Egyptian Nationalism ••• 189tian growers and the government. During this cotton boom, European in¬
vestment bankers offered Isma'il loans on attractive terms. When the
boom ended after the Civil War, Egypt's need for money was greater than
ever, but now he could get credit only at high interest rates. In 1866 Isma'il
convoked an assembly representing the landowners to seek their consent to
raise taxes. Soon they were taxing date palms, flour mills, oil presses, boats,
shops, houses, and even burials.
Isma'il adopted still other stratagems to postpone the day of reckoning.
He offered tax abatements to landowners who could pay three years' taxes
in advance. He sold Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal Company—44 per¬
cent of the stock—to the British government in 1875. When a British dele¬
gation came to investigate rumors of Egypt's impending bankruptcy, the
khédive agreed to set up a Dual Financial Control to manage the public
debt. But a low Nile in 1877, high military expenses incurred in the Russo-
Turkish War, and an invasion of Ethiopia put the Egyptian government
deeper in debt. In August 1878 Isma'il, pressed by his European creditors,
agreed to admit an Englishman and a Frenchman to his cabinet; he also
promised to turn his powers over to his ministers. At the same time, he se¬
cretly stirred up antiforeign elements in his army. This was easy, for the
Dual Control had cut the Egyptian officers' pay in half. A military riot in
February 1879 enabled Isma'il to dismiss the foreign ministers and later to
appoint a cabinet of liberals who began drafting a constitution, much as
the Ottoman Empire had done in 1876. Britain and France, guarding their
investors' interests, asked the Ottoman sultan to dismiss Isma'il. He did.
When Isma'il turned over the khedivate to his son, Tawfiq, and left Egypt
in July 1879, the state debt stood at 93 million Egyptian pounds. It had
been 3 million when he came to power in 1863.
12 The Rise of Nationalism
Isma'iPs successes and failures made him the father of Egypt's first nation¬
alist movement. His new schools, law courts, railroads, and telegraph lines
drew Egyptians closer together and helped to foster nationalist feeling. So
did the newspapers he patronized with the hope of building a positive
public image. The Suez Canal and related projects drew thousands of Eu¬
ropeans into Egypt; they became models for modernization and at the
same time targets of native resentment.
Muslim feeling, always strong but usually quiescent, was aroused at this
time under the influence of a fiery pan-Islamic agitator, Jamal al-Din, called
al-Afghani (despite his claim of being an Afghan, he was really from Persia),