British officials used antislavery rhetoric to dismiss Egypt’s empire and justify their own

Evidence

Frith Bey’s questions regarding the traders’ claims of marriage reflect the venal connection between slavery and Islamic wedlock that contemporary British officials saw in Egyptian society. In the years of the occupation, this bias against Islamic practices became increasingly institutionalized as English officeholders gained greater administrative power and greater experience in Egypt.These administrators were hotly pursued by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society for detailed information on slaves and slave raids. Through this network that disseminated information about the qualities of Egyptian government and culture, the idea spread that Muslim slaveholders used the cloak of Islamic tradition to veil the presence of the slave trade, and that this same subterfuge was employed to justify Egypt’s presence in the Sudan. Egypt’s attempts at empire were thus dismissed, and Britain’s empire in Egypt and the Sudan justified. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 700

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to general literature on humanitarianism as imperial justification, e.g., the ‘civilizing mission’ and antislavery as colonial alibi.