Egypt’s nationalist founding figure framed British rule as amputating Egypt from Sudan

Evidence

At the time of the pashas’ trial in Cairo, Mustafa Kämil led the nationalism movement; he was the founder of the Hizb al-watanï, or the Nationalist Party, whose ideas about the Egyptian nation (and the Islamic nation, a concept that incorporated loyalty to both religion and the Ottoman Empire) would be extremely influential for decades to come. Both at home and while traveling in Europe, he campaigned for French and German support for Egyptians in their struggle with Great Britain. In his eloquent pleas for the recognition of his country’s difficulties, Kämil created an image of a wounded Sudan, a spectacle of victimization that evoked the figure of Zanüba, sitting alone before foreign judges. Just as Zanüba had testified she was a slave, a masterless slave, Kämil presented the Sudan as stuck in a netherworld: neither an outright colony of Great Britain nor the natural dependent of Egypt. Egypt too was off-kilter. The British occupation had overpowered Ottoman authority over Egypt, had estranged Egyptian Muslims from the sultan of the Ottoman Empire, the amir al-Mu´minïn, and had cost Egypt the Sudan. As a body politic, Kämil’s Egypt suffered amputation; as a people, Egyptians were orphaned. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 716

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Egypt-vs-Sudan colonial comparison theme built across the book.