Egypt’s intellectual elite accepted Sudan’s annexation as natural even while opposing Ismail’s methods

Evidence

The linguistic schizophrenia of Ismaïl’s imperialist policies in Africa coincided with an increased cultural sensitivity to political language that took place in Egyptian society during the nahda. In addition to pointing out the political uses of language, writers from across the intellectual and cultural spectrum of Egyptian society paid careful attention to Ismaïl’s activities in Africa and their contradictory results: the irresolute strategies of the Egyptian army in the Abyssinian campaigns; the fears of Egyptian soldiers stationed in the Sudan who had looked to the army as an opportunity for upward mobility and who were now threatened by the Dual Control’s demand that the military be reduced; the extensive and much-publicized plans for the building of the railroad and telegraph system connecting Egypt to the Sudan; and the 1877 treaty abolishing the slave trade in the Sudan. Although many of the frustrated officers, bureaucrats, and intelligentsia disagreed with Isma`ïl on his autocratic ideas about government in Egypt and disliked his exploitation of the country’s resources and manpower for exploration of Sudanese territories, they ingested the basic idea of his ambitions for the Sudan with little question. No matter how distant it seemed culturally, nor how obscure its people, the Sudan belonged, by nature of geography and tradition, to Egypt. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 342

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: Defines the contradictory/inward character of Ismail-era Egyptian imperialism — annexationist ambition coexisting with autocracy at home.
• XREF: Connects to the broader African coloniality literature and the ‘civilizing mission’ idea also deployed by European powers in the same period.

Related

• Egyptian elites accepted Sudan as Egypt’s by right despite opposing Ismail’s methods (similarity 0.94)
• Egyptian nationalism fused anti-imperialism with the desire to re-subjugate the Sudan (similarity 0.84)
• Mubarak saw Egyptian colonialism in Sudan as necessary self-strengthening (similarity 0.83)
• Isma’il’s Sudan expansion debts caused Egypt’s foreign control and British occupation (similarity 0.83)
• Al-Tahtawï viewed European colonialism as a model for Egypt to emulate in Sudan (similarity 0.82)
• British abolitionists read Ismail’s Sudan expansion as despotic Islam, not reform. (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian imperialism defined Egypt as separate from and closer to Europe than the Sudan. (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian anti-colonial nationalists simultaneously dreamed of dominating the Sudan (similarity 0.82)
• Some Egyptian writers framed imperialism as a civilizing benefit for the colonized. (similarity 0.82)
• Egypt’s anti-imperialism was entangled with ambitions to recolonize the Sudan (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptians learned empire by drawing sharper distinctions from Sudan (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptians were surprised to learn Sudan saw them as arrogant (similarity 0.82)
• Egyptian defenses of slavery glossed over the Sudanese slave trade’s harshness (similarity 0.82)
• Lutfï al-Sayyid equated Egyptian and Sudanese subjection to shared autocratic rule (similarity 0.82)
• Sudanese and Egyptians reciprocally held condescension and resentment shaped by colonial hierarchies. (similarity 0.82)