Egypt and Sudan formed a triangular colonial relationship that shaped Egyptian nationalism.

Evidence

In just four years, Egypt had become a de facto colony of Great Britain and had lost its own colony in the Sudan, all during a period when certain pivotal groups of Egyptians were beginning to distinguish themselves culturally and ethnically from the Ottoman-Egyptian elites who occupied the highest posts in the country. The resulting triangle of colonialism marked by Great Britain, Egypt, and the Sudan thus had a profound imprint on the development of Egyptian nationalism. Thus my study differs from other explorations of Egyptian nationalism: I examine not a Manichean binary relationship between colonizer and colonized, but a more fluid relationship, in which the colonizer came from more than one continent, and the colonized could aspire to be a colonizer not only by adopting the tools of the British, or the traditions of the Ottomans, but also by making the Sudan a part of what defined Egypt as truly Egyptian. — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 65

Categorization

• XREF: This framing of a ‘triangle of colonialism’ with Egypt simultaneously colonized and colonizer directly serves the reader’s comparative Egypt-versus-Sudan goal and connects to postcolonial scholarship on middle empires and sub-imperialism.
• QUESTION: The claim that colonized Egyptians could become colonizers by making Sudan part of Egypt’s identity invites further investigation into the concrete mechanisms of Egyptian sub-imperialism in Sudan.