1841 - 1917

British consul general and Egypt's virtual ruler, 1883 - 1907.

One of Britain's most illustrious proconsular figures, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer, contributed profoundly through his policies in Egypt to the
modern history of that country. As an administrator he stressed fiscal stability, hydraulic reform, and the cultivation and export of cotton. Critics charged him with neglecting industrialization and failing to fund vital social services, especially education. During his latter years in Egypt the nationalist movement revived, having been moribund since the Urabi revolt, and from then on became a vital force in Egyptian politics.

Lord Cromer was born Evelyn Baring on 26 February 1841 at Cromer Hall in Norfolk, England, a son of Henry Baring, a member of Parliament. His father died when Evelyn was seven, and the youngster was raised by his mother. In 1855 he entered the military academy at Woolwich and was commissioned as an artillery officer three years later. His first posting was to the Ionian Islands; it proved formative for him. Not only did he meet his future wife, Ethel Stanley, there but he also learned Greek and acquired an interest in ancient history - an intellectual avocation he pursued throughout his lifetime.

Upon returning to Britain he entered the military staff college, but instead of pursuing the military career for which his education had prepared him, Captain Baring in 1872 became private secretary to his cousin, Lord Northbrook, who was viceroy of India at the time. This decision cast his fate with Britain's overseas imperial interests. He quickly distinguished himself as a resourceful and skilled administrator and a person destined for high office. In 1877, at a time when the government of Egypt was endeavoring to stave off bankruptcy under the profligate rule of its viceroy, Khedive Ismaʿil ibn Ibrahim (1863 - 1879), Baring was selected as the British representative on a multinational financial body, the Caisse de la Dette Publique, or Egyptian Public Debt Commission, which protected the interests of the European creditors of the Egyptian government. In May 1879 Baring left Egypt, resigned his army commission, and planned to run for Parliament in 1880. Instead, he briefly returned to Egypt in October of that year as British comptroller on the Liquidation Commission. He was not involved directly in the decision of the European powers to replace Khedive Ismaʿil with his son, Tawfiq. In June 1880 Baring became the financial adviser to the viceroy of India's council under George Robinson, Lord Ripon.

Baring's absence from Egypt proved short-lived. Discontent had surfaced within the Egyptian army during the crisis of 1879. It welled up again in 1881. A group of young native-born Egyptian officers, led by Ahmad Urabi, galvanized a movement of opposition to Ottoman Turkish rule and the growing foreign influence over the country. In September 1882, the British invaded Egypt, defeated the Egyptian army at al-Tall al-Kabir, exiled Urabi and other nationalists, and restored Tawfiq to power in Cairo. The British promised a swift evacuation of Egypt, which remained legally part of the Ottoman Empire and in which several European powers, notably France, had substantial financial and cultural interests. The British hastened to reform Egypt's administration so as to facilitate their withdrawal.

In 1883 Baring was named Britain's consul-general in Egypt. Although his choice came as a surprise to many - he was only forty-two and had not previously held such a responsible position - he was in fact ideal for the job. He already had considerable knowledge of Egypt from having served on the Caisse de la Dette. He was familiar with the imperial administration from his duties in India, and he was a recognized expert on fiscal matters. Egypt's single most pressing administrative problem was financial. In 1880 the government's external debt had totaled 100 million pounds, the interest on which consumed nearly half of Egypt's tax revenues. To realize its goal of withdrawal - a goal enunciated repeatedly in official pronouncements - Britain would have to reform Egypt's budget.

Baring devoted his first decade as consul (1883 - 1892) to achieving fiscal solvency. He rightly judged that the only way Egyptian finances could be reformed was by increasing agricultural production and thereby raising the tax base. The key to agricultural development, in his estimation, was irrigation, since Egypt, as the gift of the Nile River, was totally reliant on irrigation waters for its agricultural success. Muhammad Ali, ruler of Egypt from 1805 until 1849, had first begun to transform Egyptian irrigation from a basin or flood system to what was called perennial irrigation. By digging deep canals and erecting dams and weirs along the Nile, he had enabled parts of Egypt to receive irrigation waters year-round instead of only during the flood season. As a result, Egyptian farmers had begun to cultivate cotton, which, as a summer crop, required irrigation waters when the Nile was at its lowest. Unfortunately, in the latter years of Ismaʿil's reign the hydraulic system of Egypt had fallen into disrepair. Bringing some of Britain's most talented irrigation engineers to Egypt, Baring put the old system in order and then embarked upon a vigorous program of hydraulic improvement. Critical in this first decade was the repair of the Delta Barrage - a wide dam at the bifurcation of the Nile, just north of Cairo - which had been built by French and Egyptian engineers in pre-British days but never rendered serviceable.

Even the dramatic events in the Sudan in the 1880s were tied to Egyptian finances. Egypt had expanded steadily into the Sudan in the nineteenth century. The Mahdist movement threatened Egypt's control. Because of financial pressures the British government compelled Egypt to withdraw its forces from the Sudan and to leave the fate of that territory to the Sudanese. Baring secured the evacuation of the Sudan but not before the Mahdists had killed one of Britain's war heroes, General Charles Gordon, slain while defending Anglo-Egyptian interests at Khartoum.

In 1892 Khedive Tawfiq died. He had worked closely with Baring to bring fiscal stability to the country and to improve agricultural productivity. His eldest son, Abbas Hilmi II, succeeded him. In the same year Baring was elevated to the peerage as Lord Cromer in recognition of his services to the British Empire. The political tranquillity that had characterized British rule to that point was shattered soon after Abbas came to the throne. In January 1893 the new khedive tried to replace his pro-British cabinet with a more nationalist one, and Cromer needed a letter from Foreign Secretary Archibald Primrose, Lord Rosebery, confirming the need for Egypt's viceroy to consult with the British representative about ministerial changes as long as British troops occupied Egypt. In the following January, Abbas publicly criticized the Egyptian army, which he was reviewing, and its commanding general, Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener. Kitchener offered to resign, but Cromer, already worried by the nationalist advisers whom Abbas had brought together in his palace, moved with alacrity to defeat this challenge to British authority. A British battalion was diverted from its homeward journey and marched to Cairo in a show of strength. Abbas was compelled to back down. He reinstated Kitchener as commander. Although Cromer prevailed, these two incidents left a legacy of bitterness between the khedive and the consul. Although Abbas never again openly challenged British authority, the palace became a patron of various nationalist parties when they emerged during the early twentieth century.

During Cromer's second decade as consul, Britain extended its authority over Egypt's internal affairs and reconquered the Sudan. No longer was the prospect of evacuation imminent, although the British continued to proclaim their occupation a temporary one. Now British "advisers" were appointed in the ministries of justice, interior, and education. They sought to impose British cultural standards where previously Turkish, Egyptian, and French influences had predominated. Hydraulic reform continued apace, culminating in the construction of a massive dam at Aswan in 1902. Cotton accounted for more than 80 percent of the value of Egyptian exports at this time.

Cromer had hoped to postpone the military conquest of the Sudan until Egypt's finances were unshakable and the Aswan High Dam had been completed. The European scramble for African territory forced his hand. By the mid-1890s the Sudan was one of the few territories still independent of European colonial authority. The British deemed the upper Nile basin of vital importance to their African empire and feared that if a hostile power, like France, took control of the area, it would threaten British interests in Egypt. Hastily preparing the Egyptian army for action, Cromer sent troops into the Sudan in 1896. Khartoum fell to an Anglo-Egyptian force in 1898. A tense moment occurred on the upper White Nile at Fashoda (now Kodok) in 1898 when British and Egyptian forces under Kitchener met a small band of French soldiers under Jean-Baptiste Marchand. Both leaders claimed the territory for their countries, and war fever briefly stirred both the British and the French. Only after France had backed down and recognized Anglo-Egyptian preeminence in the Sudan did the Fashoda Incident end.

Once Cromer had engineered the military occupation of the Sudan, he set about creating its administrative system. Here he used considerable ingenuity to devise a way for Britain and Egypt to share in the governance of the Sudan. Seeking to spare the Sudan the tangle of international obligations that bedeviled Britain's rule over Egypt, he established the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium over the Sudan in 1899. By the terms of his anomalous political organization, the Sudan was exempted from the jurisdiction of the Capitulations and the Mixed Courts, while Egypt retained its formal suzerainty over the Sudan, and Britain became the effective sovereign power. Cromer's annual reports on the administration of Egypt and the Sudan were published, widely circulated, and sometimes even translated into Arabic to influence Egyptian opinion.

In the latter years of Cromer's administration, anti-British, nationalist sentiments gained in
strength. New political movements, like the National Party and the Umma Party, came into being, and new leaders, like Mustafa Kamil, attacked Cromer's autocratic rule. The nationalists castigated Cromer for failing to share power with Egyptians, neglecting parliamentary institutions, and starving the educational system of funds. A galvanizing nationalist event occurred in the village of Dinshaway in 1906 where the British hanged four villagers and imprisoned and publicly flogged several others for allegedly killing a British soldier while trying to protect their possessions. The severity of the sentences appalled many Egyptians (and Europeans) and came to symbolize the heavy-handedness of British rule in Egypt. Nine months after the Dinshaway Incident, Cromer submitted his resignation and left a country that he had dominated for a quarter of a century. He had never won the affection of the Egyptians, nor had he sought to do so.

In Britain Cromer did not completely cut his Egyptian ties. Always a prolific writer, with a marked scholarly bent, he published a two-volume account of Egyptian affairs before and during his time there. Modern Egypt (1908) was for many years the standard treatment of British rule in Egypt. It is read now, however, for its insights into the imperial mentality rather than for its descriptions of Egyptian society or its assessment of British rule. He also wrote Ancient and Modern Imperialism (1910) and Abbas II (1915) and collected his many essays on diverse subjects into three volumes, entitled Political and Literary Essays (1913).

A reassessment of Cromer's work in Egypt is long overdue.

Bibliography

Berque, Jacques. Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, translated by Jean Stewart. New York: Praeger; London: Faber, 1972.

Marlowe, John. Cromer in Egypt. New York: Praeger; London: Elek, 1970.

Owen, E. R. J. Cotton and the Egyptian Economy, 1820 - 1914: AStudy in Trade and Development. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1969.

Sayyid-Marsot, Afaf Lutfi. Egypt and Cromer: A Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations. New York: Praeger; London: Murray, 1968.

Schölch, Alexander. Egypt for the Egyptians! The Socio-PoliticalCrisis in Egypt, 1878 - 1882. London: Ithaca Press, 1981.

Tignor, Robert L. Modernization and British Colonial Rule inEgypt, 1882 - 1914. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966.

— ROBERT L. TIGNOR UPDATED BY ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT

Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa. Copyright © 2004 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.