Egypt’s Ottoman-elite ruling class treated the Sudan as an Egyptian colony.

Evidence

By the late nineteenth century, Egypt had experienced imperialism on many levels. Conquered by Sultan Selim I in 1516, Egypt in the early nineteenth century was a country steeped in the traditions of the Ottoman Empire, with a ruling class of Ottoman governors, officials, and descendants—an Ottoman-Egyptian elite. Although many of these elite had been born in Egypt, they were often most comfortable speaking and writing in Turkish. Muhammad Alï himself was a member of this group, and he and his successors did not identify themselves as Egyptians. But Muhammad Alï succeeded in making the rule of Egypt the dynastic right of his family, and his successful conquest of the Sudan incorporated it under Egyptian auspices. The new class of bureaucrats he created thus grew up perceiving the Sudan as an Egyptian colony. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 63

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Egyptian coloniality’s layered character: an Ottoman-subject elite that colonized Sudan under Egyptian auspices — a ‘layer-cake’ imperialism.
• XREF: Multi-layered coloniality (Ottoman over Egyptian over Sudanese) parallels layered imperial hierarchies discussed in other African colonial literatures.