Assess the Importance of the Colonels Revolt in Britain's Decision to Colonise Egypt

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Assess the importance of the colonel’s revolt in Britain’s decision to colonise Egypt European interest in Egypt was first sparked in 1798-99 by a Napoleonic campaign which was intended to strike at Britain by posing a threat to the newly acquired Indian empire, although militarily unsuccessful, it had the long term affect of changing the government in Egypt and establishing the French as the dominant European power in Egypt. Although Britain hadn't had any specific intentions to colonise Egypt at this point, because of reasons such as European rivalry and the location of Egypt as a convenient trading route to India, when events like the colonels revolt, the fall of the ottoman empire and France investing in the Suez canal occurred, It was more beneficial than detrimental to become increasingly involved in Egypt Although the colonel’s revolt was important in Britain’s decision to colonise Egypt, there are other factors to consider that led up to it, one of which is the strategic economic factors such as the Suez Canal and the Egyptian debt crisis. Because of it's positioning between the red and Mediterranean sea's Egypt had previously been used for it's overland trading route, used extensively from 1840, even more so after 1850 when a railway line from Alexandria to Cairo was constructed, however that route was too complicated for bulk cargo and it could only take dispatches which limited how much trade could be done with India The Suez Canal had always been seen as a potential trade route but it wasn't until the middle of the nineteenth century when a Frenchman put forward a method of how to feasibly construct it that it became a possibility. The British initially opposed the construction of it even though it would increase trade because the risk of it falling into enemy hands and gaining access to India was too great, they also contended that during times of
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