Cromer
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EVELYN BARING, 1st EARL, a British statesman, born in Cromer Hall, Norfolk, in 1841. He was educated at Woolwich Academy and entered the Royal Artillery at the age of 17. After filling several posts, he visited the United States during the Civil War, where he made a study of military operations. From 1872 to 1876 he was private secretary of the Earl of Northbrook, who was then Governor-General of India. In 1877 he was appointed Commissioner of the Egyptian Public Debt. His efficient service on this board attracted wide attention and on the abdication of Ismail, the Khedive of Egypt, he was made Controller-General. After three years spent in India (1880-1883), he returned to Egypt as agent and consul-general. On his arrival in Egypt he found political conditions in a deplorable state. He proceeded to organize the government, placing internal conditions on a sound basis. He also reorganized the army. Through his skill in diplomacy, he was of great assistance to Lord Kitchener in the conquest of Sudan. He was made a baron in 1892 and an earl in 1901. In his later years he was a minister in the diplomatic service. He took a prominent part in the negotiations leading up to the Anglo-French Declaration of April 8, 1904, by which France EARL CROMER acceded to the recognition of England's control of Egypt. Before his death he was chairman of a commission appointed to investigate the Dardanelles campaign. His published writings include "Staff College Essays," "The War Game," and "Modern Egypt," "Ancient Modern Imperialism," and "Political and Literary Essays," the third series of which was published in 1916. He died in 1917.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's wrote this in 1921 while Britain still held Egypt, praising Baring for putting the country's affairs on a sound basis; within a year, on 28 February 1922, Britain unilaterally declared Egypt independent, and the last British troops left the Canal Zone in 1956, the year Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. The verdict on Cromer's twenty-four years as consul-general has shifted sharply: where Collier's saw skilful organisation, modern historians weigh his refusal to fund Egyptian mass education, his hostility to nationalist politics, and the Denshawai hangings of 1906, which broke his standing and hastened his resignation the following year. Edward Said's Orientalism (1978) made Cromer a textbook example of the imperial administrator who claimed to know the East better than it knew itself, and he is now as often cited in that role as for his financial reforms. The Dardanelles Commission he chaired reported after his 1917 death, censuring the planning of the Gallipoli campaign.
Written for this edition, 2026.