Between June and September 1882, Ahmad Urabi served both as head of an insurrectionary government and commander in chief of Egypt’s defenses against the British. Urabi enjoyed widespread support in both the cities and countryside for standing up to foreign invaders. While the khedive remained confined to his palace in Alexandria, many of the princes, attendants, and women of the royal household threw their support behind Urabi and contributed money, grain, and horses for the war effort.²¹ He continued to enjoy the full support of the landed elites and the urban merchants, as well as of the religious establishment. Urabi’s partisans did all they could to support the coming war, but the professional army was neither large nor confident enough to take on the British, and the peasant volunteers lacked the discipline and training to hold their ground under fire. Even as Urabi’s numbers swelled, his chances remained slim. The British were surprised by the stiff resistance they encountered from Urabi’s irregular army. Sir Garnet Wolseley reached Alexandria at the height of summer at the head of a 20,000-man campaign force. He marched his troops from Alexandria to seize Cairo, but his progress was checked by Urabi’s Egyptian defenders for five weeks, forcing the British to abandon the effort. Wolseley returned to Alexandria to ship his men to the Suez Canal zone, which the British were able to secure with extensive naval power in early September 1882. While in the canal zone, Wolseley received reinforcements from British India, after which he prepared to march westward toward Cairo. Urabi managed to surprise the British forces before they departed the zone and inflicted heavy casualties on the invaders before withdrawing in the face of superior numbers. The Egyptian forces fell back to a spot in the Eastern Desert halfway between the canal and the delta called Tall al-Kabir, to protect Cairo from invasion. Wolseley’s forces attacked before the Egyptians had the time to lay down proper defenses. The British marched to within 300 yards of Egyptian lines in the predawn hours and surprised the defenders with a bayonet charge at sunrise on September 13. The battle was over within one hour as the exhausted Egyptian troops finally succumbed to superior British forces. The road to Cairo now lay clear before the invading forces. The insurrectionary government of Ahmad Urabi collapsed with the Egyptian defenses at Tall al-Kabir. Urabi was captured in Cairo two days later. He and his colleagues were tried on charges of treason, found guilty, and had their death sentences commuted to a life in exile on the British colony of Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka). Khedive Tawfiq was restored to his throne, though he never recovered full sovereignty. With British troops occupying the country and British advisors posted to all levels of government, the real ruler of Egypt was the British Resident, Sir Evelyn Baring (later elevated to the peerage as Lord Cromer).

Urabi left behind a mixed legacy. Following the collapse of his movement, many criticized him for having provoked the British occupation of Egypt. Yet there is no denying the broad-based support he had enjoyed when standing up for the rights of native-born Egyptians. Some of his most outspoken supporters were women of the royal household. Urabi’s lawyer, A. M. Broadley, recorded a conversation with one princess who enthused that they all ?secretly sympathised from the first with Arabi [sic], because we knew he sought only the good of the Egyptians.... We saw in Arabi a deliverer, and our enthusiasm for him knew no bounds.?²² Princess Nazli, one of Muhammad ’Ali’s granddaughters, explained Urabi’s appeal in more universal terms:Arabi was the first Egyptian Minister who made the Europeans obey him. In his time at least the Mohammedans held up their heads, and the Greeks and Italians did not dare transgress the law. . . . Now there is nobody to keep order. The Egyptians alone are kept under by the police, and the Europeans do as they like.²³

Urabi spent eighteen years in exile before being allowed to return to his native land by Tawfiq’s successor, Khedive Abbas II (r. 1892–1914), in 1901. Granted a formal pardon by the Egyptian government, he pledged his loyalty to the khedive and forsook all political activity. A new generation of young nationalists hoped to gain his support for their fight against the British occupation, but Urabi kept his promise and stayed out of politics. An elderly man, Urabi wanted to see out his days in his beloved Egypt. His eyes were firmly fixed on the past, not the future. He spent the last decade of his life reading all of the books and newspaper accounts on the Urabi Revolt and dedicated his remaining years to clearing his name of all accusations of wrongdoing.²⁴ He wrote a number of autobiographical essays and circulated them widely to authors in Egypt and abroad. In spite of his efforts, two charges stained Urabi’s name for decades after his death in 1911: responsibility for provoking the British occupation of Egypt, and treason against the dynasty of Muhammad ‘Ali, the legitimate rulers of Egypt. It was only after a new generation of young Egyptian colonels overthrew the last of Muhammad’Ali’s line in the 1952 revolution that Urabi was rehabilitated and was admitted to the pantheon of Egyptian national heroes.

The British occupation provoked upheaval well beyond the frontiers of Egypt. French dismay turned to hostility as they saw their British rivals establish an enduring imperial presence in Egypt, which since Napoleonic times had been an important French client state. The Egyptians had drawn upon French military advisors, sent their largest educational delegations to Paris, and imported French industrial technology; in addition, the Suez Canal was established as a French company. France refused to be reconciled to the loss of Egypt and sought by all means to settle scores with “perfidious Albion.” The French took their revenge by securing strategic territories in Africa, both to restore their imperial glory and to put pressure on British overseas interests. What ensued came to be known as the ?scramble for Africa,? as Britain and France, followed closely by Portugal, Germany, and Italy, painted the map of Africa in their imperial colors. Between 1882 and 1904, colonial rivalries led to a deep antagonism between Britain and France. The nadir of this competition came in 1898, when the two imperial powers very nearly went to war over rival claims to an isolated stretch of the Nile in Sudan. Neither side could allow the antagonism to fester and threaten open conflict. The only solution was to restore the imperial balance of power in the Mediterranean by conceding territory to France to compensate for Britain’s position in Egypt. Given France’s holdings in Tunisia and Algeria, the obvious solution lay in Morocco.²⁵ The problem was that France wasn’t the only European power with interests in Morocco. The Spanish held colonies on the Mediterranean coast, the British enjoyed significant trade interests, and the Germans were proving increasingly assertive in their own right. There was also the consideration that, after centuries of independent statehood, the Moroccans neither sought nor provoked invasion. The French foreign minister, Thйophile Delcassй, set out his strategy in 1902, saying that he was interested “in distinguishing the international question from the French-Moroccan question, and to settle the former separately and successively with each power in order ultimately to enjoy full freedom to settle [with Morocco].”²⁶ Over the next ten years, France haggled with each of the European powers in turn before imposing its rule on Morocco. The power with the least interest in Morocco was Italy, so Delcassй turned to Rome first, striking a deal in 1902 that recognized Italian interest in Libya in return for Italy’s support of French ambitions in Morocco. Britain was to prove more of a challenge. The British wished to preserve their commercial interests in Morocco and were unwilling to allow any maritime power to challenge the Royal Navy’s domination of the Strait of Gibraltar. However, Britain had a genuine interest in settling its colonial differences with France. In April 1904, Britain and France came to an agreement—the Entente Cordiale—that served as a fresh start for their diplomatic relations. According to the terms of the agreement, France recognized Britain’s position in Egypt and would not ask “that a limit of time be fixed for the British occupation.” Britain, for its part, recognized France’s strategic position “as a Power whose dominions are conterminous for a great distance with those of Morocco” and pledged not to obstruct French actions “to preserve order in that country, and to provide assistance for the purpose of all administrative, economic, financial, and military reforms which it may require.”²⁷ France moved swiftly to secure Spain’s agreement to a future French occupation of Morocco. The French satisfied both British and Spanish concerns by conceding Morocco’s Mediterranean coastline to Spain’s sphere of influence. This provided the basis for a Franco-Spanish agreement on Morocco, concluded in October 1904. The French had very nearly solved the ?international question,? paving the way to colonizing Morocco. All the European powers had now given their consent?except Germany. Delcass? had hoped to move on Morocco without involving Germany. After all, the German Empire had never extended to the Mediterranean. Moreover, Delcass? knew that Germany would demand French recognition of their annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, seized in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870?1871, in return for German recognition of France?s ambitions in Morocco. This was more than France was willing to give for Germany?s consent. However, the government of Kaiser Wilhelm II refused to be bypassed. Germany was emerging as an imperial power in its own right, with possessions in Africa and the South Pacific, and Morocco proved a point of competition between Germany and France. The Germans began to assert their interests in Morocco to force France to the negotiating table. In March 1905 the German foreign minister, Prince Bernhard von Bьlow, arranged for Kaiser Wilhelm II to visit the Moroccan sultan, Moulay Abd al-Aziz, in Tangier. Throughout his visit, the German emperor upheld respect for both Moroccan sovereignty and German interests in the sultan’s domains, thereby raising the first obstacle to French ambitions in Morocco. The German demarche forced the French into negotiations with Germany, and the “Moroccan question” was reopened with the convening of the Algeciras Conference in January 1906. The conference, in which eleven countries took part, was ostensibly aimed at helping the Moroccan sultan establish a reform program for his government. In reality, France hoped to use the meeting to bring broader European support to bear on Germany to overcome the kaiser’s resistance to French ambitions in Morocco. Despite Germany’s best efforts to turn the conference attendees against France, three of the states taking part—Italy, Britain, and Spain—had already given their consent to France’s claims to Morocco, and the kaiser’s government was forced to give ground. In 1909 Germany finally recognized France’s special role in Morocco’s security.