The public career of Sir Francis Reginald Wingate, High Commissioner for Egypt: 1917-1919

The career of Sir Reginald Wingate was spent almost entirely in Egypt and the Sudan, and covered the period 1883 to 1919. Wingate became the first Governor-General of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan in 1899, and held that position until 1917. His subsequent appointment to the post of High Commissioner for Egypt was terminated abruptly in March 1919, after a nationalist uprising against the existing British Protectorate, ending his public career. This dissertation examines Wingate's public career, focusing on the events surrounding the political crisis in Egypt in 1919, and attempts, within the framework of British post-war policy in the Middle East, to determine the reasons for his downfall. The paper also attempts to assess Wingate's entire period of public service within the overall context of British imperial policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wingate's long period of service in the Sudan, during the crucial early days of Anglo-Egyptian rule, is assessed both in terms of his success in achieving the economic viability which England hoped to create there, and of the benefits, or lack thereof, which accrued to the Sudanese as the result of British rule. The procedure used in the writing of the dissertation was, most importantly, the evaluation of archival material. Wingate's private papers, from the Sudan Archive at Durham University, and the Curzon Papers from the India Office Records and Library in London, provided the main primary sources. Lord Curzon was Acting Foreign Secretary during the entire period of the Egyptian political crisis. The Parliamentary Debates were also consulted, as were Colonial Office annual reports and Confidential Prints. Despite the unfortunate conclusion of his career, Wingate's overall contribution--both to the attainment of British imperial policy objectives prior to the First World War, and to the success of British forces in the Middle East during the war--was of immense significance.