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Khedive Ismail
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Essay of 2 pages for the course English Literature at CAM (Khedive Ismail)
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After reading about Khedive Ismail, the contrast between the architecturaltransformation that took place at his time versus the chaos happening now. Ismail , the
grandson of Muhammad Ali, ascended the throne in Egypt in 1863. As much as he had many
culprits work in his favor, both as an individual and a ruler, to achieve his target of modernizing
Egypt, as much as his poorly-thought of decisions were the beginning of his end. Not only did
his two-year educational stay in Paris provide him with a closeup insight of Europe that his
predecessor lacked, but also that fact that he ruled at a time when Egypt’s cotton crop prices
were hitting the roof in international markets aided him financially. However, that did not last
for long and eventually backfired.
Following Muhammad Ali’s footsteps in westernizing and modernizing Egypt, Ismail used the
infusion of funds he received for the cotton production to beautify his cities; Cairo was to have
the same boulevards, plazas, and gardens of Paris. Moreover, he built the Grand Opera House
and the National Theater morphing Cairo into becoming “Paris along the Nile.” Ismail was big on
impressing the Europeans; he had his urban engineers build structures around ugly rundown
areas so that outsiders would not catch a glimpse of them. He also persuaded Verdi, to write
opera Aida to celebrate the ancient Egyptian civilization. His aspirations were not only artistic,
but they were also political, educational and economic. He was intent on enlarging his army so
that it could carry out military campaigns in Sudan and Ethiopia, in addition to repairing and
extending the country’s canal networks and railways. Ali Mubarak and Ismail had the same
vision of what Egypt was to become. He served as the minister of public works and the minister
of schools; he drafted a law governing the educational system and expanded schools.
In order to pay back the debts he began with selling off state lands to private individuals and
pledging the taxation revenues of the wealthy provinces to European debt service and ended
with selling 44 percent of the government’s holdings in the Suez Canal Company to the British
government in 1875. What further destabilized the country were the native-born Egyptians
holding positions of power that were once monopolized by Turkish elites, which challenged the
privileges that the favorites of Muhammad Ali had enjoyed, therefore flaring up a rebellion
within the army itself. Lastly, Ismail lusted for a massive Egyptian empire centered in Sudan and
the Horn of Africa. His campaigns in Ethiopia were loaded in calamity that they provoked
resentment against him that led to a military rebellion, demands for parliamentary government,
and the British occupation of the country. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back when
it came in the reign of Khedive Ismail.
Yes, Ismail played the bigger part in drowning himself in new debts, yet he was already
plagued by inherited financial burdens from the very beginning. All due to the fact that Said
failed not to borrow from European financial houses, in addition to him signing an impulsive
agreement with Ferdinand de Lesseps to build a canal that links both seas to one another. Ismail
paid the price for his and his predecessors’ over-ambition that was never applicable with their
financial stance. However, he deserves to be lauded for the democratic reforms he made, such
as giving people the right to choose their representatives in the Consultation Council of
Representatives. Although he was not fit enough to be king and lacked the means for it, but he
surely had pure progressive intentions to elevate Egypt, unlike the wave of mayhem and
mutilation that is taking Egypt now by a storm.
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