Liberal imperialism and the occupation of Egypt in 1882

Abstract

The US occupation of Iraq and the ongoing war throw up a number of parallels with British imperial history. Outstanding in this regard is the Gladstone government's 1882 invasion of Egypt, ostensibly to oust a despotic military government. In fact, the many decades-long occupation saw the country virtually bankrupted, suppressed a modernising Islamic movement for constitutional democracy and, in the fall-out from this, fostered in the Sudan a more fundamentalist Islamic movement. The move to war was led by a charismatic politician who had, in opposition, indicted the war-mongering of the Tories but now termed himself `a labourer in the cause of peace'.