Egypt
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sovereignty from the East India Company, which ceased to exist; and, twenty years later, Queen Victoria was proclaimed ‘Empress of India’.
Egypt, 1882–1911.Another ‘Eastern’ state, much nearer home, came to us in 1882, Egypt. It was sorely against the will of our statesmen that it came. Egypt had, till 1840, been a province of the Turkish Empire, and had since that date been most shockingly misgoverned by a series of Mohammedan rulers, called Khedives. When, in 1869, the Canal was cut by French engineers through the Isthmus of Suez, which separates the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, and when a new route to India for the largest vessels was thus opened, it became of the first importance to us to keep this route safe and open. France at first shared with us the ‘Protectorate’ of Egypt which was then rendered necessary; but, when an insurrection of natives broke out in 1882, the task of suppressing it fell to us alone, and, when it was over, the sole Protectorate of Egypt became ours also. These were comparatively easy tasks, for the native Egyptian was not a good fighting man; but, as in India there is always a ‘tiger from the North’ to be feared, so in Egypt there was always a ‘lion from the South’. By this ‘lion’ I mean the fierce tribes of the desert which is called the ‘Soudan’, and of the Upper Nile Valley; they are Mohammedans by faith and of mixed Arab and negro race. These wild men were always ready to spring upon the fertile valley of the Lower Nile. Our ministers at home too often turned a blind eye to these dangers, and their blindness cost us the life of the gallant general, Charles Gordon. It was not till 1898 that these ‘Soudanese’ were finally subdued; and the Soudan is now governed by us as
