A History of the Colonization of Africa by Alien Races by Harry Johnston

(_Egypt and Eastern Africa._)

Ever since the first year of the 19th century, when Britain expelled the French from Egypt, she herself had longings to assume the control of that country. One reason for this desire was very clear: across Egypt lay the shortest sea route to India. Even without the Suez Canal, a day's journey on a railway or three days' journey by canal and carriage would transfer one from Alexandria on the Mediterranean to Suez on the Red Sea. Two hundred and thirty-four years ago, in the reign of Louis XIV, and one hundred and fourteen years ago, in the dawning empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, when steam was unknown as a motive power, the idea was conceived and born that Egypt controlled the back door, the garden gate of India. But when steam came into vogue on the sea, and later on the land, and people contrasted the saving of time the Egyptian route offered, compared with the weary three months' voyage round the Cape, it became apparent to British statesmen, that British influence must have full play if not exclusive control in Egypt.