Records of East India Company and India Office Agencies in Egypt

IOR/R/19

Records of East India Company and India Office Agencies in Egypt

1832-1870

The surviving records are those of the Agency and Deputy Agency in Egypt, and of the Packet Agencies at Cairo and Suez. They comprise letters received which seem fairly complete for the years covered, letters sent the survival of which seems more spasmodic (and for Suez non-existent), and accounts.

Many of these records were formerly lodged in the IOR Egypt and Red Sea Factory records (ref G/17) and numbered as follows: G/17/18-24 (now R/19/1-7), G/17/25-26 (now R/19/25-26), G/17/27-32 (now R/19/17-22, G/17/33 (now R/19/11), G/17/34 (now R/19/10), G

Further material on the Company's Egyptian establishment can be found in several IOR series but particularly: B, Court Minutes (copies of the Court's decisions regarding the Egyptian establishment are in IOR/L/AG/30/12, f784 onwards); IOR/G/17, Factory Records (particularly IOR/G/17/8-17); and IOR/L/AG/50/11/1-6, Egyptian Agency Accounts from 1843.

Public Record(s)

English

27 volumes

Unrestricted

Serious efforts to establish a route for the conveyance of mails between India and England via the Red Sea and Egypt began in the 1830s. Though the possibility had been considered since the mid-eighteenth century, such factors as sailing conditions in the Indian Ocean, religious objections to Christian vessels in the Red Sea north of Jidda, political instability in Egypt, and the prevalence of plague in the Near East, had inhibited the establishment of a route which would be speedier than the sea route via the Cape of Good Hope. By the 1830s, greater political stability in Egypt under Mehemet Ali, and the arrival of steam navigation, removed some objections, and new trading concerns were putting pressure on the East India Company (which lost its trading monopoly to the East in 1833) to establish a shorter route to India. The Company remained dubious because of the capital outlay, and the erosion of its control over immigration, which the new route would involve, and the initiative came from the Presidency Governments in India and from private individuals, notably Thomas Waghorn. Having been forced to reconsider its position, on 27 February 1833, the Company appointed Col Patrick Campbell, the Consul-General in Egypt, as its Agent, and on 7 June 1837 it appointed Waghorn (whose private enterprise had already created an overland transit system) as its Packet Agent subordinate to Campbell. In the same year regular steam packets were established between India and England, and the Company set up a network of Packet Agencies in Egypt and the Red Sea to expedite the mails and maintain supplies of English coal received at Alexandria and transported overland to the Red Sea. By late 1837 the Company's Egyptian establishment consisted of an Agency (held at the time, but not in later years, by the Consul-General) with a Deputy Agency both at Alexandria, a Cairo Agency (also held by the Consul), and Agencies at Suez (which had vice-consular status), Mokha and Jidda, together with Egyptian supporting staff. Within a few years this large establishment was rendered unnecessary by such factors as the improvement of internal communications in Egypt and the establishment of a competing service by the P&O Steam Navigation Company on the Bombay-Aden-Suez run. Thus the Mokha Agency seems to have been abolished in 1839, the posts of Agent and Deputy Agent in Egypt were combined in 1849, the Jidda Agency lapsed c1851, the mail service to India was taken over by the General Post Office in 1858, the Cairo Agency was dissolved in 1859 (no longer needed with the completion of a rail link between Alexandria and Suez), and the remaining Agencies ceased to handle coal when it was found cheaper to bring coal by sea round the Cape. Investigation following the death of Capt Henry Johnson, the last Agent in Egypt, showed that such residual duties as the Agencies undertook had in recent years effectively been performed by the Overland Troop Service, and the Company's (by now the India Office's) Egyptian establishment was therefore finally wound up. The last records in the collection listed here date from 1870. The names of the Agents and Packet Agents in Egypt were as follows:. Agent in Egypt: Lt-Col P Campbell 1833-39; Capt J Lyons, RN 1839-48; Capt H Johnson 1849-70 (also Packet Agent in Alexandria). Deputy Agent: Capt T Waghorn 1837; Capt J Lyons 1838-39; Capt H Johnson 1839-48 (also Packet Agent in Alexandria). Packet Agent at Alexandria: Capt J Lyons 1837; Capt H Johnson 1838-39; post then amalgamated with Deputy Agency. Packet Agent at Cairo: A S Walne 1837-59. Packet Agent at Suez: W Fitch 1837-38; H Levick 1839-70; Packet Agent at Jidda: C A Ogilvie 1837-51; Packet Agent at Mokha: S Naylor 1837-39; Company's Agent at Atfe: Ciani ?-?.