Modernization and the Growth of Nationalism 109
interest and sinking-fund payments on the loans which never
amounted to less than 12 per cent, per annum on the principal, it is
not surprising that, despite a great increase in the taxes levied on
the fellahin, expenditure during Ismail's reign amounted to
nearly double the total revenue for the period. In 1873 the floating
debt had risen to .£23,000,000; and in order to gain temporary
relief from this burden the Khedive1 contracted with Oppenheim
& Co. a new loan of £^32,000,000, but at a disastrous discount:
after discount, interest and commission had been deducted, he
received less than .£20,000,000 in hard cash. In order to
execute his ambitious programme of public works, moreover,
Isma'il had had recourse to large numbers of European con-
tractors (by 1871 the foreign population had increased to about
five and a half times its size in 1836), and many of these were un-
scrupulous adventurers who undertook concessions only in order
to find some alleged breach-of-contract on the part of the Egyptian
government and extract an exorbitant indemnity in the appro-
priate consular court to which the Capitulations gave them access.
When the Mixed Courts were set up in 1873 to regulate foreign
litigation, there was £40,000,000 in foreign claims outstanding
against the government: one case is on record in which the courts
awarded .£1,000 to a claimant who had sued for .£1,200,000. So
accustomed was the Khedive to victimization by these sharks from
Europe that he is reported to have remarked sarcastically in the
presence of one of them, 'Shut that window; if this gentleman
catches cold, it will cost me .£10,000'. Lord Milner, a far from
sympathetic critic of the extravagance of Isma'il, summed up the
situation: 'The European concession-hunter and loan-monger, the
Greekpublican andpawnbroker, thejewish and Syrianmoneylender
and land-grabber, who could always with ease obtain the protection
of some European Power, battened on the Egyptian Treasury
and the poor Egyptian cultivator to an almost incredible extent/2
By the end of 1875 Ism*ail, whose debts now amounted to
.£91,000,000, was four millions short on his next payment of inter-
est. In this plight he decided to dispose of his 44 per cent, share in
the capital of the Suez Canal Co.; and, as is well known., Disraeli
bought these shares for Britain for just under ^4,000,000. Isma'fTs
1 He had purchased this impressive but empty Persian title from the Sultan in
1866.
2England inEgypt, thirteenth ed., 15; cf. also 176 ff.