Why was Egypt conquered in the 18^th century?  Location.  Egypt is centrally located between Europe, Asia and Africa, and specifically valuable sea routes between Europe and Asia.  Because of its perfect geographic location, Egypt was a center of trading ships and war galleons, and the center of attention for France and Great Britain. (1&2)

Napoléon of France came to Egypt in 1798 when he was in war with the rest of the Europe. (3) He realized that every single British trading boat has to pass by Egypt in order to get to India and the rest of the Asia. He hoped to damage the British trading. Napoléon sent 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors to take over Egypt. (4) Egypt becomes the Ottoman province that had control of it own. (5) In fact, the British were having much harder times to get to Asia; also, the French increased their own trading by about 40% with the Middle East, India and China. (6) With the failure of the battles in Russia, Napoléon has to give up Egypt.

After Napoléon and his army leaves Egypt, Mohammad Ali took power, he made series of changes about political, military and economics from 1831 to 1883; (7) but the British wanted to control this important land of trading. In result, they united the Turkish to attack Egypt. (8) The British took power in Egypt from 1883 to 1952. (9) Egypt becomes an independent state established under the recognition of Egyptian independence by the Great Britain.  British controlled Egyptian cabinet and made dictions; they made treaties with the Egyptians of taxes, right to build railroad and limit of Egyptian military. (10) The British had their trading route back and started to trade many Egyptian cotton with the Asian countries. The British Empire wanted to expand their sea route to the Africa; after ten years of working, The Suez Canal was built in 1866 and controlled by the British. (11) The location of Egypt not only affects the trading, it also affects to wars in the future. During World War II, British used Egypt as a base for Allied operations in the African region. (12)           

In result, Egypt was conquered for many years because of its great location. Egypt specifically the valuable sea routes between Europe and Asia, it is very desirable for Great Britian, the greatest trading civilization.