North Africa

French occupation of Morocco was completed in March 1912. It represented one of the more crass acquisitions of the era and any justification was entirely simulated. Centuries of independent statehood ended as France sought compensation for Britain's 'accidental' invasion of Egypt. It is hard to imagine the sense of injustice felt by the Moroccan people as they suffered five years of unprovoked war. The subsequent French protectorate over Morocco lasted for another 40 years.

Libya was the last remaining Ottoman possession in North Africa. Not wishing to miss out on the territory it had long been 'promised' by Germany, Britain and France, Italy declared war on Libya on 29 September, 1911 on the risible pretext of alleged abuse of Italian subjects (just as the French had in Morocco). On meeting stiff restistance from the Ottomans, the Italians embarked upon a 'scorched-earth' campaign across the Easterm Mediterranean, attacking Beirut, islands including Rhodes and positions in the Dardenelles. European diplomats feared Italian aggression might ignite war in the volatile Balkans and negotiated peace on condition that the Ottomans concede Libya to Italy in March, 1912. The Libyans fought against Italian rule into the 1930s.

North Africa was now under European colonial domination. Egyptian intellectual Ahmad Amin

Ahmad Amin

the changes brought by European rule. Women entered public
life and newspapers with different political views were published. Beirut and Cairo emerged as the two main centres for journalism and they remain so today. Censorship from the Sultan in Beirut resulted in 160 Arabic-language newspapers and journals being established in more liberal Egypt including Al-Ahram. The British eased press restrictions, considering a free press to be a pressure valve allowing emerging nationalists to vent steam. The political unit known as 'the Nation' was a product of European Enlightenment adopted by the Middle East during the 19th C. Imperialism provided the two catalysts necessary for nationalism to emerge: territory to defend and a common enemy to unite the population. Questions of what it meant to be Egyptian or Libyan emerged for the first time. In Egypt, Islamic modernists and secular nationalists began to set out their agendas (I can't help seeing the irony that Islamic State is built upon ideas formed in 18th C France - although they skipped the chapters on individual liberty and religious tolerance!).

The Islamic Reform agenda was led by thinkers Al-Afghani and Shaykh Muhammad Abduh. Al Afghani travelled widely and was alarmed by the seriousness of the European threat to Islam. he advocated modern Muslims live to the principles of their religion to ward off European intrusion.

Abduh was a journalist in Egypt and was exiled to Beirut for supporting Urabi in 1882. Subesequently, he met al-Afghani while travelling in Europe and together they launched a reformist journal that rallied for an Islamic response to European imperialism. Abduh took the first community of Muslims - the Prophet Muhammad and his followers - known as the salaf - as his role models. Salafism is now assoicated with Osama bib Ladin and the most radical wing of Muslim anti-Western activism.

'Correct' salafism led to Muslim dominance for the first four centuries of Islam's existence through the Mediterranean. Adduh argued Islam ossified thereafter and fell into blind observance of the law. Removing the mysticism and returning rationalsim would, Adduh argued, invigorate Islam and recover the dynamism that had once made it the dominant world civilisation. For Al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, Egyptian nationalism, social reform and national identity came from Islam.

The European led emancipation of women went against 'the natural order' for Egyptian rulers. In the 1890s the lawyer Qasim Amin argued for the improvement of women's place in society. He argued that failing to empower women disempowered the Arab world as a whole (less than 1% of women could read and write in Egypt in 1900). He connected the improvement of women to the improvement of the nation.

Ahmad Lufti al-Sayyid ad Mustafa Kamil were influential in shaping ealry Egyptian nationalism. Both were lawyers. al-Sayyid wanted to work with the British to bring Egypt up to a level where independence was possible. He was a founding member of the People's Party. Kamil was a founding member of the National Party and an agitator for the end of British occupation.

The British had brought order and low taxes making it hard for agitators to rise against them. Until the Dinshaway Incident. A British subject was killed after he shot pigeons raised by locals for food. British soldiers arrester 52 men. Four were sentenced to death, two to hard labour for life, one to 15 years in prison, six to 7 years and five to 50 lashes. Ahmad Amin read of this in the newspapers and henceforth only read Kamil's radical nationlist newspaper and the foundations of an Egyptian nationalist movement were all but laid.

Colonialism

European imperialism has its roots in Middle Eastern governments spending beyond their means to buy European technology. All of North Africa was under European rule before the First World War broke out after effectively being forced into debt bondage.

The deys of Algiers were autonomous and between 1793 and 1798 they supplied the French with grain on credit to support their campaigns in Italy and Egypt. The French never paid what they owed starting a spat between them and the Algerian government which resulted, farcically with Husayn Pasha striking the French consul, Pierre Deval, with his fly whisk. The French used it as an excuse to bolster King Charles's X position on the grounds of ending piracy and Christian slavery. On June 1830, 30,000 French soldiers took Algiers (despite Charles still being deposed in the July Revolution of 1830). As three centuries of Ottoman rule ended and 132 years of French rule began. Typically, the French underestimated the effect of colonization on Algeria's indigenous population.

A leading young man from the Sufi community in Western Algeria united Algerians to resist the French for 15 years. Abd Al-Qadir was considered a legitmate descendant of the Prophet Muhammad and defender of Muslim lands against foreign invaders. He was remarkable in that he gained intelligence allowing him to fight the sort of war that might drive the French towards peace.

Abd al-Qadir in Damascus, 1862.

In 1839, after the French double-crossed him on who would run Constantine, Abd al-Qadir descended on the French farming community outside Algiers. This provoked a massive campaign by the French to completely occupy Algeria. Despite having a plan to draw the French into the Sahara, their scorched earth policy of killing men, women and children turned public opinion against Abd al-Qadir's resistance movement. Al-Qadir withdrew his supporters and their families (60,000) to a camp called a zimala for their own safety. The French found them after three years and attacked killing one tenth of the population, damaging morale.

Abd al-Qadir withdrew to Morocco and continued his resistance until Morocco agreed to outlaw him from their country to avoid French intervention. In December 1847 he surrendered his sword to the French. Eventually Abd al-Qadir was given a steamship and a pension for life by president Louis Napoleon and he moved to Damascus where he played an important role in communal politics.

Algeria was formally annexed to France in 1870, with nearly 250,000 French settlers living there. Only the Zionist colonization of Palestine can match what the French achieved in Algeria.

From 1840 to 1881, Europe kept its promise to preserve the integrity of the Ottoman empire (apart from France's violent imperial war with Algeria). Nationalism was a product of 18th century European Enlightenment and the Balkan Nations - Romania, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Macedonia - began to seek their independence from 1830 onwards. The seeds of the First World War were being planted. In 1875 a major revolt broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in 1876 Prince Milan of Serbia declared war on the Ottoman empire, following reported massacres of Christians. Russia supported the slavic peoples of the Balkans, much to the chagrin of Conservative prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, who supported Ottoman Empire as a buffer against Russian ambition in Continental Europe. The press put public opinion against Disraeli

Disraeli and Gladstone.

in this matter and turned it into a political barb for his Liberal opponent, William Gladstone to wield against him. The British government was forced to abandon its support of Ottoman territorial integrity after this and the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire commenced in earnest.

The Russians defeated the Turks (glossing over this - but it was an awful war) and at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, European powers embarked upon the first partition of Ottoman territory. The Ottoman Empire lost two-fifths of its territory and one fifth of its population (half of them Muslim).

On the eve of the Congress of Berlin, Britain cleverly concluded a treaty of defensive alliance with sultan Abdul Hamid II in exchange for Cyprus, where it could oversee the smooth flow of navigation through the Suez Canal. Cyprus led to France being 'compensated' with Tunisia which in turn led to

Steamships in the Suez Canal, 1880.

the Italians being 'compensated' with Libya (which happened in 1911). The Tunisians were paying their debts and declined to give up their sovereignty but the French mobilized as they had with the 1827 'fly-whisk' incident in Algeria after the Tunisians expelled an insolvent Frenchman which was used as the feeblest of excuses to mobilise an invasion force to redeem French national honour. However, the Bey of Tunisia conceded to all of France's demands and another opportunity had to be found to make Tunisia theirs. A border infringement with Algeria by tribesmen provided that opportunity and Tunisia ceded its sovereignty to France in 1881. Shortly after, Britain 'accidentally' occupied Egypt in 1882.

Egypt's landed elites wanted more power so threw in with the army against the ruling, European approved khedive. Austerity measures hit Arabic speaking Egyptian soldiers hard and Colonel Ahmad Urabi led a movement to prevent native-born Egyptian soldiers from being dismissed as Turco-Ciscassian commanders favoured their own Turkish speaking troops. After a disastrous attempt to annex Abyssinia, the Egyptian army was to be trimmed from 15,000 to 7,000 and 2,500 officers were to be put on half pay. Urabi then set a dangerous precedent repeated in the 20th century through Arab history of military men entering politics. He was, in fairness, only defending the unfair dismissal of his own people. Urabi was arrested and there was a mutiny in the Egyptian army who forced the khedive and his government to accept their demands. Urabi's success attracted the landed elit and intellectuals who wanted a better deal for Egyptians but they weren't nationlists although Europe saw them as such. Urabi and his civilian supporters took over government. Urabi assumed control of the military and imprisoned his Mamluk enemies. European officials appointed to the Egyptian civil service were dismissed.

Britain and France demanded Urabi's dismissal from cabinet. When that backfired they sent a fleet of warships to Alexandria. Riots between Europeans and Egyptians began on 11 June, 1882 following a street fight between a coachdriver and an English subject. The press fanned the flames and Urabi dispatched 12,000  troops to stop the riots and prepare for invasion. The French fleet , defeated in Germany and over-extended by campaigns in Tunisia and Algeria, withdrew on 5 June. As an Imperial power, retreat was not an option for Victorian Britain, with national pride at stake. On 11 July, Admiral Beauchamp Seymour opened fire on the ramparts of Alexandria. The city was ablaze, the Egyptian forces in retreat and so began three quarters of a century of British occupation.

Black Watch - 1882

In the war that followed, Urabi gained the support of the landed elite, the religious establishment and urban merchants. Urabi's forces stimied the first march on Cairo but were unable to prevent its fall. Urabi and his colleagues were exiled to Ceylon and Khedive Tawfiq was reinstated (without full sovereignty).

The French responded to losing their client state to 'perfidious Albion' with the 'scramble for Africa'.
This almost led to war in Sudan over an isolated stretch of the Nile. Rather than fight, the French were compensated with Morocco, an independent state which neither sought nor provoked invasion!

In April 1904 France promised not to interfere with Egypt and Britain promised not to interfere with Morocco. Spain were appeased with the Moroccan coastline. Kaiser Wilhelm II wanted Alsace-Lorraine, seized in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, to be recognised in exchange for recognition of Frances ambitions in Morocco. However, Italy, Britain and Spain put pressure on Germany to recognise Frances ambitions.

The sharifs of Morocco had ruled independently of Europe and the Ottoman Empire since 1511. However, Morocco had fallen foul to the same trick or trap of debt bondage in their attempts to keep up with European technological advances. France used attacks on French property in Morocco to occupy Casablanca. Germany sent a gunboat but were bought off with territory in the French Congo.