page_title: Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer
section_title: Later years
hierarchical_section_title: Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer / Later years
caption_attribution_description: Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, by John Singer Sargent (died 1925). See source website for additional information. This set of images was gathered by User:Dcoetzee from the National Portrait Gallery, London website using a special tool. All images in this batch have been confirmed as author died before 1939 according to the official death date listed by the NPG.
context_page_description: Evelyn Baring, 1st Earl of Cromer, GCB, OM, GCMG, KCSI, CIE, PC, FRS was a British statesman, diplomat and colonial administrator. He was British controller-general in Egypt during 1879, part of the international Control which oversaw Egyptian finances after the 1876 Egyptian bankruptcy. He later became the agent and consul-general in Egypt from 1883 to 1907 during the British occupation prompted by the 'Urabi revolt. This position gave Baring de facto control over Egyptian finances and governance.
  Baring's programs led to limited economic development in Egypt in certain areas, but deepened its dependence on cash crops and structural underdevelopment, as well as regressed many of its social developments. His policies are considered to be representative of colonial "white man's burden" attitudes.
context_section_description: Baring returned to Britain at the age of 66, and spent a year regaining his health. In 1908, he published, in two volumes, Modern Egypt, a narrative of events in Egypt and the Sudan since 1876. In 1910, he published Ancient and Modern Imperialism, an influential comparison of the British and Roman Empires. In 1914, after World War I broke out, the Khedive Abbas II of Egypt supported the Ottomans and was deposed by the British. This freed Baring to publish his impressions of the Khedive, Abbas II, in 1915.
  A lover of the classics, Baring was very well-read and spoke Greek, Latin, Italian, French, and Turkish, but he never bothered to learn Arabic – the language of the lower classes in Egypt. During the opening years of the 20th century, a nationalist movement began to appear in Egypt, but Baring, who became increasingly aloof with age, brushed it off as inconsequential.
  In most regards, Baring was a typical Englishman of his generation. He believed with great conviction in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and its duty to act as a parental figure to the less advanced peoples of the world. Viewing the Eastern mind as weak and "slipshod", he often boasted that he possessed an intimate understanding of it – despite evidence to the contrary. He very much fitted the stereotype of the British colonial administrator: fair, hardworking, devoted, and patriotic but humourless. Known to co-workers and intimates as "Vice-Viceroy" and "Over-Baring", he could be brusque and condescending to both his peers and the "subject races".
  Baring was active in politics. Having been raised to the peerage as Lord Cromer in 1892, Baring was entitled to sit in the House of Lords. He joined the free-trade wing of the Unionist Party. Baring was a leader of the anti-suffragette cause, serving as the president of the Men's League for Opposing Woman Suffrage in 1908, then in 1910–1912, the subsequent National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage. In 1916, he was appointed to the Dardanelles Commission, but it was too much strain for the 75-year-old Baring to handle.
  Baring died on 29 January 1917; he is buried at Wimborne Road Cemetery, Bournemouth, in Dorset.
caption: Cromer by J. S. Sargent
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