2023/01/30 by Nick Foretek · 1 voice · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Ancient history #Archaeological Research and Protection #Archaeology #Cave #Geography #History
paper · doi:10.1093/pastj/gtac045
published in Past & Present 261(1), 158-192 (Oxford University Press)
openalex publication_date 2023/01/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
In August 1876, when all was said and done, the former chancellor of the exchequer and current member of the Liberal opposition Robert Lowe stood before the House of Commons to ‘term the drama . . . “the decline and fall of Egyptian credit” ’. Marshalling all his powers of vituperation, he divided the unsavoury process into ‘four acts, or tableaux’: ‘intrusion’, ‘inquisition’, ‘suppression’ and ‘repudiation’. It had involved an ‘extraordinary doctrine’ and an ‘unprecedented’ set of events according to which ‘a Mission should have been forced and foisted upon an independent country that never asked for it’. Its central protagonist had been Stephen Cave, the Conservative MP for New Shoreham, whose actions ‘gave a mortal wound, from which [Egypt has] never rallied since’.1 This article directs its view towards an early form of British intelligence intervention by examining the events leading up to the Report by Mr. Cave on the Financial Condition of Egypt (1876). In particular, it explores how the acquisition of certain forms of financial information paralleled emerging institutional intelligence tactics in late nineteenth-century Britain. It further develops an analytical framework for understanding intelligence gathering as a unique method through which the British government extended its imperial umbrella. When considered at all, Cave’s mission and report have been advanced as a mere precursor to the management of Egyptian finances spearheaded by France and Britain between 1876 and 1882, rather than as a pivotal process through which novel forms of imperial intervention became conceivable through the capture, synthesis and distribution of proprietary information within the realm of finance.2