ABSTRACT
The British intervention in Egypt from July 1882 can be understood as a response to a normative threat to international order in the sensitive strategic location of the Near East. This section argues that post-intervention British policy in Egypt contained a fundamental inconsistency. Multipolar competition resulted in continual attempts by the Continental Powers to erode the perceived relative gain of Britain's position in Egypt. Anglo-French dominance compounded Egypt's ambiguous political status within the Ottoman Empire. Since the 1820s, Egypt's Turko-Circassian ruling aristocracy had wrested increasing political concessions from Constantinople to the point of de facto statehood under nominal Ottoman suzerainty by 1873. Press correspondents at Alexandria viewed the political instability fostered by the ignorant soldiery' as threatening the entire fabric of Egyptian governance. The revolt in Egypt and its mobilization of Islamic sentiment carried much wider Empire ramifications for British policy-makers.
