xiv, 289 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates : 24 cm For a hundred years or more, until the last troops embarked at Suez in 1956, Egypt was the hub of Britain's empire, the point at which Western etiquette first encountered Eastern splendour. A unique cast of travellers, traders and troops made their way to and through Egypt. The explorer James Bruce, in 1768, thought Cairo was a great sink of tyranny and oppression, while Florence Nightingale, in 1849, called it the rose of cities and the garden of the desert. Samuel Shepheard opened a hotel here which became one of the world's most famous rendezvous. After the British invasion of 1882, Lord Cromer's unofficial control of the country was called the 'Veiled Protectorate'; but Egyptians were more familiar with the name of Thomas Cook & Son whose agents sent arrivals up the Nile to Luxor and Aswan by sailing boat or express tourist steamer. And Luxor's reputation was further enhanced after 1923 when Howard Carter made his famous discovery of the Tutankhamun tomb. Egypt had become a sophisticated resort which Noël Coward called the last refuge of the International Set. But by then Egyptian nationalism was in the ascendant, and soon the British would be withdrawing from Egypt for good. Using many rare diaries, letters and memoirs, Lifting the Veil traces the development of Western society along the Nile, showing how Egypt brought out a peculiar eccentricity in the imperial British character. Spiced with anecdote, adventure and

... Egypt came under virtual control by London after British forces bombarded the coast in 1882. From 1914 to 1922 Egypt was a British protectorate ... political and commercial presence after formal independence in that year. In 1952, a ... An authoritative history of modern European empires which covers: eras of colonisation and decolonisation; transnational themes in colonialism; and 'snapshots' of particular colonies at key moments.

in Egypt , which at once became the authoritative account of the work done since the British occupation. Sir Alfred Milner remained at the Board of Inland

as the United Kingdom declared Egypt to be a formal protectorate of the United Kingdom. Whilst Egypt was not annexed to the British Empire, with the British On 23 July 1952, a revolution began in Egypt with the toppling of King Farouk in a coup d'état by the Free Officers Movement, a group of army officers led by Mohamed Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. It ushered in a wave of revolutionary politics in the Arab world, contributing to the escalation of decolonization and the development of Third World solidarity during the Cold War. Though initially focu After the Anglo-Egyptian War, the United Kingdom was left in de facto control over the country, a state of affairs that became known as the veiled protectorate. In the years that followed, the United Kingdom would cement its political and military position in Egypt, and subsequently in Egypt's domains in Sudan, with the British high representative in Cairo exercising more power than the Khedive himself. In 1888, at the Convention of Constantinople, the United Kingdom won the right to protect the Suez Canal with military force, giving Britain a permanent base from which to dominate Egyptian politics. In 1899, the United Kingdom forced Tewfik's successor as Khedive, the nationalist Abbas II, to transform Sudan from an integral part of Egypt into the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a condominium in which sovereignty would be shared between Egypt and the United Kingdom. Once established, the condominium witnessed ever-decreasing Egyptian control, and would for most of its existence be governed in practice by the United Kingdom through the Governor-General in Khartoum. For the remainder of his reign, this would be one of the flashpoints between the nationalist Khedive Abbas II and the United Kingdom, with Abbas seeking to arrest and reverse the process of increasing British control in Egypt and Sudan. Egyptians nationalism was brewing under the harsh economic policies of the British. Nationalist activists such as Mostafa Kamil Pasha, Abdullah an-Nadeem and Yaqub Sanu fought for greater autonomy for Egypt. The phrase "Egypt for the Egyptians" was a popular rallying cry among nationalists in protest to the privileges of foreigners. It was during this time that the five major points of contentions among nationalists were crystallized:

The Eastern Question was the great diplomatic conundrum caused by the gradual decline of the Ottoman Empire. It was an issue which took on different configurations depending upon a state’s geographical perspective. The term ‘Eastern Question’ was first used by Habsburg officials, who had seen it in land-based terms while Britain, which later became deeply involved with it, saw it from a maritime perspective. Ever since Nelson defeated Napoleon’s forces at the Battle of the Nile, Britain had been growing as a power in the Eastern Mediterranean and there is a continuum of intent that extends from the Battle of the Nile to Gallipoli, through Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem in 1917 and culminating in that remarkable day in November 1918 when British ships sailed into the Golden Horn and British forces took part in the occupation of Constantinople. British arms in 1918 had achieved a victory that had eluded all of Europe, all of Christendom, during the Crusades. Britain now dominated the Eastern Mediterranean world, with Constantinople occupied, a veiled protectorate over Mesopotamia, the Caspian Sea in British hands, the Caucasus occupied by British divisions from the Black Sea to the Caucasus mountains, and Egypt, Palestine and Syria all under British control.