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Sir Charles Dilke and the British Intervention In Egypt, 1882: decision making In a nineteenth-century cabinet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

M. E. Chamberlain
M. E. Chamberlain
Affiliation:
Senior Lecturer in History, University College of Swansea
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Extract

“There's Dilke that has done it all”, remarked Wilfrid Scawen Blunt to Lord Blandford as they watched Dilke walk down Piccadilly one day in July 1882.1 The “it” was the British intervention in Egypt which entangled Britain in Egyptian affairs for two generations. More soberly, Louis Mallet, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the India Office, wrote to Evelyn Baring a year later that the Liberal government of William Gladstone had made themselves “the unconscious, and some of them (not all) the unwilling instruments of a policy from which Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Salisbury would have shrunk, and which is big with future disaster”. “Dilke and Chamberlain” he wrote, “I consider mainly responsible for the Egyptian war.” In The Trouble Makers, A. J. P. Taylor came to the conclusion, “The occupation of Egypt in 1882 marked Gladstone's decisive breach with Radicalism. Indeed it ruined Radicalism for more than a generation. It began modern British Imperialism…”. How ironic if the ruin of British radicalism was brought about by the two leading radicals of Gladstone's predominantly Whig administration. What do the Dilke and Chamberlain papers among others reveal about the exact role of the two men in the crisis ?

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , October 1976 , pp. 231 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1976

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References

page 231 note 1 Gwynn, S. and Tuckwell, G. M., Life of Sir Charles Dilke, 2 vols. (London, 1917), vol. 1, p. 470Google Scholar. Blunt was a Sussex landowner, who had retired from the Diplomatic Service on inheriting the family estates. He constituted himself the spokesman of the Egyptian nationalist movement in London in 1882.

page 231 note 2 Mallet to Baring, 24 Dec. 1883 (Cromer Papers, Public Record Office, F.O. 633/7). Baring, later Lord Cromer, although he achieved fame as the great British ‘Pro-Consul’ in Egypt, initially had misgivings about the occupation.

page 231 note 3 Taylor, A. J. P., The Trouble Makers (London, 1957), p. 87Google Scholar.

page 232 note 1 Dilke's Diaries (Dilke Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 43924-5) reveal how he became almost paranoiac in his fears that he would again be passed over for cabinet office or that his initiatives would be attributed to other men. For one example see below p. 235. Lord Fitzmaurice wrote in July 1914, “The real truth is that Dilke was too big a man to be an Under-Secretary in 18 80, and the whole position was a false one”, quoted Gwynn and Tuckwell, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 310.

page 232 note 2 When the Liberals returned to office in Feb. 1886, Herbert Bismarck wrote privately to Rosebery, “don't put old Granny at the head of this most important office [the Foreign Office] ” and, when he heard that Rosebery was to be Foreign Secretary, expressed much relief “for a great fear prevailed that we would again have to deal with an elderly gentleman”, H. Bismarck to Rosebery, 31 Jan., 4 Feb. 1886 (Rosebery Papers, National Library of Scotland, Box 3). Dilke was almost as indiscreet. He wrote to Mrs Pattison in Nov. 1880, “Lord G. is old, and only about half a man, the useful and ornamental”, quoted in Jenkins, R., Sir Charles Dilke (2nd edn. London, 1968), p. 148Google Scholar.

page 232 note 3 Gwynn and Tuckwell, op. cit. vol. 2, pp. 83-84.

page 232 note 4. Ibid. vol. 1, pp. 52, 102; vol. 2, pp. 371 ff.

page 233 note 1 Dilke, C., Greater Britain, 2 vols. (London, 1868), vol. 2, pp. 402–4Google Scholar.

page 233 note 2 Malet to Granville, 24 Oct. 1881, minutes by Granville and Gladstone (Granville Papers, Public Record Office, 30/29/159). The despatch was printed, Parl. Papers, lxxxii (1882) 1Google Scholar.

page 233 note 3 Parl. Papers, lxxxii (1882) 5Google Scholar; Cromer, Lord, Modern Egypt, 2 vols. (London, 1908), vol. 1, p. 234Google Scholar.

page 233 note 4 For the close connection in Gambetta's mind between the Joint Note and Egyptians’ claim to control their budget, see Lyons to Granville, no. 30, 12 Jan. 1882 (Public Record Office, F.O. 27/2559).

page 234 note 1 Blunt, W. S., Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (2nd edn., London, 1907), pp. 159–61Google Scholar, 181–7.

page 234 note 2 Ibid. pp. 607-14.

page 234 note 3 Dilke was not merely holidaying in Provence but playing an elaborate game to ensure that he returned to Paris on Gambetta's invitation, see letters from Lord Lyons (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43883), especially those of 7, 14, 20, 2.1, 24 Dec. 1881 and curiously mutilated letter of 27 Dec. 1881.

page 234 note 4 Dilke to Gladstone, 28 Dec. 1881 - marked “Later” to distinguish it from another letter of the same date (Gladstone Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 44149).

page 234 note 5 Dilke to Gladstone, 2 Jan. 1882 (Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44149). The letter to Granville, to which Dilke referred in his letter to Gladstone of 28 Dec, is missing but there is a letter to Granville of 2 Jan. 1882 (Granville Papers, Public Record Office, 30/29/122) similar to his letter to Gladstone of that date in which he tells Granville that he had breakfasted with Gambetta for the fourth time that week and “He raised a matter at which he had already hinted and which I had named to Lord Lyons. He wants a joint representation to the Sultan at Constantinople about Egypt…”.

page 234 note 6 Lyons to Granville, no. 1180, 31 Dec. 1881 (F.O. 27/2499); Granville to Lyons, no. 12, 6 Jan. 1882 (F.O. 27/2552).

page 235 note 1 Lyons to Granville, no. 5 Secret, 3 Jan. 1882 (F.O. 27/2559).

page 235 note 2 Malet, E., Egypt, 1879-1883 (privately printed, London, 1909), pp. 213–26Google Scholar.

page 235 note 3 Granville to Lyons, no. 25, 10 Jan. 1882 (F.O. 27/2552); Lyons to Granville, no. 28, 11 Jan. 1882 (F.O. 27/2559); Dilke to Granville, 14 Jan. 1882 (Granville Papers, P.R.O. 30/29/122).

page 235 note 4 Dilke's Diary, 15, 16, 21 Jan. 1882 (Add. MSS. 43924). Dilke's Diary should be distinguished from his Memoirs (Add. MSS. 43935 relates to 1882) which were written up many years later, although they were frequently used by Gwynn and Tuckwell as if they were interchangeable; cf. Gwynn and Tuckwell , op. cit. vol. 1, pp. 454-6.

page 235 note 5 Dilke's Diary, op. cit. 12, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31 May, 1 June 1882 (Add. MSS. 43924).

page 235 note 6. Quoted Gwynn and Tuckwell, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 460.

page 236 note 1 Dilke's Diary, op. cit. 17, 19 June 1882 (Add. MSS. 43925).

page 236 note 2 See for example Tissot (French Ambassador in London) to Freycinet, 20 June 1882, “Cinq membres du Cabinet, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Hartington, Kimberley, Lord Northbrook et Sir Ch. Dilkes[sic] sont décidés à adopter une politiqu énergique; la majorité du Parlement est avec eux. ” Archives des Affaires Étrangeres, Paris, Angleterre 795).

page 236 note 3 See complaints in Dilke's Diary especially 24 July 1882 (Add. MSS. 43925) and exchange of notes between Dilke and Granville, 16 July 1882, when Dilke had to request an invitation. (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43880).

page 236 note 4 Lyons to Granville, no. 646 Secret, 30 June 1882 (F.O. 27/2566).

page 236 note 5 Granville to Lyons, no. 784, 3 July 1882; the same, no. 748A; drafts of these, one apparently prepared on 1 July, marked “Sent by Sir Ch. Dilke”; note by Tenterden, 4 July 1882 - “The draft of no. 784 of July 3 to Ld. Lyons was sent last night by Special Messenger. I thought you might have liked to stop it by telegraph but he has acted on it”; subsequent notes by Granville and Tenterden, n.d. (F.O. 27/2555). An undated and empty envelope, addressed to Dilke from Granville, bears a note in Dilke's handwriting, “The end of our row. He's got over it” and seems to relate to this period (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43880).

page 236 note 6 Dilke's Diary, op. cit. 4 July 1882 (Add. MSS. 43925).

page 236 note 7 Gwynn and Tuckwell, op. cit. vol. 1, p. 464; note by Granville, 1 July 1882 (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43880).

page 237 note 1 Dilke's Diary, op. cit. 4 July 1882 (Add. MSS. 43925). Rivers Wilson, now a British director of the Suez Canal Company, had once been Finance Minister of Egypt.

page 237 note 2 Gwynn and Tuckwell, op. cit. vol. 1, pp. 446-7, 466.

page 237 note 3 Dilke's Diary, op. cit. 7 July 1882 (Add. MSS. 43925).

page 238 note 1 Dilke's Diary, op. cit. 11 July 1882 (Add. MSS. 43925). Sir John Stokes was an engineer officer who had been the British government representative on the Suez Board of Directors since 1876. Reginald Brett, later second Viscount Esher, was Hartington's private secretary. Malet had been invalided home after what he at first supposed to have been an attempt to poison him but which was more probably an attack of fever.

page 238 note 2 Granville to Dufferin, 11 July 1882, Parl. Papers, lxxxii (1882), 439Google Scholar.

page 238 note 3 Dilke to Granville, 17 July 1882; Sanderson to Granville, 17 July 1882 (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43880).

page 239 note 1 Proof copy of the “Historical Despatch” with Dilke's manuscript amendments (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43923). The account in Dilke's Memoirs, published in Gwynn and Tuckwell, vol. 1, pp. 469-70, op. cit. is deliberately misleading, e.g. “The chief alterations … which we [Dilke and Chamberlain] made … were in the direction of omitting all reference to the financial engagements of Egypt, which we were most unwilling” to take upon ourselves in any manner. ”

page 239 note 2 Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 272, c. 1709.

page 239 note 3 Fitzmaurice, , Life of Lord Granville, 2 vols. (London, 1906)Google Scholar, vol. 2, p. 265; Garvin, J. L., Life of J. Chamberlain, vol. 1 (London, 1932), pp. 447–8Google Scholar.

page 239 note 4 For an analysis of the relationship see R. Jenkins, op. cit. pp. 98-100, 122ff.; cf, the comment of Edward Hamilton, Gladstone's private secretary, who was intimately concerned with these events, “Chamberlain being the alter ego of Dilke is said to be Jingoish”, Hamilton's Diary, 7 July 1882 (Hamilton Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 48632).

page 240 note 1 Quoted Garvin, vol. 1, op. cit. p. 445.

page 241 note 1 Cabinet Minute by J. Chamberlain, 21 June 1882 (Granville Papers, Cabinet Opinions, P.R.O. 30/29/143). This minute is printed in Chamberlain, J., A Political Memoir, 1880-1892, ed. Howard, C. H. D. (London, 1953), pp. 72–73Google Scholar, but in general Chamberlain's later recollections were as unreliable as Dilke's on the details of the crisis.

page 241 note 2 Minutes by Northbrook, Selborne and Hartington, 27 June 1882, by Kimberley, 28 June 1882 (Granville Papers, P.R.O. 30/29/143); note by Dilke, 4 July 1882 (Granville Papers, P.R.O. 30/29/122) - the copy of this in Dilke Papers 43880 is accompanied by a note “to try to stiffen Ld. G. ” on a despatch of 4 July - presumably the one instructing Seymour not to postpone hostile action at Alexandria because of the probable French withdrawal.

page 242 note 1 Minute, 18 Oct. 1882; memoranda A-D on Granville's despatches to Malet, 18 Oct. 1882 (Chamberlain Papers, Birmingham University Library, JC 7/1/3); Chamberlain to Dilke, 19, 23 Oct. 1882 (Dilke Papers, Add. MSS. 43885); Chamberlain to Harcourt, 22 Oct. 1882 (Harcourt Papers, Bodleian Library, by kind permission of the present Lord Harcourt). The Radicals discussed at some length whether it was possible to ascertain public opinion.

page 242 note 2 Chamberlain to Bright, 31 Dec. 1882 (Bright Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 43387).

page 242 note 3 Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 272, c. 1578, 1704-5.

page 243 note 1 Garvin, vol. 2, op. cit. pp. 447, 451-6.

page 243 note 2 Chamberlain to Dilke, 18 Jan. 1892 (Chamberlain Papers, JC 5/24).

page 243 note 3 Minute by Bright , 3 July 1882 (Granville Papers, P.R.O. 30/29/143).

page 243 note 4 Chamberlain to Harcourt, 31 Aug. 1882 (Chamberlain Papers, JC 5/38/131).

page 243 note 5 Hansard, 3rd ser., vol. 272, c. 722-3, 1702; The Diaries of John Bright, ed. Walling, R. A. J. (London, 1930), pp. 489–90Google Scholar. The vote was carried by 275 to 19.

page 243 note 6 Garvin, vol. 1, op. cit. p. 456.

page 244 note 1 Hansard, 3rd ser., vol . 272, c. 1709.

page 244 note 2 Trevelyan, G. M., Life of John Bright (London, 1913), pp. 433Google Scholar, 435; Sturgis, J. L., John Bright and the Empire (London, 1969), p. 112Google Scholar; Fraser, P., Joseph Chamberlain (London, 1966), p. 43Google Scholar.

page 244 note 3 Bright to Ripon, 2 Oct. 1882 (Ripon Papers, British Museum, Add. MSS. 43632).

page 245 note 1 Bright to Gladstone, 12 July (2 letters), 13 July, 15 July 1882, Gladstone to Bright, 14 July 1882 (Gladstone Papers, Add. MSS. 44113); Gladstone to Bright, 12 July, 13 July, 17 July 1882 (Bright Papers, Add. MSS. 43385).