ABSTRACT
In analyses of the modern Middle East, it has become commonplace to view the British occupation of Egypt in the summer of 1882 as a quintessential feat of imperialism-a premeditated land grab by the largest empire on Earth in its ceaseless quest for world domination. ‘The pretext for the British invasion was the claim that the government was in revolt against legitimate authority, and that order had broken down’, wrote the British historian, Albert Hourani. However, ‘the real reason was that instinct for power which states have in a period of expansion, reinforced by the spokesmen of European financial interests’.2
