Forms of foreign intervention

02Forms of foreign intervention

The Cadwalter mission (1875)

• It was brought from Britain to help solve the financial crisis.
• This drove France to send its own expert, M. Vivier, so that England should not take the matter alone.

The Debt Fund (1876)

• To conciliate the creditors, Isma'il asked them to devise the system they approved.
• The French side submitted the project of founding the Fund and consolidating the debts, and a decree was issued creating it.
• Its task: to be a sub-treasury beside the public treasury, receiving the sums earmarked for the debts directly from the government departments.
• It was the first official European body created to impose foreign intervention in Egypt's affairs: it was administered by foreign delegates nominated by the creditor states and appointed by the Khedive.
• Then the forms of intervention came tumbling down: in May 1876 the Khedive issued a decree creating a Higher Council of Finance of ten members, half of them foreigners.

Dual control (November 1876)

• It was created to supervise Egypt's finances through two controllers, one English and one French.

The European inquiry commission

• When the government's financial position worsened, the control administration accused the Khedive of placing obstacles in the way of ordering financial affairs.
• At the proposal of the controllers and the members of the Fund, a European inquiry commission was formed (January 1878); Isma'il yielded and issued a decree creating the Supreme Commission of Inquiry to examine the government's financial affairs and verify the deficit in the revenue heads and its causes.
• A further decree in March 1878 generalised its competence to include all the revenues and expenditures of the government, obliging ministers and officials to give it all the data.