The party called for the evacuation of the British from Egypt in 1907 and controlled a major newspaper, The Banner (Al Liwa). The religiously conservative National Party appealed to young professionals, such as students and people seeking government positions. Two political parties emerged by 1907 that increasingly became vehicles for Egyptian nationalism: the People’s Party (Al Hizb al Umma) and the National Party (Wantani Party), founded by the wealthy journalist and prominent lawyer Mustafa Kamil. After Tawfiq’s son Abbas Hilmi II ascended to become Egyptian Viceroy, the move toward independence picked up among Egyptians. Protests against Egyptian Viceroy Khedive Tawfiq were suppressed. Nationalism emerged in the late 19th century in response to concessions to British and French interests and increased further with the informal establishment of a British protectorate in 1882. Taxes were also raised to pay foreign debt, which was widely unpopular.

The debt reached crisis levels by 1875, forcing Ali’s grandson and successor Ismail to sell his interest in the canal to Britain. Completed in 1869, the Suez Canal was one of several expensive development projects that put Egypt heavily into debt with usurious European bankers. Ali’s son and grandsons succeeded him, and often continued his legacy of development and modernization of the Egyptian state, infrastructure and economy. An Albanian commander, Muhammad Ali, quickly distinguished himself as a popular leader and became the Ottoman Viceroy in Egypt in 1805. Albanian forces, nominally loyal to the Ottomans initially, emerged in the four years of chaos that followed the French retreat. Napoleon Bonaparte invaded in 1798, but the French were quickly expelled by the combined armed forces of the British, Mamluk and Ottoman empires in 1801. Since its height as one of the world’s great early civilizations, Egypt had contended with occupation by the Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Ottomans.

Lasting legacy of egypt