Anglo-Egyptian War

The Anglo-Egyptian War was fought in 1882 between Britain, backing the Egyptian Khedive Tewfik Pasha, and Egyptian nationalist forces led by the army officer Ahmed Urabi, who had risen against the Khedive's government the previous year in opposition to growing British and French financial and political control over Egypt. Following anti-European rioting in Alexandria in June 1882, the British fleet bombarded the city in July, and British forces under General Garnet Wolseley then landed and advanced through the Suez Canal zone, defeating Urabi's forces at Kafr El Dawwar in August before winning a decisive victory at the Battle of Tell El Kebir in September. Urabi was captured, tried and sent into exile, and the war's outcome established a British military occupation of Egypt that, though formally leaving Ottoman and Khedival sovereignty intact, gave Britain effective control over the country for the following seven decades. The occupation that followed the war became a central grievance of later Egyptian nationalist movements through the first half of the twentieth century.