Abbas Hilmi II
1874 - 1944
Egypt's khedive (viceroy), 1892 - 1914.
Born in Cairo, Abbas Hilmi was the seventh member of the Muhammad Ali dynasty to serve as viceroy of Egypt but the first whose whole term of office co-incided
with Britain's military occupation of the country. A high-spirited youth inclined to nationalism when he succeeded his father, Tawfiq, Abbas soon clashed with the British consul-general, Lord Cromer, over the appointment of Egypt's new prime minister. The two men agreed finally on a compromise premier, Mustafa al-Riyad, but Cromer had persuaded his government to enlarge the British occupation force.
In 1894 Abbas, while on an inspection tour of Upper Egypt, quarreled with the commander of the Egyptian army, Sir Herbert (later Lord) Kitchener, over what he viewed as the poor performance of the British-officered units. Kitchener offered to resign, but Cromer made Abbas issue a statement expressing his satisfaction with all the units of his army - a public admission of surrender. Unable to confront Britain directly, he formed a secret society that evolved into the National Party, which initially placed its hopes on French support.
When France's challenge to Britain's predominance in the Nile valley waned after the 1898 Fashoda incident, Khedive Abbas moved away from the Nationalists, who were turning to pan-Islam and to appeals for constitutional government. After the Dinshaway incident, he briefly resumed his opposition to the British by helping the Nationalists to publish daily newspapers in French and English. After Cromer retired, however, he was lured away from nationalism by the friendlier policies pursued by the new British consul, John Eldon Gorst. In 1908, he named a new cabinet headed by Boutros Ghali, a Copt (Christian) who favored the British. Abbas adopted a policy increasingly hostile to the Nationalists, reviving the 1881 Press Law, prosecuting the editor of al-Liwa, and promulgating the Exceptional Laws after the 1910 assassination of Boutros Ghali by a Nationalist. When Gorst died and was succeeded by Lord Kitchener, Abbas again broke with the British. His hope of using the 1913 Organic Law to bring his supporters into the new Legislative Assembly was only partly successful, since Saʿd Zaghlul, an old enemy, emerged as its leading spokesman.
When World War I broke out in 1914, he was in the Ottoman capital of Istanbul recovering from an assassination attempt. The British forbade him to return to Egypt, using the entry into war of the Ottoman Empire on their enemy's side as a pretext to depose him and sever Egypt's residual Ottoman ties. The former khedive spent most of the war years in Switzerland - plotting at first with the Nationalists to engineer an uprising in Egypt against the British; then with the Germans to buy shares in several Paris newspapers to influence their policies in a pacifist direction; and then with the British to secure the succession of his son to what had become the sultanate of Egypt.
After all these intrigues failed, Abbas returned to Istanbul and cooperated with the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire) until their final defeat (1918). He tried for several years to regain control of his properties in Egypt, but finally accepted a cash settlement and went into business in Europe. He attempted to mediate the Palestine question and supported a Muslim organization. He then backed the Axis powers (Germany, Japan, and Italy) early in World War II (1939). Although energetic and patriotic, he failed to stem British moves to strengthen their military occupation of Egypt.
Bibliography
Beaman, Ardern Hulme. The Dethronement of the Khedive. London: Allen and Unwin, 1929.
Cromer, Evelyn Baring, Earl of. Abbas II. London: Macmillan, 1915.
— ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT
