1878   


Two decades after the Crimea war, Russia was at war with the Ottomans again. In the peace treaty of San Stefano, the Russians forced the Turks to recognize a large Bulgarian state. This was unacceptable for the other European powers, notably Austria-Hungary and Britain. Bismarck offered to mediate, and the Congress of Berlin was held. The Congress resulted in a compromise that averted a European war. A smaller Bulgarian state became a tributary of the Ottoman Empire, while Serbia, Roumania en Montenegro were enlarged and became completely independent of the Ottoman Empire. The Turkish provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina came under Austrian military occupation. This was an elaborate compromise between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian ambitions, on the receiving end of which was the Ottoman Empire. The demise of that state would now go on a fast track. From now on the Empire was basically fair game for the interventions of the rivalling European powers. The British received the island of Cyprus that was strategically en-route to the Suez Canal. The French started to interfere in Egypt (an Ottoman sub-state) whose ruler, the Khedive Ishmael, had gone bankrupt, due to the big loans he had received from European bondholders, who loaned money to the Khedive to enable him to enlarge his state well into Equatorial Africa (the present Sudan and beyond). These financial problems would reduce the Khedive to complete dependency on the European powers that intervened on behalf of his debtors. Eventually he would be removed by them. France and Britain introduced "the Caisse" in which Egypt was to put all of its resources to repay the European bondholders. When Arab nationalists revolted in Egypt, the British intervened to safeguard the financial interests of the European bondholders. In the process they frustrated the French ambitions towards Egypt and towards Africa in a wider sense. A rivalry between Britain and France was the result of that. The French had had an interest in Egypt since the days of Napoleon. These tensions would almost lead to war, but war was averted, and in the early twentieth century Franco-British friendship would be sealed in the Entente Cordiale. Egypt was left to Britain and France got a free hand in most of Northwest-Africa. Britain, in all but name, took over Egypt.