Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer

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Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer bigraphy, stories - British diplomat

Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer : biography

26 February 1841 – 29 January 1917

Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer GCB, OM, GCMG, KCSI, CIE, PC, FRS (26 February 1841 – 29 January 1917), was a British statesman, diplomat and colonial administrator. He was British controller-general in Egypt during 1879, part of the international Control which oversaw Egyptian finances after the khedives’ mismanagement, and during the British occupation prompted by the Urabi revolt, agent and consul-general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907. Far from the centre of the Empire, Cromer ran the territory with great drive and his effective governance balked British wishes to withdraw from Egypt.

Later years

Baring returned to Britain at the age of 66, and spent a year regaining his health. In 1908, he published, in two volumes, Modern Egypt ( & ), a narrative of events in Egypt and the Sudan since 1876. In 1910, he published Ancient and Modern Imperialism, an influential comparison of the British and Roman Empires. In 1914, World War I broke out. The Khedive Abbas II supported the Ottomans, and was deposed by the British. This freed Baring to publish his impressions of the Khedive, Abbas II, in 1915.

A lover of the classics, Baring was very well-read and spoke Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Turkish, but he never bothered to learn Arabic (the language of the lower classes in Egypt). During the opening years of the 20th century a nationalist movement began to appear in Egypt, but Baring, who became increasingly aloof with age, brushed it off as inconsequential.

In most regards, Baring was a typical Englishman of his generation. He believed with great conviction in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and its duty to act as a parental figure to the less advanced peoples of the world. Viewing the Eastern mind as weak and "slipshod", he often boasted that he possessed an intimate understanding of it (despite evidence to the contrary). He very much fitted the stereotype of the British colonial administrator: fair, hardworking, devoted, and patriotic but humourless. Known to co-workers and intimates as "Vice-Viceroy" and "Over-Baring", he could be brusque and condescending to both his peers and the "subject races".

Baring was active in politics. Having been raised to the peerage as Lord Cromer in 1892, Baring was entitled to sit in the House of Lords. He joined the free-trade wing of the Unionist party. Baring was a leader of the anti-suffragette cause, serving as the president of the Men’s League for Opposing Woman Suffrage in 1908, then in 1910–12, the subsequent National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage. In 1916, he was appointed to the Dardanelles Commission, but it was too much strain for the 75-year old Baring to handle, and he died on 29 January 1917.

An English Heritage blue plaque commemorates Baring at 36 Wimpole Street in Marylebone.

British Consul-General of Egypt

The Urabi Revolt, led by Ahmed Urabi, a rising Egyptian colonel, endangered the Khedivate. After the subsequent intervention by the British in Alexandria (the 1882 Anglo-Egyptian War), Baring returned from India in Egypt as the British agent and consul-general, "with a mandate for minor reforms and a prompt withdrawal of British troops".http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/reid.html Baring’s requests to withdraw were thwarted by British public outcry when the 1881 uprising of the Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad and the ensuing Mahdist War caused the successive defeats and deaths of the popular Colonel William Hicks and General Chinese Gordon.

Baring’s first act as Consul-General was to approve of the Dufferin Report, which essentially called for a puppet parliament with no power. In addition, the report asserted the need for British supervision of reforms deemed necessary for the country. Furthermore, it stated the interests of the Suez Canal zone should always be maintained. Baring believed that because of Egyptian administrative incompetence, a long occupation was essential to any sort of reform. Moreover, he established a new guiding principle for Egypt known as the Granville Doctrine (named for the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville). The doctrine enabled Baring and other British officials to dismiss Egyptian ministers who refused to accept British directives. Under Baring, British officials were positioned in key ministries and a new system, known as the Veiled Protectorate, was introduced. Essentially, the government was a façade. Egyptian ministers were the outward form, yet British officials held the actual power. Baring thus remained the real ruler of Egypt until 1906, and this arrangement worked well for the first ten years of British control because Tawfiq Pasha was a weak man more than happy to abdicate any governmental responsibility. The Egyptian army, which Baring considered utterly untrustworthy due to its previous mutinies against the Khedive, was disbanded and a new army organized along with British lines (much like in India). With Egyptian finances stabilised by 1887, Baring also compelled the government in Cairo to abandon any pretension of reconquering the Sudan, which Egypt had lost control of following the Mahdist Rebellion. Careful (and often stingy) handling of the budget, plus promotion of irrigation projects, brought considerable economic prosperity to Egypt. Baring believed that at some point in the future, British control of Egypt would end and full independence would be restored, but only once the Egyptian people learned proper self-governance.