The Nile in Darkness: a flawed unity, 1863–1899 (review)

This is the second volume of The Nile in Darkness, the first covering the much longer period 1504–1862. Both focus primarily on Sudan: A Flawed Unity begins from the succession of Ismail Pasha Ibrahim as Viceroy of Egypt in 1863 and ends with the establishment of the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium of Sudan in 1899. The author, like his father, served under the Condominium, and these two volumes reflect a lifetime of interest and commitment. A Flawed Unity is a thoroughly researched account of Turkish-Egyptian expansion as far as the Abyssinian border and coast, Equatoria and Darfur, and of concurrent and subsequent European involvement and interventions. Although this period has been documented in some detail both at the time and since, this volume is an important new contribution because of the comprehensiveness with which the author has brought together the sources. The length of the volume should not deter readers, for the writing style is brisk and engaging, and the chapters and sections clearly break up the narrative. The only drawback to the consolidated referencing is that direct quotes are sometimes not immediately identifiable.

As a second (and highly detailed) volume, it assumes a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the reader, and a newcomer might struggle initially to grasp the government structures, personalities and places, or to dip into chapters. Nevertheless, there is a helpful introductory summary of the previous forty years of Turkish-Egyptian rule in Sudan. Its negative appraisal is continued in accounts of local distrust towards the Turkish occupation and its taxation demands and military conscription. But there is also sympathy for the difficult task of the successive governors of Sudan in dealing with administrative and military policies from Egypt amid financial difficulties. The analysis of Ja’afar Pasha Mazhar (1866–9) in Chapter 2, for example, embodies the rather subtle reappraisal of sources characteristic of the book. The author relies heavily on Georges Douin’s 1930s analyses of the Turkish sources, but his own thorough research enables him to question Douin’s (and other) criticisms of Ja’afar and emphasize instead the military over-extension and gathering financial crisis of Viceroy Ismail’s government in Egypt.

In Chapter 3, the author highlights the British Magdala relief expedition to Abyssinia (1867–8) as the most significant stimulus to Ismail’s expansionism, which is followed through its failures in Abyssinia and rather limited successes in the Upper Nile, Bahr el Ghazal and Darfur to its territorial climax in the 1870s (Chapters 4–10). Although Sudan is the primary focus of the book, it continually brings a wide-ranging regional perspective to both Egyptian and European involvement in North-East Africa. It also emphasizes the Viceroy’s mindfulness of the need to appease European opinion in order to pursue his aggrandizement, which led to the rather anomalous role of European governors in Sudan, whose instructions to end the slave trade reflected the propaganda rather than purpose of the Viceroy. The author at times appears to reflect his European sources: for example, in depicting the Abyssinian Emperor Theodore as ‘psychotic and devious’ (p. 79) or the British as enforcing ‘civilized conventions’ (p. 83), or the Acholi and Madi ‘relief’ when Baker garrisoned Egyptian army soldiers in the Equatorial trading stations (p. 137). But he is also critical of Baker’s arrogance towards his Turkish-Egyptian colleagues and superiors (pp. 121–41), and matter-of-fact in his account in Chapters 11 and 13 of Gordon’s role, highlighting the latter’s positive attitude toward Islam (pp. 340–3) and the role of the British press in his appointment to lead the withdrawal from Sudan (p. 427). The account of the rise, establishment and fall of the Mahdist government (Chapters 12–15) is shorter than that of the Turkish-Egyptian government, but emphasizes the continuities by locating the appeal of the Mahdi in the failures of the preceding administration and the grievances it...