A similar process was under way in the Nile valley. Ever
since the voyages of the Portuguese explorers at the close
of the fifteenth century, European trade with the East had
been carried on almost exclusively by the route around
the Cape of Good Hope. But from the outset, there was
some interest in shortening the route by digging a canal
east of Cairo, where only a low, swampy isthmus separated
the Mediterranean from the Red Sea. The Ottoman
Turks, who controlled the area, had considered constructing
a canal in the sixteenth century, but nothing
was accomplished until 1854, when the French entrepreneur
Ferdinand de Lesseps signed a contract to begin construction
of the canal. The project brought little immediate
benefit to Egypt, however, which under the vigorous
rule of the Ottoman official Muhammad Ali was attempting
to adopt reforms on the European model. The costs of
construction imposed a major debt on the Egyptian government
and forced a growing level of dependence on foreign
financial support. When an army revolt against
growing foreign influence broke out in 1881, the British
stepped in to protect their investment (they had bought
Egypt’s canal company shares in 1875) and set up an informal
protectorate that would last untilWorldWar I.
The weakening of Turkish rule in the Nile valley had
a parallel farther to the west, where autonomous regions
had begun to emerge under local viceroys in Tripoli, Tunis,
and Algiers. In 1830, the French, on the pretext of
reducing the threat of piracy to European shipping in
the Mediterranean, seized the area surrounding Algiers
and annexed it into the kingdom of France. By the mid-
1850s, more than 150,000 Europeans had settled in the
fertile region adjacent to the coast, while Berber resistance
continued in the desert to the south. In 1881, the
French imposed a protectorate on neighboring Tunisia.
Only Tripoli and Cyrenaica (Ottoman provinces that
make up modern-day Libya) remained under Turkish rule
until the Italians took them in 1911–1912.
World History
