Egyptian elites accepted Sudan as Egypt’s by right despite 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

• XREF: Connects to postcolonial debates about internal African colonialisms, e.g. Egypt’s own claim on Sudan paralleling European claims. — connects to: Egyptian officers advanced Sudan’s colonial administration yet were excluded from elite societies — Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism_…, 505