Anglo-Egyptian Relations 1929–1930

Abstract

After Disraeli’s decision to purchase shares in the Suez Canal, the Egyptian question assumed a place of permanent importance for successive British Governments, since it presented problems which, like those associated with Ireland, appeared to defy all attempts at solution. The basic cause of the trouble lay in the total incompatibility of Egyptian and British aspirations in two significant respects. First, Great Britain came to regard the Suez Canal as of quite fundamental strategic importance and as the lifeline of her whole Empire. Secondly, an ideological conflict arose on the question of the Sudan, when the British after 1899 developed a missionary zeal for the separate development of this area while the Egyptians clung tenaciously to the view that the Nile Valley should become a single political unit.¹ An Anschluss between Cairo and Khartoum came to be as unacceptable to Great Britain, whether under Labour or Conservative rule, as that between Austria and Germany was to the victorious allies immediately after the First World War.