Expressly Orient? Britain’s railway-making in pre-colonial Egypt

Constructed in the 1850s with heavy British involvement, the Egyptian railway was the first to be built in a non-European Mediterranean territory. Britain–which neither financed nor owned this railway–nonetheless came to view it as a British possession. Originally envisioned as a highway for connecting the Mediterranean to the Red Sea and India, the railway became a means unto itself in Britain’s drive for a foothold in Egypt. Taking place in a period of both expanding British influence in the Mediterranean and technological innovation, this article centres on the largely overlooked interconnectivity between the railway and Britain’s march to dominance in Egypt. To secure a railway, Britain systematically undermined Ottoman sovereignty in semi-independent Egypt. Britain’s efforts ranged from gunboat diplomacy to combating Ottoman legal reform intended to limit capital punishment, which Britain saw as a prerequisite to safeguarding its interests in Egypt. Moreover, Britain de facto supported the railway’s construction through mass Egyptian forced labour. Once in operation, the railway became a social site that produced de facto colonial racial hierarchies. Combined, the article shows how, decades before the 1882 British occupation of Egypt, the railway project irrevocably contributed to Britain’s gradual colonization of Egypt.