Cromer treated slavery as socially respectable in Egypt and ignored the Anti-Slavery Society

Evidence

The slave trade bureaus sanctioned by the Anglo-Egyptian Anti-Slavery Convention of 1877 now answered directly to the British Agent and consulgeneral of Egypt, Sir Evelyn Baring, soon to be named Lord Cromer, who funded them amply and supported their director, Colonel Charles Schaefer, enthusiastically. Cromer was not easily persuaded by the Anti-Slavery Society, which he in fact considered dangerously unacquainted with the political realities of Egypt and the Sudan. Part of his impatience with the Society stemmed from his sense that slavery was practically respectable in Egyptian society. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 673

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• QUESTION: Cromer’s toleration of Egyptian slavery as ‘respectable’ is a striking counterpoint to British antislavery rhetoric elsewhere — worth chasing how this maps onto later British policy in Sudan itself.

Related

• Cromer deemed slavery practically respectable in Egyptian society (similarity 0.97)
• British officials argued Egyptians were unfit to govern Sudan due to despotism (similarity 0.83)
• British officials dismissed Egyptians’ anti-slavery professions as hypocrisy (similarity 0.81)
• British consul-general Cromer ran Egypt’s government rather than the khedive (similarity 0.81)
• Britain used anti-slavery claims to justify its empire over Egypt and Sudan (similarity 0.79)
• Britain justified its empire by discrediting Egyptian authority over Sudan (similarity 0.79)
• British officials doubted Egyptian nationalists were sincere about abolishing slavery (similarity 0.79)
• British officials used antislavery rhetoric to dismiss Egypt’s empire and justify their own (similarity 0.79)
• European explorers were monumentalized while Egyptian figures were stigmatized as slave traders (similarity 0.79)
• Egypt hired British officials to placate London abolitionists (similarity 0.78)
• Egyptian elites petitioned British officials directly, bypassing their own khedive (similarity 0.78)
• Egyptian nationalists framed slavery as an Egyptian-Sudanese matter excluding the British (similarity 0.78)
• Egyptian expansion into East Africa collided with British abolitionist scrutiny (similarity 0.78)