The Sudan Sensation of 1898

In early September 1898, after a two-year campaign reported in detail by some of the most famous war correspondents in the late Victorian period, an Anglo-Egyptian force under Lord Herbert H. Kitchener smashed the army of the Khalifa at his capital of Omdurman in the Sudan. Initially the event led to the usual spate of merchandising common during the time, but for weeks, then months after the battle the event and the participants stayed squarely in the public consciousness. This paper explores the breadth and depth of the public’s mania for all things Omdurman for the remainder of 1898, and speculates why a public that showed no great personal love for the regular army (at least, as enlistees) went on a binge of regular army hero worship.