Designs on Empire by Andrew Priest

Author:Andrew Priest
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

Race and Rule in British Egypt

In the months that followed, Pomeroy’s replacement, John Cardwell, saw the effects of the British military presence firsthand and decried its disruption of the fabric of Egyptian society. He complained that drunkenness among British troops had become “a very customary thing” in Alexandria and other areas of Egypt, where it had been previously unknown. Soldiers were “disgracefully disorderly at times,” he reported, but the authorities rarely, if ever, took any action. In one particularly egregious case in Port Said, British soldiers wrecked an American drinking house, stealing goods and furniture without even being reprimanded.131 By 1887, Cardwell reported, there were now some four hundred “grogshops” in Cairo alone. Not only was the drunkenness associated with these establishments a problem, but so too was the prostitution that many of them supported, with “women of ill-fame” very often available to serve British soldiers. Numerous drinking houses were also close to mosques, and alcoholism was becoming such a problem among the native population that temperance societies were now working in the country.132

Figure 4.3   Aside from the folly of Britain’s enterprise in Egypt, its brutality in putting down Ahmed Urabi’s rebellion shocked American elites. Many of them expected better from the British Empire, although this Puck cartoon from shortly after the Alexandria assault acknowledges Britain’s aggression elsewhere against weaker opponents (note the caricature of an Irishman pulling on a small glove labeled “Fenian” in the bottom right corner). The quotation from British foreign secretary Lord Granville reads: “It is painful to be obliged to use force against the weak.”

Source: Joseph Keppler, “British Benevolence,” Puck, July 19, 1882.

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