The Problems of the Status of British Troops in Egypt After the Occupation in 1882

The article covers the issues of defining the status of the British occupational troops in Egypt from 1882 to 1922 and the diplomatic struggle of the great European states of that time over this problem. This whole problem is described in detail in its development since the establishment of the “veiled protectorate” designed to hide the true purpose of the British Government in the region, to the formal approval of the Protectorate status of the British Empire. It attempts to find the motives and methods of management of the British Foreign Office in this difficult situation considering counter of such powers as Russia and France. Herewith it provides data from the archives of the British Foreign Office, confirming all these facts. The evidences of the contemporaries of those events – Lord Milner and Cromer – who were representatives of the occupation authorities and published their memoirs, complete the picture. In addition to these documents we used the archival materials of India Records Office in the British Library. All these sources indicate that the official declaration of the Protectorate in 1914 only temporarily solved the problems creating additional difficulties for those officials who were responsible for the situation in the country. This decision allowed the British officials to conceal the explicit nature of the occupation and the British military presence in the Suez Canal zone. However, such policy aroused some problems, which led to a new round of the Egyptian national liberation movement in the future, and needed new solutions which were made only after the World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire