and followed the British example, Britain would certainly not have objected; indeed, she would probably have welcomed such participation. But by this time the French government seems to have lost interest. Thanks largely, we are told, to the violent opposition of the young Georges Clemenceau, it failed to vote the funds necessary for military intervention, thus sacrificing at a stroke France’s traditional influence in Egypt and giving her British rival a free hand to do as she liked. At the end of 1882 the Dual Control was abolished.
When in the past British troops had occupied Egypt, they had thought only of getting out again as soon as possible; this time, however, they had a lifeline to defend. For many years Britain was to claim that her occupation of Egypt was nothing but a temporary measure. As for full annexation, successive governments would protest that nothing was further from their minds; Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire, and they were more than happy that she should remain so. But the Canal had to be protected, and it was Britain’s task to do
it. If such protection involved the occupation of Egypt, then that was that.
Britain had now guaranteed for herself the effective control of the Canal in the event of war, but she recognised that such an ad hoc arrangement would not satisfy the other powers. So strategic a waterway could ultimately be protected only by a complete neutralisation. The diplomatic negotiations required before this could be achieved were delicate and complicated, but at last, on 29 October 1888, the representatives of nine nations at Constantinople signed the Suez Canal Convention, establishing ‘a definite system designed to guarantee at all times and for all Powers the free use of the Suez Maritime Canal’. The Canal was, it stipulated, to be open to all vessels of whatever provenance, in time of war as in time of peace. Its entrances were not to be blockaded, nor were any permanent fortifications to be erected on or along its banks. No belligerent warships might disembark troops or munitions in its ports or anywhere along it. Under the terms of the original concession of 1854, however, the Convention would remain in force only until 1968, ninety-nine years after the Canal’s opening. Its ownership would then revert to the Egyptian government.
This chapter requires, perhaps, a brief postscript. In November 1914 Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire and proclaimed a protectorate over Egypt, with Khedive Abbas–his title of viceroy being no longer appropriate–being redesignated Sultan. Only four years later, however, Egypt was granted full independence (with a few reservations) and became, in its own right, a kingdom. The first ruler, King (formerly Sultan) Fuad I, was succeeded in 1936 by his son Farouk, who reigned until 1952, when a group of Egyptian army officers inspired by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser overturned the monarchy and declared Egypt a republic. In 1954 they concluded a treaty with Britain, whereby all British forces were to be withdrawn from the Canal Zone; two years later, on 26 July 1956–twelve years before the automatic reversion–the Canal was seized and nationalised. At the end of October, all diplomatic representations having failed, the recently formed state of Israel, joined by Britain and France, invaded Egypt with the purpose of recovering the Canal by force. British troops were landed at Port Said under cover of a naval bombardment, while the Israelis invaded the Sinai peninsula. Soon, however, international disapproval for the operation–and particularly that of the United States–became so strong that in December the Anglo-French forces were obliged to withdraw, leaving Nasser–despite severe military losses–triumphant and the Canal firmly in Egyptian hands. British influence in Egypt was at an end. Port Said was reoccupied, and the statue of Ferdinand de Lesseps–without whose vision and determination the Canal would never have come into being–was torn from its pedestal. In the hearts of dictators, gratitude is a rare emotion indeed.
CHAPTER XXXI
The Balkan Wars
Greece, in her first years of independence, remained an unhappy land. Her new king in particular had been a disappointment. It was perhaps too much to hope that the seventeen-year-old Otto speaking not a word of Greek and not even a member of the Orthodox Church, would be able to endear himself to his swarthy, battle-scarred subjects. The King’s father, Ludwig I of Bavaria, in the name of the London Conference powers–Britain, France and Russia–had therefore appointed a Regency Council of three, all Bavarian, only one of whom had ever set foot in Greece. None showed the least sensitivity to local custom or tradition, introducing their own legal and educational systems, gagging the press and imposing taxes that were both oppressive and unjust. They continued in this way for almost three years–years that were known as the Bavarokratia, the Bavarocracy–but even after Otto came of age in 1835 there was little real change. Bavarian influence was as strong as ever, and was increasingly resented. Was it for this, the Greeks asked themselves, that they had fought so long and so valiantly? Their new rulers were even worse than the Turks.
Matters came to a head in 1843, when a virtually bloodless military coup forced Otto to grant a constitution. On paper, this seemed liberal enough, providing inter alia for nearly universal male suffrage (though women had to wait for their vote until 1952). Meanwhile, the Bavarian ministers were dismissed and replaced by a new ministry composed exclusively of Greeks, together with a Greek National Assembly. In fact, traditional Greek society had–thanks to the long Turkish occupation–evolved in a totally different manner from the societies of western Europe, and the people were quite unprepared for a sophisticated modern democracy; it seemed, nonetheless, that Greece had taken a significant step forward, and there were grounds for hoping that there might be better times ahead.
Alas, such hopes were vain. All that had happened was that a Bavarian oligarchy had been set aside in favour of a Greek one, even more ham-fisted than its predecessor. It was certainly understandable that, on the outbreak of the Crimean War in March 1854, the Greeks should have identified themselves emotionally with Russia–then the only other sovereign power with a national Orthodox Church–and violently opposed the Ottoman Empire, which had held them in thrall for nearly five hundred years. It was, on the other hand, sheer folly that led them to launch an utterly abortive invasion of Turkish-held Thessaly and Epirus, the only result of which was that British and French fleets occupied Piraeus, landing detachments of foreign troops which were to remain on Greek soil until 1857. So much, it seemed, for Greece’s newly acquired and much vaunted sovereign status.
In the last years of his reign Otto showed genuine patriotism for his adopted country, and was much influenced by what was known as the Great Idea: in essence, the elimination of the Ottomans and their replacement by a reborn Byzantium, a Greek Christian empire with its capital once again in Constantinople. But he was never popular with his subjects. In 1862, on one of his progresses round the Peloponnese, an insurrection broke out in the old Venetian fortress of Vonitza. Before the royal yacht could return to Athens, the government had proclaimed its king deposed. Otto returned to Germany and settled in Bamberg, where five years later he died.
The Powers had accepted his expulsion without protest, and his former subjects set about looking for a successor. The search took them two years. Their first choice was Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria; unfortunately, however, it had been laid down in the agreements of 1827 and 1830 that no member of the reigning families of the three powers should occupy the Greek throne; the proposal was accordingly turned down flat. Only then was an approach made to the seventeen-year-old son of Christian IX of Denmark, whose sister Alexandra had recently married the Prince of Wales. His name, William, smacked too much of the north and was more or less unwritable in the Greek alphabet, but he was only too happy to change it; it was thus as King George I of the Hellenes that he was to ascend the throne in 1863 and occupy it for the next half-century until 18 March 1913, when he was assassinated in Thessalonica while taking an afternoon stroll.
King George’s reign got off to an auspicious start when Britain voluntarily–despite the powerful opposition of William Ewart Gladstone–ceded to Greece the Ionian Islands, which had been under its protection since 1815.268 It continued with another success: the introduction in 1864 of a new constitution, a huge improvement on that of 1844. George’s later popularity was largely due to his having adopted principles precisely contrary to those of Otto; instead of trying to impose his own personality and leadership he made a point of remaining a figurehead, interfering with government as little as possible and allowing his ministers a free hand to do much as they liked.
With the Ionian Islands now safely incorporated within the kingdom, the next territorial problem was posed by Crete. This island had a far longer experience of foreign domination: after four centuries under Venice, it had–unlike Corfu and most of its fellows269 –already suffered two more under Ottoman rule, which was as firmly established as ever. In Venetian days it had been in a state of almost constant insurrection, and the War of Independence had still further increased nationalist feeling among the Christian population, to the point where the Cretans had now set their sights not simply on the expulsion of the Turks
but on union with the new Greek kingdom. Crete had sent delegates to the National Assembly of Argos in 1829, but in the following year, as we have seen, Sultan Mahmoud had bestowed the island on Mohammed Ali as a reward for his services in the recent hostilities. This union with Egypt–unnatural, to say the least–lasted for only ten years; in 1840, furious at his viceroy’s insubordination, the Sultan took it back again.
To the Cretans it mattered little whether they were under the Egyptians or the Turks. Their call was for enosis, union with Greece. The insurrections continued, by far the bloodiest of them breaking out in 1866. It was in the course of this that Maneses, abbot of the monastery of Arkadion and one of the great heroes of Cretan history, blew up his powder magazine–though it may be wondered why monasteries had powder magazines–rather than surrender. The ensuing bloodbath, in which large numbers of women and children were killed in cold blood, caused an international scandal; the British government in particular came under severe censure when it was revealed that it had ordered the Royal Navy not to rescue Cretan civilians of whatever age or sex who were threatened with massacre, lest such operations be seen as departures from the strict neutrality which Britain was determined to preserve.
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