Ismaʿil Pasha
1830–1895

Ismaʿil Pasha, the grandson of Muhammad Ali, who had ruled over Egypt from 1805 until 1848, was himself the ruler of Egypt, or khedive, from 1863 until his deposition in 1879. His rule witnessed Egypt's increasing integration into the world economy, yet it led inexorably to the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Ismaʿil was a flamboyant ruler, re-energizing the country and renewing the programs that Muhammad Ali had initiated and that his successors, Abbas II (1848–1854) and Saʿid (1854–1863), had permitted to languish. During the height of his reforming zeal, Ismaʿil was reported to have exclaimed that Egypt had finally become a part of Europe. He brought to a conclusion the digging of the Suez Canal, which connected the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and dramatically shortened the distances between Europe and East and South Asia. He celebrated the opening of the canal in 1869 with gala festivities, attended by numerous members of European royalty and other dignitaries. He beautified the cities of Cairo and Alexandria on the model of Paris. He encouraged the cultivation of Egypt's most valued export commodity, long-staple cotton, which provided much of the financing for his modernizing energies and which fetched particularly high prices on the world market during the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865).

His reforms came at a heavy price, however. By the middle of the 1870s Egypt's foreign debt exceeded 90 million British pounds, more than ten times the size of the state's annual revenues. To stave off an impending bankruptcy, the khedive sold Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal Company in 1875 to the British government for 4 million pounds and then conceded British-French control over the ministries of finance and public works. Discontent among the junior officers in the Egyptian army, who feared that they would be ousted from their positions in cost-cutting moves, and Ismaʿil's own behind-the-scenes maneuvering to undercut the authority of the British and French over his country, led the major European powers to force Ismaʿil to resign the khedivate in favor of his son Tawfiq. He left the country in 1879 for Istanbul, where he died in 1895.

SEE ALSO Ali, Muhammad; Egypt; Empire, British; Empire, French; Empire, Ottoman;Suez Canal.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Daly, Martin W., ed. Modern Egypt from 1517 to the End of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Owen, E. Roger J. Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820–1914: A Study in Trade and Development. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1969.

Owen, E. Roger J. The Middle East in the World Economy, 1800–1914. London: Methuen, 1981.

Robert L. Tignor