Egypt

the Ottoman Turks in 1517, after which it became a province of the Ottoman Empire. The defensive militarization damaged its civil society and economic institutions.[27] The weakening of the economic system combined with the effects of plague left Egypt vulnerable to foreign invasion. Portuguese traders took over their trade.[27] Egypt suffered six famines between 1687 and 1731.[29] The 1784 famine cost it roughly one-sixth of its population.[30]

Egypt was always a difficult province for the Ottoman Sultans to control, due in part to the continuing power and influence of the Mamluks, the Egyptian military caste who had ruled the country for centuries. As such, Egypt remained semi-autonomous under the Mamluks until it was invaded by the French forces of Napoleon I in 1798. After the French were expelled, power was seized in 1805 by Muhammad Ali Pasha, an Albanian military commander of the Ottoman army in Egypt.

Egypt under the Muhammad Ali dynasty remained nominally an Ottoman province. It was granted the status of an autonomous vassal state or Khedivate in 1867. Isma'il and Tewfik Pasha governed Egypt as a quasi-independent state under Ottoman suzerainty until the British occupation of 1882. Nevertheless, the Khedivate of Egypt (1867–1914) remained a de jure Ottoman province until 5 November 1914,[31] when it was declared a British protectorate in reaction to the decision of the Young Turks of the Ottoman Empire to join the First World War on the side of the Central Powers.