Britain Buys Suez Shares

November 25, 1875

Benjamin Disraeli, with a four-million-pound loan from the Rothschilds and without asking Parliament, bought the bankrupt Khedive Ismail's forty-four percent stake in the Suez Canal Company. Britain now effectively controlled the shortest route to India. It was, Disraeli told Queen Victoria, hers - and she enjoyed the news considerably. The purchase led, within seven years, to the British occupation of Egypt that would last until 1956.