Benjamin Disraeli responded quickly and with permission from parliament and Queen Victoria received a £4 million loan from Lionel de Rothschild to purchase the 177,000 shares from Ismail on behalf of the British government. This offer was slightly greater than the French offer, and Ismail physically delivered his share certificates to the British consulate. By December 1875 Britain became the largest shareholder of the Suez Canal Company, owning 44 percent of the shares. However, the remaining 56% of the company's shares remained under the ownership of French shareholders. In 1876, Ismail again faced government debt payment issues and was forced to join an international commission which would govern Egypt's finances known as Dual Control. As a condition of joining the commission, the khedive's right to 15 percent of the commissions from Suez Canal traffic was sold. The buyer was a French bank and the price was 22 million francs. In 1879, Ismail was deposed by the Ottoman sultan and replaced with Tawfiq. Tawfiq was challenged for leadership during a nationalist uprising in 1880 by Colonel Ahmad Urabi. In response to an anti-European riot in 1882, Britain landed an army, seized the canal, and developed a protectorate over Egypt, placing Lord Cromer as the head governing authority. The 1888 Convention of Constantinople declared the canal a neutral zone under British protection. The agreement went into effect in 1904, the same year as the Entente cordiale between Britain and France. World War I and Interwar period The British assigned more than 100,000 troops to the canal during the first world war. The canal was used to help stage T.E. Lawrence and Faisal's Arab revolt during the war against the Ottomans. Egypt was declared an independent country in 1922, however, Britain still asserted a right to defend the canal and stationed troops there for that purpose into the 1930s. The company's profits rose greatly during the 1920s and 1930s. In 1938, Benito Mussolini demanded that Italy have a sphere of influence in the Suez Canal, specifically demanding that an Italian representative be placed on the company's board of directors. Italy opposed the French monopoly over the Suez Canal because under French domination of the company all Italian merchant traffic to its colony of Italian East Africa was forced to pay tolls upon entering the canal. From World War II to the Suez Crisis Britain secured the canal against the Germans and their Afrika