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MIDDLE EASTERN MONOGRAPHS: II
EGYPT IN
THE SUDAN
1820-1881
The Royal Institute of International Affairs is an
unofficial and non-political body, founded in Kj20 to
encourage and facilitate the scientific study of inter¬
national questions. The Institute, as such, is pre¬
cluded by the terms of its Royal Charter from
expressing an opinion on any aspect of international
affairs. Any opinions expressed in this publication
are not, therefore, those of the Institute.
MIDDLE EASTERN MONOGRAPHS
In order to illuminate the background to inter¬
national relations in the area, the Royal Institute
of International Affairs proposes to publish from
time to time under this general title studies of the
modern society of the Middle East—its ideas and
beliefs, its economic activities, its social and poli¬
tical institutions. All will be based on first-hand
investigation or original thought, and all will be
concerned, in their different ways, with a single
theme: the vast, rapid, and continuing change in
Middle Eastern society in modern times, and the
problems it poses for the Middle Eastern peoples
and for those who have interests among them.
The first volume to be published in the series was
The Labour Movement in the Sudan, igqC-ig55
by Saad ed din Fawzi. Richard Hill’s is the second.
EGYPT IN
THE SUDAN
1820-1881
BY
1
RICHARD HILL
Issued under the auspices of the
Royal Institute of International Affairs
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
Oxford University Press, Ely House, London W. i
GLASGOW NEW YORK TORONTO MELBOURNE WELLINGTON
CAPE TOWN SALISBURY IBADAN NAIROBI LUSAKA ADDIS ABABA
BOMBAY CALCUTTA MADRAS KARACHI LAHORE DACCA
KUALA LUMPUR HONG KONG TOKYO
© Royal Institute of International Affairs 1959
First published 1959
Reprinted 1963 and 1966
\
SET IN GREAT BRITAIN
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, OXFORD
AND REPRINTED LITHOGRAPHICALLY BY
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EDINBURGH
r
PREFACE
H E object of this book is to explain the nature and significance
of the Egyptian occupation of the Sudan.
The story of Egypt’s modern relations with the lands be¬
yond her southern border began in 1820 when a masterful body of
conquerors went south under the Ottoman flag and won a footing
in the Sudan. They strengthened and extended their hold towards
the Great Lakes and down the Red Sea coast until 1881 when,
under pressure of nationalist revolts in Egypt and the Sudan, they
began to withdraw, fighting as they went. The withdrawal was
completed in 1885, after Mahdist arms and British policy had
forced the Egyptian Government from the country.
The sixty years of Egyptian rule left a deep impression upon the
Sudan, and when Kitchener reconquered the lost territory with
an Anglo-Egyptian army in 1896-9, Egypt began to take a quiet
but essential part in its rehabilitation. Egyptians often complain
that the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of 1899-1956 was a device
invented by the British for the purpose of excluding Egypt from
all share in the effective control of her own possession. This is true
in the political sense in that the senior officials of the young Sudan
Government were British and the British Foreign Office had the
last word in Sudanese policy-framing, as in fact it had in Egypt
until at least 1919. But there is evidence on all sides in the Sudan
today that in the wider, and in the long run the more important,
sense, conditions under the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium were
favourable to the spread of Egyptian influence.
It is all the more regrettable that Anglo-Egyptian relations, at
all times difficult enough, should have been complicated by contro¬
versy over the Sudan. British writers (historians among them),
preoccupied in defending the memory of General Gordon, have
been so contemptuous of the Egyptian point of view that they have
not troubled to understand it and have dismissed their rule in the
Sudan as one of oppression, slavery, and graft. Egyptian writers,
for whom historiography is almost always an expression of patriot¬
ism, have accused Britain of deliberately weakening an enlightened
Egyptian administration in order to seize the Sudan and Uganda
for herself and deny to Egypt her natural patrimony. The cham¬
pions of both sides have piled up a vast and partisan literature
without presenting in English or Arabic an objective appraisal
either of the Egyptian record in colonial government or of the
extent of her present influence in the African hinterland.
This book attempts to fill the void left by the controversialists.
Preface
VI
The reader is warned at the outset that the documentation for the
period of Egyptian rule in the Sudan is pitiably thin. The Egyptian
state archives, where nearly all the surviving papers are preserved,
have suffered from destruction and neglect, while the government
archives in the Sudan perished in the fury of the Mahdist revolt.
After all, the Egyptian Sudan was only an appendage to an Otto¬
man province, a dependency of a dependency ; the country never
enjoyed autonomy, and administrative continuity was always at the
mercy of the ruler in Egypt. Statistical information, especially in
the fields of economics and public finance, is scarce and unreliable.
The hazards of investigation are increased by the fact that the
Sudan Government did not adopt Western fiscal procedure until
the last years of Egyptian rule when Egypt herself was entering
upon political chaos.
I have tried to avoid giving the story a unity on paper which,
as will soon be discovered, it never possessed in fact, and to refrain
from those neat, doctrinaire judgements which simplify and yet
distort the writing of so many Western commentators on Eastern
themes. I have been content to show the Egyptian Government
prosaically at work in office and camp, in district and village, on
the ground that it is better to bore with detail than deceive with
jargon.
Only the briefest word need be said on the subject of translitera¬
tion from the Arabic script. The task has been to reconcile in a
rough compromise the divergent renderings of Arabs, Turks,
French, and the occasionally tone-deaf makers of African maps. If
the reader knows a better way of tackling this particular job, I
shall be happy to receive correction.
A bar between two dates given in the Gregorian calendar, e.g.
1831/2, indicates that the Islamic date from which they are re¬
corded has been incompletely written in the original document
and so has rendered a more precise conversion impossible.
I join with gratitude the small procession of recent workers in
nineteenth-century Sudanese history who have acknowledged their
obligation to the officials in charge of the Egyptian archives for
many kindnesses. To the Council of Gordon Memorial College
(now the University of Khartoum) I am deeply indebted for the
grant of leave and allowances which enabled me to study in Cairo.
Finally I thank three good friends: Colonel 'Abd al-Rahman
Zaki, librarian of the Egyptian Army Library and formerly curator
of the Military Museum, Cairo, for much technical guidance on
troops and arms; Shatir Busaili, librarian of the Institute of Suda¬
nese Studies, Cairo, and for many years my colleague in the Sudan
Civil Service, for the help that comes of a lifetime’s friendship;
