Expansion in the Industrial Age - Great Britain

EXPANSION IN THE INDUSTRIAL AGE HIST 1301 | History Great Britain Britain's initial foothold on the continent was in South Africa. Founded by Dutch traders in the seventeenth century, the Dutch Cape Colony was formally governed by Britain in 1806. The Dutch residents of South Africa, known as Afrikaners or Boers, were driven even further interior, north and east, in the Great Trek of 1836, when British immigrants came. South Africa was meant to be a colony of settlers. They gave the Cape Colony to the British and founded the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, two sovereign republics. Egypt was a great place for Britain to get cotton for its textile factories, thus it was its second point of interest in Africa. Since the fourteenth century, Europeans have been fascinated by the prospect of constructing a canal across the Suez Canal, which separates Asia from Africa. Trade with South and East Asia would be much eased if the Mediterranean and Red Seas were connected. This would enable ships to access the Indian and Pacific Oceans without having to circumnavigate Africa. The moment appeared right to turn this dream into a reality. The son of Muhammad Ali, Sa'id Pasha became the ruler of Egypt and Sudan in 1854. In 1854, the French businessman and politician Ferdinand de Lesseps asked for permission to build a canal across Egyptian land. After receiving it, Lesseps assembled a group of seven nations in 1858 to design a canal that would be accessible to ships from any country. The Suez Canal opened for navigation in 1869, with construction starting in 1859. At first, Britain had been against the canal. It put the British Cape Colony in jeopardy and increased access to and vulnerability in its most valuable colony, India, as well as its control over the primary maritime route to Asia. But when Ismail Pasha, who succeeded his uncle Sa'id Pasha as khedive or viceroy of Egypt and Sudan in 1863 and found himself heavily indebted to European creditors, which allowed European interests to influence him, Britain's stance on the matter shifted. For instance, he was compelled to set up a system of two courts, where judges from Europe, not Egypt, handled cases involving European defendants. Ismail Pasha ceded Egypt's interests in the Suez Canal to Britain in 1875 because he was unable to pay his obligations. Additionally, he was compelled to hand up control of Egypt's financial affairs to British and French authorities. Colonel Ahmed Urabi led an Egyptian anti-European rebellion that started in 1879. Britain and France asked the Ottoman sultan to remove Ismail Pasha from office and replace him with his more amiable son, Tawfiq Pasha, after Pasha bowed to Urabi's demands to remove the British and French from positions of administration. Despite their reluctance to acknowledge Tawfiq as their king, Urabi's army persisted in fighting until the British destroyed them in 1882. Following the Anglo-Egyptian War, Urabi was banished and Britain took over administration of Egypt and Sudan in order to safeguard its financial interests in the area. An further threat emerged in Sudan, where British influence had been shaky, as hostilities between Britain and Urabi's soldiers were drawing to an end. A religious figure by the name of Muhammad Ahmad urged the Sudanese people to rise above Ottoman domination in 1881, which effectively meant liberating themselves from Egyptian control under British supervision. Muhammad Ahmad started to identify himself as the Mahdi, a messiah or saviour who will arrive on the planet to restore the practice of "true" Islam and bring about a brief era of justice before to the end of the world. After declaring a holy jihad against the Egyptian king, Muhammad Ahmad attracted adherents. Even after the Mahdi's death in 1885, his adherents persisted in imposing their rule over the region, despite British attempts to keep authority over Sudan failing.