Why was Egypt forced to give up so much of its land in 1840? (Short Animated Documentary)

0:00 Egypt is a part of the world

0:01 where borders have drastically changed over the centuries.

0:04 And whilst the rise and fall of regional powers is nothing special,

0:07 Egypt is a nation which in the mid-9th century had all of these lands taken

0:10 away from it at the height of its power by a coalition of great powers.

0:13 You know the ones, it's always them.

0:15 Egypt had obtained all of this after rebelling against

0:18 and then defeating the Ottoman Empire in two separate wars.

0:20 But shortly after this, and without so much as a single

0:22 loss by the Egyptian army to the Ottoman one,

0:24 Cairo's gains were returned to Constantinople and everyone

0:27 just sort of forgot about the whole thing.

0:28 which raises the obvious question, why did this happen?

0:31 And why would Egypt accept the loss of all

0:33 of this land without putting up more of a fight?

0:35 So, like so many things in the 19th century,

0:37 in order to understand this one fully, we have to go back to Napoleon.

0:41 As you'll know, before Napoleon's rise to ruling France,

0:43 he launched an invasion of the Ottoman Empire's

0:45 province of Egypt with the hope of using it

0:47 as a launchpad for disrupting Britain's trade and contact

0:49 with India and the rest of its empire.

0:51 And here, the Ottomans were thoroughly beaten.

0:53 And it was only due to both the intervention of the British and events

0:55 back in France forcing Napoleon to sneak off that the French weren't successful.

0:59 So after the dust had settled,

1:00 someone needed to take the blame for this catastrophe.

1:03 And the only people who could were either the Ottoman governor of Egypt,

1:06 appointed by the Sultan to make sure it stayed in line and paid its taxes,

1:08 or the Mammluks, the local elite who helped out

1:11 the Ottomans in return for maintaining some authority and prestige.

1:14 After some long reflection, it turned out that nobody was at fault.

1:17 And this soon led to a civil war breaking out in Egypt,

1:20 during which the Ottomans discovered that they were in fact broke,

1:23 which meant they couldn't pay their Albanian troops

1:25 in the region who they had brought in to keep order.

1:27 They promptly rebelled, removed the Ottoman appointed governor,

1:29 and replaced him with Tahir Pashia, their leader.

1:32 To everyone's shock and surprise,

1:33 Tahir also wasn't able to magic up money from nothing,

1:36 and so also couldn't pay all of his troops.

1:38 Some of him promptly offed him, and in hisstead rose Muhammad Ali.

1:41 Ali was able to fend off the demands for pay from the troops

1:43 because he was extremely well-liked by local leaders and Cairo's populace,

1:46 meaning that getting rid of him wouldn't be so easy.

1:49 Ali was able to consolidate his hold on power and defeat

1:51 the numerous attempts by the Ottomans and the Mamluks to oust him.

1:54 In 1805, Saleem III, the Ottoman Sultan,

1:56 realized that Ali wasn't going anywhere and so gave

1:58 him the title of Pashard and made him governor.

2:00 After some more civil war, a failed British intervention against Ali,

2:03 and a massacre of five, Muhammad Ali was now firmly in control of Egypt.

2:06 And as an insult to his supposed Ottoman overlords, he took the title of Kadiv,

2:10 which was a much grander title than the one he had been given,

2:12 and one that only the Sultan had the right to hand out.

2:15 Ali swiftly undertook sweeping reforms of Egypt in its economy.

2:18 He monopolized all foreign trade, which massively increased tax revenue,

2:21 and he used this money to build a larger, more modern military.

2:24 This military was soon put to use when the Ottomans

2:26 lost control of Mecca and Medina to the souths.

2:28 The Ottoman Sultan asked Ali for help to regain it, which he was able to do,

2:32 thereby giving him a lot of prestige in the region

2:33 and again making the Ottoman government look wildly incompetent.

2:36 In the 1820s, he also expanded Egypt southwards,

2:39 taking all of this, which gave him access to things to sell like gold,

2:42 timber, and of course, people.

2:44 As you'll probably know,

2:44 the 19th century was not a happy one for the Ottoman Empire.

2:47 And when the Greeks revolted in the 1820s

2:49 and Constantinople was unable to crush the revolt,

2:51 the Sultan yet again turned to Ali in Egypt for help.

2:54 This time though, Ali wanted compensation.

2:56 And it was promised that in return for him crushing the Greek revolt,

2:59 he would be given Cree,

2:59 which he gladly accepted because Cree would make an important naval

3:02 base and would massively increase Egypt's

3:04 reach and influence across the Mediterranean.

3:06 The war in Greece started off well for the Egyptian forces.

3:09 However, Britain, France,

3:10 and especially Russia wanted to see an independent Greece,

3:12 and they were also deeply worried about this upstart ruler gaining Cree,

3:15 which would complicate things in the Mediterranean for them.

3:18 As such, they intervened and promptly destroyed

3:20 Egypt's shiny new and very expensive navy,

3:22 as well as ensuring Greece would break away from the Ottoman Empire,

3:24 which begrudgingly accepted this new reality in 1830.

3:28 Upset by this loss, Ali began rebuilding his military

3:30 and demanded compensation from the Ottomans for his losses.

3:32 They refused because there was nothing he could do about it.

3:35 But turns out he could invade, which he did in 1831.

3:38 The Ottomans had very little ability to resist this invasion because

3:41 the overwhelming majority of their military were stationed on the frontiers,

3:44 either in the north or in the Balkans.

3:46 And up until this point, if there were any troubles in the Levant,

3:49 well, the trusty Egyptians would pick up the slack.

3:51 As such, Ali's army was quickly able to occupy all of this territory.

3:54 And when the Egyptians did eventually meet the Ottomans here in Connor,

3:57 the Ottomans were soundly defeated.

3:58 And thus, there was no one left to resist the Egyptian army.

4:01 Now, Muhammad Ali knew that if he pushed too hard,

4:03 the great powers would intervene again.

4:04 And so, in 1833, he pushed for peace.

4:07 In the following treaty, the Ottoman Empire,

4:09 after being forced to by the European powers,

4:10 that is, acknowledged that Egypt was basically independent,

4:12 but everyone had to pretend that it wasn't,

4:14 and that the Ottomans would promise not to remove the new rulers of Egypt.

4:17 Furthermore, in return for him not advancing any further,

4:19 it was decided that he would in fact now

4:21 be given Cree as well as these territories in Arabia,

4:23 and that the Levant would become Egyptian vassels for as long as Ali lived.

4:26 He accepted these terms because even though

4:28 above all else he wanted internationally recognized independence,

4:31 he knew that his new territories would

4:32 strengthen his hand and that his successors

4:34 would likely be able to resist any Ottoman attempts to take it back.

4:37 So with all that done, why was it then that the great powers soon changed

4:40 their minds and forced Egypt to hand its gains back?

4:42 Shockingly, the Ottomans weren't too happy about these continued

4:44 humiliations at the hands of their supposed vassels.

4:47 And so they sought to regain the empire's territories

4:49 and if they could get rid of Ali altogether.

4:51 They did this by asking him to just hand them over.

4:54 And when that ingenious plan somehow failed, they just invaded.

4:57 This offensive went extremely poorly for the Ottomans, and yet again,

5:00 the Egyptian army was free to roam the Ottoman heartlands.

5:02 But it was here that internal divisions became a problem.

5:05 You see, Ali didn't want to do anything

5:06 that could get the great powers involved again.

5:08 But Ibrahim, his son and heir, wanted more.

5:10 You see, the Ottoman Sultan, had just died,

5:12 being replaced by Abdul Masid, his young son.

5:14 And Ibrahim believed that if the Egyptians simply advanced,

5:17 he would easily be able to overthrow

5:18 this teenager and make his father the new Sultan.

5:20 Ali was unsure in how to proceed because the British, the Russians,

5:23 and the Austrians were fiercely opposed

5:25 to anything that could threaten the Ottoman state.

5:27 And so they'd issued him an ultimatum demanding that his forces withdraw.

5:30 If he did so quickly, they'd let him keep this.

5:32 But if he dillied, or dare I say even dallied,

5:34 he would lose everything that he'd won.

5:36 Now, you'd think that faced with the overwhelming force of these three powers,

5:39 plus a nasty note from Prussia, Ali would have just agreed immediately.

5:41 But fun fact, no.

5:43 Looking back, this wasn't the brightest idea,

5:45 but Ali's main reason for resisting was that France

5:47 had largely been supportive of Egypt's new rulers.

5:49 partly because they had this wacky idea for a canal or something

5:51 and partly because it wanted to increase ties with North Africa.

5:54 Some of which it was in the process of conquering,

5:56 but the support was mostly because the great powers hadn't

5:58 consulted them about Egypt and so they felt left out.

6:01 At this point, the French government

6:02 and monarchy was already massively unpopular and so

6:05 a wave of nationalist sentiment seemed like a good way to boost support.

6:08 The French dispatched a fleet to Egypt as a show of solidarity

6:11 and made it clear that they believed that compensation was needed.

6:13 Not for Egypt, obviously, this was the 19th century.

6:16 They'd get nothing.

6:17 Instead, the French demanded that in return for being left

6:19 out of the solution to the crisis in the Ottoman Empire,

6:22 the Austrian led German Confederation and Prussia should seed

6:24 all of their territories west of the rhyme to it.

6:26 Now, this might seem like an insane ask because it

6:30 was and all it did was put everyone on edge.

6:32 Now, the French knew that they couldn't fight,

6:34 let alone win a major war against the other European powers.

6:37 And so, in order to calm things down,

6:39 Adolfier, the French prime minister, mobilized the army,

6:41 fortified Paris, and publicly declared that he was

6:43 more than willing to fight to the bitter end.

6:45 This made the rest of the French political class quite nervous.

6:48 And when the king vetoed his more aggressive diplomatic moves, the A resigned.

6:52 His replacement was quick to back down,

6:54 order the French navy home and apologized for causing a ruckus.

6:56 And whilst France was making all of these threats,

6:58 Ali saw it as an opportunity to give him some wiggle room.

7:01 And it was this hope that the great powers would look

7:03 to moderate their demands in order to calm things down with France.

7:06 They did not.

7:07 As a result, Ali was forced to yield to these demands,

7:10 which saw him in Egypt lose all of these lands in Arabia,

7:12 the Levant, and also Cree.

7:14 But he was allowed to remain as ruler

7:15 of Egypt because getting rid of him sounded difficult.

7:18 Egypt was given greater autonomy within

7:19 the empire and his son's succession was guaranteed,

7:21 providing that he didn't die first, of course.

7:23 But given that Ali had risen to rule Egypt

7:25 on the back of a revolt by his fellow Albanian soldiers,

7:28 that outcome wasn't all too bad when you think about it.

7:30 For the European powers, their intervention was a successful one.

7:33 You see, they didn't back the Sultan out of the kindness of their heart.

7:36 but because they knew that if the Ottoman Empire were to collapse,

7:38 it was anyone's guess as to what the region would look like afterwards.

7:41 And more importantly,

7:41 if any of their fellow powers would profit at their expense.

7:44 Also, by paying lip service to the Ottoman ownership of Egypt,

7:46 whilst at the same time realistically making it independent,

7:49 European powers now had a means of gaining significant influence

7:52 in an important part of the Mediterranean

7:54 without having to go through Constantinople, which for the French and later

7:57 the British turned out to be extremely profitable.

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